EPMD's Prose Poetry is Over Group

[twelveoone]

See, there's the problem. You're homing in on a definition of poetry that I'm not buying. Or you seem to be.

Musicality is but one poetic device (or rather a combination of different ones) out of many. A poet chooses the devices that are effective for communicating the message and apt for the poetry genre of his choice. That may or may not include audible devices as meter and rhyme. If a poet cling to certain decives out of a skewed notion that poems must contain them, said poet is crippling himself.

Bullet list please, what must a poem contain to not be, in your words, "prose disguised as poetry"? You're looking for flowery elocution? Meter structure? Depth of metaphor (what has zilch to do with musicality)?

Yeh, what he said
because there are 10,000 ways

 

[twelveoone]

of course the easiest thing to do, is pull the trigger on some of the obvious crap, on the obviously writter critters.
all this time wasted, when I and the prose posse could have been stompin...

 

[butters]

Wadded Red Lace
byPoetGuy©

It was not the way she handed him
the damp undergarment, nor
her slitted eyes, her half-smile,
her snake tongue flicking at the air for scent.
It was that the lace was wet. And why.


This submission is prose, unless someone can make an argument for poetic elements. It could be the first three sentences for a story PoetGuy is working on. Three excellent introductory sentences. The fact that it's not a poem doesn't take away from the quality of the image. The tell for me is that the line breaks are irrelevant, they could be in a number of places and we'd still easily read the sentences and get the image.

It was not the way she handed him the damp undergarment,
nor her slitted eyes, her half smile, her snake tongue
flicking at the air for scent.
It was that the lace was wet.
And why.

It was not the way
she handed him the damp undergarment, nor
her slitted eyes, her half smile, her snake tongue flicking
at the air for scent. It was that the lace was wet.
And why.

It was not the way she handed him the damp undergarment, nor her slitted eyes, her half smile, her snake tongue flicking at the air for scent. It was that the lace was wet. And why.

What could have made this into a poem? An attention to iambs, accentual-syllabic verse? Obviously, line breaks do not make for poetry. Do we want prose and poetry to be separate? Does it matter?

i'll take up the baton here, Epmd

for me, it is a poem. simple as that.
now for why, and in the simple terms i am used to using (not being a scholarly type):

the line breaks - they make me read it piece by piece; they make me hear/see/think about what's being said. they make me take stock of each image, savour it, feel the internal rhymes ... they make me listen and listen well. the line-breaks you bestowed upon it lessened its effect. judicious line-breaks, combined with the imagery, sound, and appeal to the reader's understanding of human nature, all serve to make this a poem in my eyes.

It was not the way she handed him
the damp undergarment, nor
her slitted eyes, her half-smile,
her snake tongue flicking at the air for scent.
It was that the lace was wet. And why.

-------------------------------------------

this, on the other hand, written some years back and full of problems, is the sort of material i view as 'prose-poetry'. be thankful it's merely an excerpt and that i don't inflict the rest with its breaks into 'proper poetry' (as well as i managed) upon you as well

(edited to say this has lost its formatting in translation - maybe for the best )



once, I thought I knew. my skies were lit by a golden sun and stars sailed the night in rightful attitudes. false days, false nights, where steps taken forward are really only steps on a treadmill; the fragile illusion of forward momentum a cunning distraction of my attention from the struggles of trying not to sink beneath this stinking pool of murk - embalmed.
distended - with the bloat of undigested thoughts; amending - for the troubles that have brought about this flimsy peace; unbending - yet must bend before the wind or snap, this aptitude for balancing on tightropes something lending me extension...
I am not mad.
to dwell in realms of unreality is not a sign of madness. to survive these surreal states of mind requires tenacity - and the skills of an acrobat: I bend as India rubber bends; I spin plates on poles that don't exist; appear smiling with the tiger yet I'm flying through the air with the thunder of the canon's fire still ringing in my ears. I
disappear
yet go nowhere. just mirrors. just a trick involving mirrors. you direct my performances - you - the ringmaster. you tie-off the ropes, adjust the nets, pull in the audiences...
you
orchestrate the marches and the clowns.
I climb the ladders blindfold, bright visions of towers dancing in my mind's eye... call in the elephants - the lions are tame now. the trapeze swings low for me, I must catch it left-handed... if I fall, will the crowds gasp? will the crowds gasp as loud as they'd gasp if it were you falling through the air instead of me? should we see? but who would take pleasure in that? that would be like tying a rat to a burning thing... smelling its fur singe, hearing its eyes pop - tasting the blood in its mouth as it bites through its tongue, stifling its screams.... see what I mean? not much fun to be had that way. that's not my way nor is it your way I shouldn't wonder.

 

[butters]

Shit, if I saw a line like that, I would have given it a 6, in context a 7.
Consider it, you're missing too much.
doesn't look too musical though

i have to say those lines were kiss-worthy. *nods*

 

[Epmd607]

Shit, if I saw a line like that, I would have given it a 6, in context a 7.
Consider it, you're missing too much.
doesn't look too musical though

Guttural throes is difficult for me.

In my reading of this stanza 'guttural' is to be in the throes of an emotion and expression of something. Almost synonymous, unnecessarily repetitive and therefore uninteresting.

 

[butters]

Guttural throes is difficult for me.

In my reading of this stanza 'guttural' is to be in the throes of an emotion and expression of something. Almost synonymous, unnecessarily repetitive and therefore uninteresting.

i read that as acting in contrast to the word 'sing' which implies harmonious sound. guttural, in this context, is all about the harsh quality of the sound, the dissonance - the grief it allows a reader to infer.

Music .
a.
a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion.
b.
an unresolved, discordant chord or interval.

 

[Epmd607]

See, there's the problem. You're homing in on a definition of poetry that I'm not buying. Or you seem to be.

Musicality is but one poetic device (or rather a combination of different ones) out of many. A poet chooses the devices that are effective for communicating the message and apt for the poetry genre of his choice. That may or may not include audible devices as meter and rhyme. If a poet cling to certain decives out of a skewed notion that poems must contain them, said poet is crippling himself.

Bullet list please, what must a poem contain to not be, in your words, "prose disguised as poetry"? You're looking for flowery elocution? Meter structure? Depth of metaphor (what has zilch to do with musicality)?

To start at a definition, or understanding, I start with minimal elements. 'Musicality' would simply mean: having the quality or likeness of music. Musicality in poetry, would relate poetry and music in some way.

What relationship or likeness do music and poetry share?

*Minimum of rhythm. But not all poetry must contain a discernible rhythm. But it is limiting, prose has no discernible rhythm to aid expression. If prose had rhythm it would likely be considered poetry. A poem such as the one 1201 posted is pretty common in that it slips in and out of rhythms, measurable metrical feet. Rhythm began as an aid in memorization. Not long after rhythm in poetry pretty much became a new numerology that is still held onto today. This is a sonnet, this is a roundelay, this is haiku and each should be done in accord with this feeling by these numbers.

*Sound superseding symbol. Rhythm is related to this. But this covers internal rhyme, alliteration, pretty much any poetic device in a poet's pocket. What's the point of rhyme or any poetic device? It's a choice of sound expression, making symbol secondary. An ignorant or educated Someone forcing an end rhyme is the result of a categorical imperative(to bastardize IK) We begin writing poems opposing sound over symbol, musicality over expression.

 

[twelveoone]

To start at a definition, or understanding, I start with minimal elements. 'Musicality' would simply mean: having the quality or likeness of music. Musicality in poetry, would relate poetry and music in some way.

What relationship or likeness do music and poetry share?

*Minimum of rhythm. But not all poetry must contain a discernible rhythm. But it is limiting, prose has no discernible rhythm to aid expression. If prose had rhythm it would likely be considered poetry. A poem such as the one 1201 posted is pretty common in that it slips in and out of rhythms, measurable metrical feet. Rhythm began as an aid in memorization. Not long after rhythm in poetry pretty much became a new numerology that is still held onto today. This is a sonnet, this is a roundelay, this is haiku and each should be done in accord with this feeling by these numbers.

*Sound superseding symbol. Rhythm is related to this. But this covers internal rhyme, alliteration, pretty much any poetic device in a poet's pocket. What's the point of rhyme or any poetic device? It's a choice of sound expression, making symbol secondary. An ignorant or educated Someone forcing an end rhyme is the result of a categorical imperative(to bastardize IK) We begin writing poems opposing sound over symbol, musicality over expression.

Now how in the fuck to do you scan a line with one word?
Sound should not supercede symbol, it should support it. If I wanted to write sound I'd write empty like Swinburne.
What it is is words, words and meaning, if you want to play with numbers go ahead. Here is one that I can across about a 1/3 of the old poetry is "substitutions", the only ones that complain some neo-formalists. (20% for them)
Ar you arguing for that?
Doesn't seem to be, something called Musical Free Verse, Free verse is variable foot, for one. Do you mean Blank Verse? Define music. etc. etc. etc., something that sounds like a dairy queen jingle?
Now according to some theories of literature, the poetry is in either a sense of opposition, or the sustained irresolution, or in the frustration of the pattern.

 

[Angeline]

To start at a definition, or understanding, I start with minimal elements. 'Musicality' would simply mean: having the quality or likeness of music. Musicality in poetry, would relate poetry and music in some way.

What relationship or likeness do music and poetry share?

*Minimum of rhythm. But not all poetry must contain a discernible rhythm. But it is limiting, prose has no discernible rhythm to aid expression. If prose had rhythm it would likely be considered poetry. A poem such as the one 1201 posted is pretty common in that it slips in and out of rhythms, measurable metrical feet. Rhythm began as an aid in memorization. Not long after rhythm in poetry pretty much became a new numerology that is still held onto today. This is a sonnet, this is a roundelay, this is haiku and each should be done in accord with this feeling by these numbers.

*Sound superseding symbol. Rhythm is related to this. But this covers internal rhyme, alliteration, pretty much any poetic device in a poet's pocket. What's the point of rhyme or any poetic device? It's a choice of sound expression, making symbol secondary. An ignorant or educated Someone forcing an end rhyme is the result of a categorical imperative(to bastardize IK) We begin writing poems opposing sound over symbol, musicality over expression.

I agree with you that the poetry powers that be--the publishers, agents, major MFA and writer's workshop places--get hung up on a certain kind of poetry and "prose poetry" has been all the rage for at least the past five years, right? I also tend to agree that what determines poetry is rhythm, syntax and and line, line usually being the first clue that what you are reading is a poem. (Whether or not it's a good poem is another question entirely.)

But some writers who are obstensibly writing prose, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two good examples to me, seem to be writing extended poems to me, epics without shaping. And some poets do things with line that shape a poem in a very specific way (like the example I once saw of a poem called Model T composed of the letter t over and over arranged to look like a car). Are the former prose, the latter poetry? I don't think either label helps me define any of these pieces of art.

I just wish the publishing crowd looked at other kinds of poetry as acceptable and that includes traditional forms as well what we popularly call free verse (which usually, if it is good, is not so free at all). Sometime I don't know how a poet like Billy Collins slipped past the publishers and academia to become poet laureate: his poetry is so normal. And traditional forms to me are good for practice and to play with and modify and see what comes of it.

But mostly I never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.

 

[twelveoone]

In looking for an example, it's serendipitous that I copied your poem to paste as example of what's melodic free verse, only to discover you've already joined the cause!

I Contain Multitudes
byvrosej10©

you are a tiny trinket box
you think I am a diamond
but I am elephantine
five metres by five
a serpentine
boulder

SCAN IT EMP, mark it off

 

[twelveoone]

An ignorant or educated Someone forcing an end rhyme is the result of a categorical imperative(to bastardize IK) We begin writing poems opposing sound over symbol, musicality over expression.

I'm pretty good at that
who knows what luck will brang
Sweeney, the orang-outang?

I hate poems with O in it, said AS, so I wrote one. I think it went over to the first issue of MQ
I no longer have it otherwise, I'd post it for your ridicule. Here is the deal EPMD, I'll bet you I can write something, that qualifies under whatever the fuck you are advocating, but what do I get? I can't even get you to vote.

 

[twelveoone]

before I go, EPMD, just three words
William
Carlos
Williams

 

[Liar]

To start at a definition, or understanding, I start with minimal elements. 'Musicality' would simply mean: having the quality or likeness of music. Musicality in poetry, would relate poetry and music in some way.

What relationship or likeness do music and poetry share?

*Minimum of rhythm. But not all poetry must contain a discernible rhythm. But it is limiting, prose has no discernible rhythm to aid expression. If prose had rhythm it would likely be considered poetry. A poem such as the one 1201 posted is pretty common in that it slips in and out of rhythms, measurable metrical feet. Rhythm began as an aid in memorization. Not long after rhythm in poetry pretty much became a new numerology that is still held onto today. This is a sonnet, this is a roundelay, this is haiku and each should be done in accord with this feeling by these numbers.

*Sound superseding symbol. Rhythm is related to this. But this covers internal rhyme, alliteration, pretty much any poetic device in a poet's pocket. What's the point of rhyme or any poetic device? It's a choice of sound expression, making symbol secondary. An ignorant or educated Someone forcing an end rhyme is the result of a categorical imperative(to bastardize IK) We begin writing poems opposing sound over symbol, musicality over expression.

This is where you lose me.

"Sound superceding symbol" is a priciple that is not in my world compatible with poetry. It's compatible with lyrics. Which can be poetic or unpoetic. Just like prose can be poetic and unpoetic. Just like poetry can be lyrical or not. A handful of poetic devices deal with sound. Most poetic devices most certainly do not.

Are you saying that metaphors, metonymies (and all them other tropes), allusions, omissions, synecdoches, anthropomorps, climax and anticlimax (and about a hundred more where that came from) are not poetic devices? Myeah.

 

[Epmd607]

This is where you lose me.

"Sound superceding symbol" is a priciple that is not in my world compatible with poetry. It's compatible with lyrics. Which can be poetic or unpoetic. Just like prose can be poetic and unpoetic. Just like poetry can be lyrical or not. A handful of poetic devices deal with sound. Most poetic devices most certainly do not.

Are you saying that metaphors, metonymies (and all them other tropes), allusions, omissions, synecdoches, anthropomorps, climax and anticlimax (and about a hundred more where that came from) are not poetic devices? Myeah.

I agree that lyrics are the best example of sound over symbol, but this is just in likeness to poetry. Poetry is more complex because aside from a nursery rhyme a poet is really trying to say something that means something to them. But when you read TS Eliot and then Read Proust, who is more cyptic in their expression of emotion? The why is what separates free and blank verse poetry from genuine prose and genuine prose poetry. Musicality is still what differentiates prose poetry from prose.

 

[twelveoone]

I agree that lyrics are the best example of sound over symbol, but this is just in likeness to poetry. Poetry is more complex because aside from a nursery rhyme a poet is really trying to say something that means something to them. But when you read TS Eliot and then Read Proust, who is more cyptic in their expression of emotion? The why is what separates free and blank verse poetry from genuine prose and genuine prose poetry. Musicality is still what differentiates prose poetry from prose.

vacuous evasion
you sound like a guy that reads poetry like a little girl skipping down the street
la-la-la-la-la
which is fine except it isn't free verse, it is blank verse.
WTF was this point of these twin outbursts anyway
Whoever bought BlackSparrow cleaning out the Bukowski bin, and selling it to rubes.
Now about scanning? Did you? Did you run up against the variable foot, because the lines are variable?
I question, at this point:
1.) How much you do know about poetry
2.) Your taste in music ( i suspect it's whatever they play at starbucks)
because what music would they play for a funking monster building his funeral pyre? Disco Inferno?
This fucking clarion call that you issued, and you won't get of your ass to even comment on the prose poetry
Change it, you can start with mine, leave a comment and a score. Do I fucking care?

How about it guys do I sound like a pissed off poet? Well I did throw some jokes in.
Disco Inferno?
If only John Waters was still alive.

HV day.

 

[vrosej10]

vacuous evasion
you sound like a guy that reads poetry like a little girl skipping down the street
la-la-la-la-la
which is fine except it isn't free verse, it is blank verse.
WTF was this point of these twin outbursts anyway
Whoever bought BlackSparrow cleaning out the Bukowski bin, and selling it to rubes.
Now about scanning? Did you? Did you run up against the variable foot, because the lines are variable?
I question, at this point:
1.) How much you do know about poetry
2.) Your taste in music ( i suspect it's whatever they play at starbucks)
because what music would they play for a funking monster building his funeral pyre? Disco Inferno?
This fucking clarion call that you issued, and you won't get of your ass to even comment on the prose poetry
Change it, you can start with mine, leave a comment and a score. Do I fucking care?

How about it guys do I sound like a pissed off poet? Well I did throw some jokes in.
Disco Inferno?
If only John Waters was still alive.

HV day.

You are a pissed off, vocal and opinionated poet. These are all good things. We should talk more on haiku. That'd piss you off! (I left a good comment on that second haiku up this week and the damn thing vamoosed!).

 

[Epmd607]

vacuous evasion
you sound like a guy that reads poetry like a little girl skipping down the street
la-la-la-la-la

If a poet writes a good poem one shouldn't be hung up on the metrical feet. The 'beat' should find them, regardless of an attention to form numerology. The 'beat' resembling reading veerosej's poem above and not getting hung up on choice of line break. I read poetry the way I read prose. I don't want to get caught up in stress errors or forced rhymes or poor punctuation. Describing flow in poetry is easy in blank verse. That which meets the standards, line by line, of a set stress/unstress syllabic structure or pattern.


Which is fine except it isn't free verse, it is blank verse.

Blank verse has a fairly rigid definition, we won't see much of it in a tradional form. People don't write epics. Free verse has some definional liberties. Any poem with no discernible structure can be labeled free verse, including a poem that begins in rigid form and meter and ends haphazardly.


WTF was this point of these twin outbursts anyway

It was to once again bring up the discussion of 'why is poetry so insignificant to the masses when it was once so significant, and do we want it to survive in a way that doesn't just resemble a new prose. I've brought this question up throughout my time at the site.

Whoever bought BlackSparrow cleaning out the Bukowski bin, and selling it to rubes.
Now about scanning? Did you? Did you run up against the variable foot, because the lines are variable?

I think I have superb scansion. Why must I run my thread at your whim? I've brought out examples and have responded to two of your poems with my reasons for why they resemble poetry and no prose.

I question, at this point:
1.) How much you do know about poetry
2.) Your taste in music ( i suspect it's whatever they play at starbucks)
because what music would they play for a funking monster building his funeral pyre? Disco Inferno?
This fucking clarion call that you issued, and you won't get of your ass to even comment on the prose poetry
Change it, you can start with mine, leave a comment and a score. Do I fucking care?

How about it guys do I sound like a pissed off poet? Well I did throw some jokes in.
Disco Inferno?
If only John Waters was still alive.

HV day.

Anyway, I listen to early Metallica, Aaron Copland, bob dylan, Jackson 5 and that's about it.

Again, responding to my disinterest in voting -- I read the poems and comment on the ones that are truly worth commenting on. Comments and votes are even divorced now on the new poems page. Does poet guy care if I voted his poem a 1 or 5, or is he interested in why I don't think it's a poem?

 

[Epmd607]

I agree with you that the poetry powers that be--the publishers, agents, major MFA and writer's workshop places--get hung up on a certain kind of poetry and "prose poetry" has been all the rage for at least the past five years, right? I also tend to agree that what determines poetry is rhythm, syntax and and line, line usually being the first clue that what you are reading is a poem. (Whether or not it's a good poem is another question entirely.)

But some writers who are obstensibly writing prose, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two good examples to me, seem to be writing extended poems to me, epics without shaping. And some poets do things with line that shape a poem in a very specific way (like the example I once saw of a poem called Model T composed of the letter t over and over arranged to look like a car). Are the former prose, the latter poetry? I don't think either label helps me define any of these pieces of art.

I just wish the publishing crowd looked at other kinds of poetry as acceptable and that includes traditional forms as well what we popularly call free verse (which usually, if it is good, is not so free at all). Sometime I don't know how a poet like Billy Collins slipped past the publishers and academia to become poet laureate: his poetry is so normal. And traditional forms to me are good for practice and to play with and modify and see what comes of it.

But mostly I never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.

James joyce began his literary career as a real life poet, as you probably already know, he wrote in view of Yeats, definitely not very rigid. Having read dubliners through finnegans, I can't agree with a critic who says his work is free verse category of Poetry. The same is said of that other poet Kerouac. Their work might resemble the musicality and sound emphasis and beat of free verse poetry, but any poet who's read poetry before the modernists and beats should be able to tell what william c willaims is doing compared to what Joyce or Burroughs is doing. The connection is tenuous, at best, between former poets and their future prose. You currently write prose, given a couple pages of your new story or general prose I'm sure I can spot poetic tendencies...but I doubt your writing anything resembling free verse poetry. Honestly, it's hard enough to be Pushkin or Howl. What would a true novella length Howl resemble? A story, journal entry, prose-poetry, common free verse? I don't know, but I couldn't get over how common it was to call On the Road 'free verse poetry' when I was eighteen and barely nascent in terms of understanding the complexity of euphony over direct expression.

 

[vrosej10]

I would like to jump in here and remind people that these are opinions not facts.

 

[bronzeage]

Sign in here if you'd like to join me in combatting plain prose disguised as poetry. We will work to end the most popular form of poetry in contemporary art. In place of a paragraph story made into lines and stanza we'll seek out those melodic free verse gems to fill the free form void.

I'm not signing up for this crusade because when you storm the citadel, I'll be the one standing in the gate with a bloody ax. I have Bukowski's last book and I'm not afraid to start reading aloud. The CTRTWOBP (Committee to rid the world of bad poetry) has thrown themselves against the walls many times and the walls have yet to feel a thing.

Poetry can not be defined by what it is, only by what it is not. We go along for a while content in the smug knowledge that poetry is not prose and suddenly some Philistine comes up and finds a way to turn prose into poetry, simply by hitting the enter key at random and breaking off the sentences. Now what?

The real problem here is poetry is just too accessible. Anyone can write a poem. Anyone can scribble on a page and if no one recognizes the form, declare it a new and exciting form. Next week we will see the birth of the seven line limerick and the forty syllable haiku.

Poetry uses no passports. Our borders are unguarded and even if they were, we would let everybody walk right in.

Bad poetry will always be with us and rightfully so. Bad poetry is what makes the good poetry stand out. There are diamonds in the gravel bed.

 

[twelveoone]

Anyway, I listen to early Metallica, Aaron Copland, bob dylan, Jackson 5 and that's about it.

Again, responding to my disinterest in voting -- I read the poems and comment on the ones that are truly worth commenting on. Comments and votes are even divorced now on the new poems page. Does poet guy care if I voted his poem a 1 or 5, or is he interested in why I don't think it's a poem?

Oh Ok, I'm off your case.

poet guy, maybe, I don't know.
all I can do is speak for myself, if what I think you said is dumb, well I might question it, if you catch me in something dumb, well that is what it is there for.

 

[twelveoone]

Next week we will see the birth of the forty syllable haiku.

There are diamonds in the gravel bed.

thank you, I was running out of ideas, can I steal this line?

 

[bflagsst]

this isn't prose poetry.

PLUR Psalms 04
byCeliaisAliena©

There be none of Music's daughters this dirty
coarse-tempered cantata pumps rapture
bachae booty
bass squiggle squirm

I hammer my pelvis
doll busts callow porcelain
lurid cognizance delivers
veritable desire machine

Negate bound tingle touch
rush earth matter mutter
mother beat beauty become

Womb enough and four
to the floor

----
It makes some sense to me, high abstraction open for my interpretation. I won't spoil it with my transcription, unless someone is interested.

Down with prose poetry, up with Hmmnmm.

 

[twelveoone]

this isn't prose poetry.

PLUR Psalms 04
byCeliaisAliena©

There be none of Music's daughters this dirty
coarse-tempered cantata pumps rapture
bachae booty
bass squiggle squirm

I hammer my pelvis
doll busts callow porcelain
lurid cognizance delivers
veritable desire machine

Negate bound tingle touch
rush earth matter mutter
mother beat beauty become

Womb enough and four
to the floor

----
It makes some sense to me, high abstraction open for my interpretation. I won't spoil it with my transcription, unless someone is interested.

Down with prose poetry, up with Hmmnmm.

go ahead
about half of it looks fuzzy to me.
or bad writing
I can't tell
and if you want
you can mark it for scansion
personally I'd rather read a paragraph

 

[twelveoone]

a bird, the bird an ass with crack to sit
to bore and bore, to get the jist of it
too lively, huh? how do I tone this down?
I'm not commenting or doing new poems, until I come up with 12 more lines