While examples of prose and poetry merging in English literature—or, at the very least, the two genres occupying the same space—can date back as far as the tenth century,1 we have to wait until the nineteenth century for a more notable fusion of the two forms and the twenty-first for the prose poem in name and practice to be positively recognised in Britain. This book aims to look at the form’s narrative between the examples of prose poetry (as opposed to poetic prose ) in nineteenth-century English literature and the current century’s resurgence of British prose poetry . A question underlying the leaps in time between prose poetry (and, indeed, poetic prose) found in widespread English literature and prose poetry written and produced in Britain, is, of course: why English Literature first and Britain later? By way of background, the historical timeline tends to follow a particular narrative,2 more or less between Baudelaire, via the Decadent and Symbolist movements through to modernist writers of poetry and prose in America, Europe and the UK, and landing in a host of contemporary writers of prose and poetry—all genders , all races, all classes, both traditional and experimental, among them the writers listed earlier, but with many more emerging.3 In the twenty-first century, prose poets are indebted not only to current writers and academics working in this field, but also to a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers and their incisive questioning of conventional ideas of prose and poetry. Crucial to the shifting or blurring of boundaries so central to the prose poem’s identity or reputation, we are finally acting upon assertions and questions that have long ago been raised by and between key English authors. Wordsworth and Coleridge4 most notably provided the reader with the earliest, most persuasive examples of critical responses by and between poets exploring how and why prose and poetry can be seen at all as two distinct, separate genres and languages. These crucial debates helped break down boundary lines, or at least change and disseminate entrenched understandings of generic boundary lines. Their questions brought about changes to how both reader and writer alike can approach a piece of literature. Underneath these changes, the prose poem continued to evolve through experiment, but was not recognised definitely and clearly as the ‘prose poem’ in the works of several modernists—among them Virginia Woolf , James Joyce , Gertrude Stein , T.S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett . They wrote short prose, plays, prose lyrics and lyric essays and, above all, consciously and critically drew attention to the fluid correspondence between poetry and prose in their texts, coming close to producing what we now regard as prose poetry , or at the very least helping us recognise what it is and what it can do.
In the twenty-first century, we have gained an unprecedented appetite for short forms, on- and off-screen, and arguably the prose poem can be read with greater frequency and in far more congenial territory than was offered in the past. It appears that both British writers and critics alike are beginning to appreciate the possibilities of this hybrid form with increasing rigour and focus—that the prose poet’s distillation and organisation of music, image, metaphor, and complex but economical use of juxtaposition merged with aspects of narrative technique, dialogue, point-of-view and even plot and character are particular crafts in and unique to the prose poem. Further to this, that the prose poem can become a genre in itself in British literature is finally being acknowledged—at least in terms of digital and print exposure, where it is being published, taught and discussed steadily in the independent streams, and more frequently recognised by centrally established authors, publishers, panels and judges.
With the presence, rather than absence, of the prose poem very much in mind throughout this book, the complex backstory to the prose poem in the UK, where it could have disappeared entirely, seems all the more important to remember. Many critics place T.S. Eliot in the frame when it comes to compounding the damage done during the prose poem’s association with Wilde and Decadence . I quote from one of this volume’s contributor’s, Michel Delville , in the introduction to his seminal book on the American prose poem, The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre, to put this point and Eliot’s criticism in context:
One of the first critical responses to such a conception of the prose poem as a piece of stylized and ‘poeticized’ prose (Ernest Dowson ’s 1899 collection of prose poems was quite appropriately named Decorations in Prose) was voiced by T.S. Eliot in 1917. In an essay entitled ‘The Borderline of Prose,’ Eliot reacted against the prose poems of Richard Aldington, which he saw as a disguised attempt to revive the stylistic preciousness and technical ‘charlatanism’ of the Decadents (‘Borderline’ 158). In contrast with the prose poems of Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen and the ‘pure prose’ of Rimbaud’s Illuminations, which he admired, Aldington’s hybrid prose poems were condemned by Eliot on the ground that they ‘seem[ed] to hesitate between two media’ (159). As became clear in a second essay on the subject, published in 1921, Eliot did not object so much to the prose poets’ endeavors to create a hybrid genre as to the terms ‘prose poem’ and ‘prose poetry ’ themselves, to which he preferred the more neutral expression ‘short prose’ (‘Prose and Verse’ 6).That Eliot’s fierce condemnation of the formal hybridity of the prose poem did a lot to discourage other early modernist poets from even trying their hands at the genre is beyond any doubt—if Eliot had been the lesser poet, and Aldington one of the most respected and influential men of letters of his time, the history of the contemporary prose poem in English may have taken a totally different turn.5
In many ways, this volume is a response to two things that T.S. Eliot said at the beginning of the twentieth century in one of the earliest published examples of a poet and essayist critiquing the British prose poem. Eliot’s first opinion more or less condemned or heavily refuted the prose poem; the second implied that the prose poem might do better were it regarded as short prose, rather than a prose poem. While these questions of form and identity are addressed, what emerges through these essays is that, as part of tracing the prose poem’s story in Britain, we need to turn as much towards the UK itself as outwards towards other literary, cultural and societal values in which the prose poem has been able to play a more readily and naturally accepted role in education, publishing , literature and performance. Throughout the world there are examples of prose poets in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa, the Caribbean, Russia, Japan, China, Syria, Portugal, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain and Greece, and it appears that the form—or at the very least the blending of poetry and prose—is far more stitched into their mainstream literatures and curricula. It is for another editor and writer to produce a literature survey of prose poetry across the globe and go much further towards ascertaining the manifold traditions, rules and approaches towards poetry and prose, and how they have governed the prose poem’s role and status accordingly.
Through acknowledging and being aware of the international differences as far as the status of the prose poem is concerned, the contributors here focus on writers based in the UK who have globally and locally influenced and developed the prose poem, through dedicated practice—raising its profile in teaching, publishing , performance and public debates. As a result of this creative and professional momentum coordinated to encourage a correspondence between conventionally separate disciplines, forms and contexts, the British prose poem is thriving.
And yet, in spite of this resurgence, there is still criticism and confusion reminiscent of Eliot’s questioning. What are we marketing? What is this form? What defines the prose poem? How would we recognise one? It is still in many ways the ‘impossible genre’ in spite of its recent success. While it has been defined, within that definition (or definitions), practitioners have had their own idea of what constitutes prose poetry , from length to use of sentence, look and sound. In a handful of critical texts—notably Jonathan Monroe, A Poverty of Objects (1987); Stephen Fredman , Poet’s Prose (1990); Margueritte S. Murphy, A Tradition of Subversion (1992); Michel Delville , The American Prose Poem (1998); and Steven Monte , Invisible Fences (2000)—there are some definitions, many of which are useful and directive. More significantly, however, these writers’ texts raise discussions around definition and the various takes on what a prose poem is or is not, as well as ask: to what extent is a definition helpful and to what extent is it pointless, or even detrimental, to a form that is so closely associated with so many other terms and forms? There are, of course, many examples of prose poems given in this volume but, if we work with the most recognised characteristic of a prose poem—which is that the sentence is used as the unit, rather than the line—can we then see the examples all falling into the same genre? Clearly not. So, how do we commonly account for what they are; what they are doing with language, image, thought, rhythm and form? For an important essay on questioning the prose poem with astute reference to Geoffrey Hill , see Alan Wall’s essay in this volume. Among Wall’s questions, he asks of a passage from Dickens’ Bleak House: is this a prose poem? In language, turn of phrase, focus and density, this is a hall-mark prose poem, he acknowledges, but, as Wall concludes, it is not a prose poem, because it is an intrinsic part of a larger piece of fiction. This begs another question: is there room in the genre for found prose poetry , or is the prose poem a prose poem because it works in a far more self-contained and autonomous manner? This essay raises and draws attention to ongoing arguments and opinions around definition that, to a point, pitch against some of the views in other essays and certainly will continue debate in the poetry and prose poetry communities. It is essential that questions about, as well as common understandings of, prose poetry are represented here in order to reflect today’s mix of contradictory and broad takes on the prose poem. Its exposure and survival is dependent on these articulated differences; they are an essential part of the questions that need to happen around the prose poem, not only to gain more of a critical understanding of the genre and variations of the form within that genre, but also to gauge whether the prose poem is a form that opens up more opportunities for new forms within other genres. Can it exist, for example, as embedded and waiting to be found within larger works of fiction as much as be created according to its own rules?
For the purposes of at least having a foundation on which to stand or leave and to help answer these questions, one of the more useful working definitions and important synoptic accounts which both practitioners and critics have been able to draw on is to be found in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:
PROSE POEM (poem in prose). A composition able to have any or all features of the lyric, except that it is put on the page—though not conceived of—as prose. It differs from poetic prose in that it is short and compact, from free verse in that it has no line breaks, from a short prose passage in that it has, usually, more pronounced rhythm, sonorous effects, imagery, and density of expression. It may contain even inner rhyme and metrical runs. Its length, generally, is from half a page (one or two paragraphs) to three or four pages, i.e., of the average lyrical poem. If it is any longer, the tensions and impact are forfeited, and it becomes—more or less poetic-prose.6
Characteristic of many definitions, while it gives a good idea of the prose poem—as opposed to poetic prose—this is as prescriptive as it is safe: ‘usually’ ‘may’ and ‘generally’ draw attention to the fact that the prose poem is hard to summarise precisely and that ...