Prose Poetry

[bogusagain]

If poetry cannot be defined or limited by form and specification, then no on can declare the primary mission of a poem.

Precisely.

Nor can anyone say what is a poem and what isn't.

 

[Angeline]

the parade of stick figures fucking
to the blaring tunes of cliche

Stop me, it's beginning to take poem shape, a little lacking in the coding part,
but I can't help but think somewhere out there would go

Really, where?
I'm sorry I missed it.
Why wasn't it announced?

And I would have to apologise for leaving the Tueday part out

Do you remember my poem, Sista Fista? I have to find it; it's on a cd somewhere around here. It was an homage (of sorts) to the hideous fisting video ad that was on top of the new poems page for a few years. I ain't no prude but it was disturbing! Maria remembers it cause we used to say eek together over it.

So it's not like there's no precedent.

Precisely.

Nor can anyone say what is a poem and what isn't.

Now you're just being mean.

ETA: oops I read that first word as "now." Long day. eagleyez sprained his back and we recently got back from the emergency room. He's going to be fine but forgive me if I am not making a lot of sense.

 

[Palba_Noruda]

Palba, your turn...

What a nice discussion. And I love this comment most of all.

I am feverishly preparing a response.

I'm leaning toward some comments on the purpose of poetry, and the fuzziness of boundaries between forms of expression. Even Aristotle's categories seem arbitrary from where I sit.

“In Aristotle's time rhetoric and poetics were classified as sort of siblings in the pantheon of ideal things. Because of rhetoric's direct importance for law and politics, it evolved to become, to a large degree, distinct from poetics, in spite of both themes being classified under aesthetics in the Aristotelian system of metaphysics. In this sense, rhetoric and poetics are two sides of the same thing—the aesthetic dimension.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)

 

[Palba_Noruda]

you have to define it, if you can't really define poetry, how can you define prose poetry, the term probably came from the efforts of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, both who wrote in highly constrained forms, and desired to go outside the forms, bflagsst will correct me if I'm wrong.

snip
Let's turn the question back to you, why is this poetry? What is he doing?

If you can't answer, the Why is this poetry part, then why do you like it?

In interviews, many prose poets say they don’t care much for the term. They don’t much care to put any label on the their writing. Which seems fair.

Why is it poetry?
I imagine poetry as a continuum. On one end are the highly regulated forms. The sonnet. Even more precisely, the Pushkin Sonnet. That is Poetry.

On the other end of the continuum, you have the kind of Poetry a sports fan may invoke after a few beers. “In his day, Michael Jordan was pure fucking Poetry.”

The prose poems linked above hold an important space on the provisional Poetry continuum. But one could certainly argue that they are not prose poems at all. And ultimately, if one argued that, it probably wouldn’t matter all that much. I think it would be harder to argue that they are not Poetry, for if one takes a liberal view of Poetry--as I do--then most things in the universe are, in fact, Poetry.

Reasons I like it?
Both are specific with their imagery. Both hold my attention. Edson’s surrealism tickles me. Young’s piece moves me. I like it’s tenderness.

There’s something work-a-day in both Edson’s and Young’s body of work. They are both prolific, and I sense some similarity in technique with my own technique. I’m encouraged that their style is respected. Their writing validates my own writing.

It doesn’t hurt that both are already well liked. If they were strangers posting the exact same work on a forum, I wouldn’t be talking about them here.

Also, I like these pieces because they challenge the way I’ve seen people talk about poetry on this forum..

a prose poem sans surreal

I don’t know, the ending seems to be on its way to surrealism.

I like both examples, Palba. I'm not sure I understand the distinction between prose poetry (like in your two examples) and free verse. I do see that the examples tend toward complete sentences and maybe use more adjectives and transition words (e.g., and, but, for). And the ellipses points are a stylistic choice also made by lots of people who would describe what they're writing as free verse. I'm thrown by the shape of these poems. Didn't prose poems used to have longer lines? I picture them as having a more prose-like shape, but maybe the standard changed?

I just wrote a poem today that maybe by the look of your poems could be prose poetry, so maybe I like it more than I realize. I dunno. Educate me, Palba? Poets?

The boundaries are fuzzy all right. If you know somebody who can define them, you should tell them to update the wikipedia entry on prose poems.

a poem that is a work of poetry first and foremost--and executed well--will usually have the feel of a musical composition, whereas a poem that is a hybrid of prose and poetry will have a more avant garde rhythm.

I like this idea. I go to the symphony orchestra, it’s pure music. Emotion happens in the audience. Does a composer try to get across MEANING in an orchestral work? I don’t think that’s the point of orchestral music. Some people will like to analyse an orchestral work from the perspective of its meaning, but is not a necessary analysis for the existence of orchestral music.

Bring text into music, and the meaning of the words becomes part of the artistry, but I hate to put constraints around the purpose of text in music. Too often, the consensus on this forum narrows the definition and purpose of text to an unacceptable degree.

For fun, here is a lovely poem by Octavio Paz set to music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw
http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/satb-choral/water-night

This whole conversation has me thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of them is competence. I practice poetry in an attempt to achieve competence, also known as mastery. This has been a well understood principle in some eras:

“Because poetry in Japan was often written for utaawase, or poetry competitions, a “good” poem was not merely one that expressed emotions in a unique and beautiful way. Rather, poets were judged on their mastery of using their knowledge of existing poems and the way in which they placed honkadori and other poetic tropes into their poems. In this way, the use of honkadori added depth to the poem because the poet displayed his mastery of Japanese poetic tropes, signifying a mastery of Japanese poetry.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honkadori

Mastery of the art is discussed on this forum often, but is it ever discussed as the fundamental purpose of practicing the art?

On this forum, it seems the consensus is that the purpose of poetry is to transfer meaning or emotion or ideas from the poet to the audience. I reject that idea. Transferring meaning, emotion, or an idea is not the fundamental point of poetry. They are but techniques utilized to achieve what IS the fundamental purpose--the mastery of the art.

The need for mastery is closely followed by the other basic needs that writing poetry satisfies: confidence, achievement, respect, identity, community, creativity, problem solving, self-understanding . . . but mastery is the primary need many artists are trying to fulfill, and that should be acknowledged on this forum.

snip

Or, I'm going to tell a story utilizing the minimal constraints of what can constitute poetry in this culture. What are these minimal tools? Metaphor and allusion to elicit different emotions, then probably bits and pieces from the general bag of poetic tricks: alliteration, half-rhyme etc.

snip

I disagree that the primary purpose of poetry is “to elicit different emotions.” Some wonderful poetry works in the realm of the emotional, but other poetry works it the realm of the intellectual, spiritual, or existential. When a poem works well in these other realms, perhaps the reader has an emotional response to how the poem works in her. Perhaps that is the emotional response you are referring to?

Setanta84 may think that poetry is poetry due to the bag of tricks, the sounds that poetry makes compared to prose. It's certainly an important point, that poetry is genuinely more 'musical' than prose and prose-poetry should take some of the musicality on. But it's problematic to say poetry or prose have different primary missions beyond expressing something. snip

Again, I don’t think expressing something is the primary mission of poetry. If a person burns every poem she writes before anyone reads it, is she a poet?

I can list some of the references within the allusion and metaphor if you want, it probably took a few thousand years to gather the information contained in just the first line. But the point is, in poetry you're given multiple places to plug-in with your life experience and you can get some wonderful things or maybe nothing at all.

I’m not understanding this wording: “you’re given multiple places to plug-in with your life experience.”

Do you mean that poetry should be confessional? Autobiographical?
Or am I missing the boat entirely with what you mean here?

Surely poetry, in many ways is like painting and music, it makes allusions, which is why a poem, a painting and a piece of music, can mean different things to different people depending on the experience of the reader/listener,viewer?

I love this, bogusagain!

I would have thought the job of the poet/artist/musicians was to open up the imagination of the reader using signifiers to induce empathy.

That’s a tricky one. I would say that the inducement of empathy is but one possible technique in the poet’s bag of tricks in her attempt at the mastery of the art. But it seems like an important technique. What if a poem were written that was meant to seriously disgust the reader? A beautifully worded description of something truly horrid? I think that empathy is very much tied up in the process of how meaning works in language . . . therefore I would quibble with you that empathy is the ultimate purpose of poetry. (I may be grossly mischaracterizing what you are trying to say). But I agree wholeheartedly with your previous paragraph.

Virginia Woolf

I think plenty of prose is, in fact, poetry.

Great discussion.

I agree. Well done, poets of lit.

We start by saying there is prose and poetry. Black and white and, for the most part, sufficient. But then things get a bit greyer and we add new boxes (for clarity of course). Blank verse to cope with poetry that doesn't rhyme. Prose poetry for those who don't like a ragged right edge to their text block. Poetic prose for a slightly blander shade. All good if it takes us somewhere useful.

But here's the paradox. More categories for dicing up a continuum doesn't do anything useful (beyond having a few categories) except to keep taxonomistic literati occupied over drinks after a reading. The cost of all the subcategories is a disincentive to engage in poetry at all because its obviously too complicated.
::

I agree that there is much paradox in labeling. Labels can be a real drag, but on the other hand, they can be useful. It is no fun feeling like the only person who does a certain thing. Slap a label on that certain thing, define some (fuzzy) boundaries, and pretty soon, others might join in. Good for support, community, education, advocacy, relationship, etc.

we all hate prosers more, because they don't understand it is work. And if there is one point bflagsst and I totally agree on, it is that laziness has no place in poetry.

I didn’t do it!

 

[twelveoone]

In interviews, many prose poets say they don’t care much for the term. They don’t much care to put any label on the their writing. Which seems fair.

Why is it poetry?
I imagine poetry as a continuum. On one end are the highly regulated forms. The sonnet. Even more precisely, the Pushkin Sonnet. That is Poetry.

On the other end of the continuum, you have the kind of Poetry a sports fan may invoke after a few beers. “In his day, Michael Jordan was pure fucking Poetry.”

The prose poems linked above hold an important space on the provisional Poetry continuum. But one could certainly argue that they are not prose poems at all. And ultimately, if one argued that, it probably wouldn’t matter all that much. I think it would be harder to argue that they are not Poetry, for if one takes a liberal view of Poetry--as I do--then most things in the universe are, in fact, Poetry.

Reasons I like it?
Both are specific with their imagery. Both hold my attention. Edson’s surrealism tickles me. Young’s piece moves me. I like it’s tenderness.

There’s something work-a-day in both Edson’s and Young’s body of work. They are both prolific, and I sense some similarity in technique with my own technique. I’m encouraged that their style is respected. Their writing validates my own writing.

It doesn’t hurt that both are already well liked. If they were strangers posting the exact same work on a forum, I wouldn’t be talking about them here.

Also, I like these pieces because they challenge the way I’ve seen people talk about poetry on this forum..



I don’t know, the ending seems to be on its way to surrealism.



The boundaries are fuzzy all right. If you know somebody who can define them, you should tell them to update the wikipedia entry on prose poems.



I like this idea. I go to the symphony orchestra, it’s pure music. Emotion happens in the audience. Does a composer try to get across MEANING in an orchestral work? I don’t think that’s the point of orchestral music. Some people will like to analyse an orchestral work from the perspective of its meaning, but is not a necessary analysis for the existence of orchestral music.

Bring text into music, and the meaning of the words becomes part of the artistry, but I hate to put constraints around the purpose of text in music. Too often, the consensus on this forum narrows the definition and purpose of text to an unacceptable degree.

For fun, here is a lovely poem by Octavio Paz set to music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3rRaL-Czxw
http://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/satb-choral/water-night

This whole conversation has me thinking of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. One of them is competence. I practice poetry in an attempt to achieve competence, also known as mastery. This has been a well understood principle in some eras:

“Because poetry in Japan was often written for utaawase, or poetry competitions, a “good” poem was not merely one that expressed emotions in a unique and beautiful way. Rather, poets were judged on their mastery of using their knowledge of existing poems and the way in which they placed honkadori and other poetic tropes into their poems. In this way, the use of honkadori added depth to the poem because the poet displayed his mastery of Japanese poetic tropes, signifying a mastery of Japanese poetry.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honkadori

Mastery of the art is discussed on this forum often, but is it ever discussed as the fundamental purpose of practicing the art?

On this forum, it seems the consensus is that the purpose of poetry is to transfer meaning or emotion or ideas from the poet to the audience. I reject that idea. Transferring meaning, emotion, or an idea is not the fundamental point of poetry. They are but techniques utilized to achieve what IS the fundamental purpose--the mastery of the art.

The need for mastery is closely followed by the other basic needs that writing poetry satisfies: confidence, achievement, respect, identity, community, creativity, problem solving, self-understanding . . . but mastery is the primary need many artists are trying to fulfill, and that should be acknowledged on this forum.

I disagree that the primary purpose of poetry is “to elicit different emotions.” Some wonderful poetry works in the realm of the emotional, but other poetry works it the realm of the intellectual, spiritual, or existential. When a poem works well in these other realms, perhaps the reader has an emotional response to how the poem works in her. Perhaps that is the emotional response you are referring to?





Again, I don’t think expressing something is the primary mission of poetry. If a person burns every poem she writes before anyone reads it, is she a poet?



I’m not understanding this wording: “you’re given multiple places to plug-in with your life experience.”

Do you mean that poetry should be confessional? Autobiographical?
Or am I missing the boat entirely with what you mean here?



I love this, bogusagain!



That’s a tricky one. I would say that the inducement of empathy is but one possible technique in the poet’s bag of tricks in her attempt at the mastery of the art. But it seems like an important technique. What if a poem were written that was meant to seriously disgust the reader? A beautifully worded description of something truly horrid? I think that empathy is very much tied up in the process of how meaning works in language . . . therefore I would quibble with you that empathy is the ultimate purpose of poetry. (I may be grossly mischaracterizing what you are trying to say). But I agree wholeheartedly with your previous paragraph.



I think plenty of prose is, in fact, poetry.



I agree. Well done, poets of lit.



I agree that there is much paradox in labeling. Labels can be a real drag, but on the other hand, they can be useful. It is no fun feeling like the only person who does a certain thing. Slap a label on that certain thing, define some (fuzzy) boundaries, and pretty soon, others might join in. Good for support, community, education, advocacy, relationship, etc.



I didn’t do it!

there is a bit of a circle going on here, compounded by the ambiguity inherent in the words (meaning -prime example) themselves. And a bit of self deception on the part of yourself.

but mastery is the primary need many artists are trying to fulfill, and that should be acknowledged on this forum.
this has been addressed, you missed it. Indeed blagfsst has made the point that, it is not mastery of the art, because it is a willy-nilly trip to the tool box, which it often is. My term for it is often a walk through.

Mastery of the Art, should be a given, the what for, the why and the how to, discussed, and often.

Honkadori can be viewed as extreme coding for a select audience, or (same thing) relating to a person's experience (which would be having the a group of masters' noses up the Ass of Art) Sonneteers writing sonnets to impress other sonneteers and being deadly serious about it.

confessional poetry is just that

and trash is confession brought down to the LCD.

but people have to relate to something, otherwise for all intent and purposes it isn't there

The introduction of Edson and Young here present problems. Copyright for one. Edson and Young also are presenting to a select audience. Young I didn't read. Specific images, what does that mean? Specifically, I saw an old woman who lived in a shoe and some broken eggs, somehow it all seems too easy, I can't relate much, either as mastery of the art, or on any other level.

And this part gets real deadly for me, Edson and Young are well liked, reads to me as they validated by a sort of consensus, whereas if a stranger presented...if it pretty much the same thing, I would think you would have pretty much the same opinion, you don't?

Also, I like these pieces because they challenge the way I’ve seen people talk about poetry on this forum..
Also can be read as they validate my invalidation of what people talk about...

Here is a suggestion, show us your competence go post, comment, i.e. put your ass on the line, get your nose bloodied, I do, ah, everybody else does

 

[Palba_Noruda]

there is a bit of a circle going on here, compounded by the ambiguity inherent in the words (meaning -prime example) themselves.

Desejo, do you read poetry out loud for the most part? I figured most read and enjoyed poems silently. I don't think a deaf person would miss out on structured/metered/patterned verse. I'm sure there is a significant element of poetry, the musicality(which is a whole other discussion) that a deaf person misses out on. I really don't know whether sound is critical in something being a good poem or not. But I think we're in agreement, that meaning should be more important than sound.

So. Meaning. I think there are two kinds of meaning at play here--surface level meaning and "deeper" meaning.

Angeline mentions Jabberwocky, which is a poem that doesn't have any surface level meaning. I guess nonsense verse is a form. They are working in the same vein as, say, Daft Punk in this video.

Not much surface level meaning going on there. But the people love it.

I believe this is the point Setanta84 was trying to make. A poet does not have to be obsessed with surface level meaning or "deep" meaning in order to be successful. An obsession with technique is fine and dandy. (And yes, it occurs to me I may be trying to persuade myself.)

What of the poets who feel they are simply channeling something from outside themselves when they write? Surely, they're not obsessed with meaning.

Sentanta's flaw was in trying to make his claim a universal truth. Some wonderful poets are obsessed with meaning, and that's good for them.

select audience

I believe you hit the nail on the head, twelve. It's all about the community. What are this community's views on meaning? It seems like it's sacrilege here to suggest that meaning is but a technique. Is meaning sacred?

but mastery is the primary need many artists are trying to fulfill, and that should be acknowledged on this forum.
this has been addressed, you missed it. Indeed blagfsst has made the point that, it is not mastery of the art, because it is a willy-nilly trip to the tool box, which it often is. My term for it is often a walk through.

I'm not following this.

 

[twelveoone]

I believe you hit the nail on the head, twelve. It's all about the community. What are this community's views on meaning? It seems like it's sacrilege here to suggest that meaning is but a technique. Is meaning sacred?

No, outside of a somewhat certain consensus, that poetry is poetry because it is more coded than prose, God forbid it becomes hive-mind. Poetry is highly individual, but for it to work, someone must "get it", that "getting it" is the meaning.*
What I suggest to you and everybody else in varying degrees of emphasis is involvement. If you don't write it, why read it, ( or if you do read it and want to write about, come prepared) and if you do write it, you better read it,

So. Meaning. I think there are two kinds of meaning at play here--surface level meaning and "deeper" meaning.


Angeline mentions Jabberwocky, which is a poem that doesn't have any surface level meaning. I guess nonsense verse is a form. They are working in the same vein as, say, Daft Punk in this video.

Not much surface level meaning going on there. But the people love it.

yes, in varying degrees of depth

I believe this is the point Setanta84 was trying to make.

was misusing a word, badly, and insistent, noboby disagreed with the rest of what was said.

A poet does not have to be obsessed with surface level meaning or "deep" meaning in order to be successful. An obsession with technique is fine and dandy. (And yes, it occurs to me I may be trying to persuade myself.)

isn't that what you were trying to say when you brought in Maslov.
There are a lot more idiots than savants in poetry, the problem with poetry is nobody reaches it, every poet knows this, when they cease knowing that, they cease being poets. This has been discussed in the past in threads

What of the poets who feel they are simply channeling something from outside themselves when they write? Surely, they're not obsessed with meaning.

Yes they are, but they channeling from inside. All the good crap is those deeper parts.

Sentanta's flaw... was in either misusing a word, or misunderstanding poetry, or both.

I'm not following this.

get your nose bloodied, it will become clearer. i.e take a trot over to new poems, leave a comment, leave a name.
But whatever you do, don't present someone else's work as an example, unless they are very famous or very dead, that presents certain legal and ethical problems. i.e. I see some problems with the "huge shoe", how do I illustrate that? I think I can tell you how it works, but I'm sure what he is doing in other parts. "Hidden operations", Pab, go look up Macro to Micro, and Contrast apply it the that breakfast poem. I am not going to discuss further.

*one of the more awesome things I've seen posted here in Literotica was from my old nose bloody fill in the blank, Tzara, one of the saddest was I think I was the only one that got it, so much for consensus, double funny since Tzara does like to point out how out of step I am. But that would be another question, how do you measure success?

 

[twelveoone]

Prose Poem

as posted in new poems as in

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. - Steven Wright
Constantly fusing and confusing the banal and the bizarre -blurb


A conjoined pair of twins walked into my bar with one pair of pantyhose pulled over their faces and announce "This is a stick up"

Now i have to ask to whom do I hand the money to?

Another time, another face, the coiffed king paced in his mirrored place in a time of no bread and guillotines. Things reflect bad, back on me. How could get it any worse?

As I pace, peering though poet's eyes at a race between the grotesque and grandiose, but Where is the gobbledygook?

So Fuck Daddy G muses "How come there's no black mimes? What the world needs is rapper kings doing pantomine."

"Really?" I ask, incredulous "How you gonna do 'ho'in mime?"

(sound of pantomine)

"Sorry I asked" with a deadpan start, I know things just get worse, they always do. I dread this next part...

"Lawyers!" Dick Cheney breaks in " If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..."

"You have to be careful how you translate these things," I interject " someone in Meiheko might object..."

"Fuck you, now where are the twins?"

"Duck!' I say, as Cheney cuts loose with a shot gun blast, that breaks a few mirrors and wings the king.

"I hate the man." Fuck Daddy grabs his 45 "The man just ain't got heart."

"Yes he does. He's got mine, and I'm getting it back." as I rose with a surgical knife; but the twin sisters, Russians from Chernobyl, popped in and burped with Kalashnikovs.

There were no surviours, and I never felt so alone, far from home and cold in my life.

In-gen-u-us! Prose poetry. Now, so how much does it pay?


Authours Comment:As best as I can tell, this has no real metaphors, no ambiguity, two major tools poets use for er, coding. The sentences are denotive, outside of some minor play they do note connote, thereforth this is prose. Poetry, it does use some of the tools, and if I had to, I could make a case that the "message" is presented in a non literal way, and it alludes to a certain thread. Other than that it is presented merely for amusement, if it pisses a few people off, good! It did not take long to write.

to tod - do you see this mess, note how I tie this shit together.

to the anon asshole - did you like the alone, far from home and cold? I put it in just for you. I am telling you upfront, if this owes, it owes to Tarantino and Steven Wright. Make the most of it.

Well now, I fucked up.

I might have quipped on the past that sometimes you need to unlearn what you have learned if it becomes too automatic. There are two "poetic lines", poetic in the sense of sometime might be behind then.

a time of no bread and guillotines. Things reflect bad, back on me.
(a reference to the French Revolution) no big deal

How come there's no black mimes?
(black men doing Whiteface) but this one might open a can of poetic worms. i.e. what does he mean by that?
Sorry, the object was to blast though all of this with no thought, no code, every line meaning exactly what it said. Until the last few lines

There were no surviours, and I never felt so alone, far from home and cold in my life.

If there were no surviours...but, right in the middle I said
I dread this next part...the text is self aware

In-gen-u-us! Prose poetry. Now, so how much does it pay?
this one is a bitch, how do you read it? Money is mentioned once before, an encasement went on.

"This is a stick up"
Now i have to ask to whom do I hand the money to?

I can hardly wait to see some of the comments, despite all the clues I left.

 

[twelveoone]

well, pleasantly surprised, most didn't bother with going back and looking for the poetry, because it is not there, it is prose; no code.

and myself amused
my anon calls it
racist insensative honky dribble

you should be ashamed!

I am, I was expecting some serious flack about how it's not poetry, there is no story, how I stole, etc., etc.


THE CODE
a real problem I have with "surreal" is if there is a code, are there enough clues to decode it, to arrive at some "meaning", the setting up if two bizarre images sets up a tension that somehow needs to be resolved, i.e. are these metaphors for what? otherwise it appears to be nothing more than a grandiose extrapolation of the Stanley Fish experiment. Word salad. My ROI (return on investment) as a reader is nil, and I feel my time is better spent writing crap of my own, (which I did) the challenge was in the denaturing. And I have the sense to try to make it amusing.
Dali I find wickedly funny, the key sometimes is in the title, and he puts a different perspective on things.

All well and good, but the key question to ask yourself as a reader is why do I like or why do I not like, that seriously ups the writing aspect of whatever style you wish to operate in.

 

[todski28]

Bump because I understand some of this now, hopefully in another ten years I will understand some more.

 

[twelveoone]

Bump because I understand some of this now, hopefully in another ten years I will understand some more.

Be very careful with this thread.
1.) at best bflagsst and Emp vs I, have an uneasy truce, I believe this thread was started on less than honourable motives. My view blagsst is a very good writer and Emp has some good things to say, some valid criticisms. Pablo is a bit too much of a time waster, and bullshit artist.
2.) Sentanta's main thrust of his argument is denotation, one word, one meaning, one utility - THIS IS NOT WHAT POETRY IS ALL ABOUT, esp, one utility, even if you are writing the lamest of verse, you still have to utilize the word TWO ways. Denotation and rhythm.
A poet's cloud is quite different than an writer's (i.e. as in over there) cloud, because a poet cannot see a cloud as a cloud. He will see a big pile of tits in the sky, semen stains across a blue sheet, anything but a cloud.
3.) Prose poem was written for you an easy lesson - it is a variant of Chekhov's gun - look it up. Basically, something is pulled out, used and then disposed of. Or tie all the threads together.
Otherwise it is bullshit, junk, something I pulled outta my ass (templated), you can like junk, just it is not good as a steady diet. Taco bell is wonderful from time to time. As is Taco Bell poetry, from time to time. Heartily recommended for the Demure types.
4.) Prose poetry was developed by Baudelaire, a very tight writer mostly in the French sonnet, which has less leeway than the English. And then he discovered hash, I may be wrong, and I'm sure Emp will correct me. Consider what I just said about the origin, he was a very tight writer. Emp's point of prose with line breaks, as is too often offered here, as not being poetry is valid too a degree. We just don't agree on tactics. Violently, think Stalin and Trotsky, and I am not about to get my head ice-picked.

There is nothing worse than a repeated short outbursts of cliched, denoted words as an expression of how-you-feel. Christ, I think we all agree on that!

Yes, sometimes I am a wordy bitch...so what...do you see how middle of the road this is?