Joe and Alison both have interesting things to say about the prose poem,
the long line, & the short. I recall the long lines of Daphne Marlatt in
Steveston & later volumes. She has written 'prose' poems, but I always
thought the alomst prose lines of Steveston were still lines, & that the
linebreaks counted. This question came up in a workshop last weekend, & my
answer there, as to myself always, is that the linebreak is one of the ways
one can get at rhythm in free verse, that music Pound sought. Far too many
practitioners of free verse (or what I call open form) seem to have no
sense of the line as such, of the turn on the linebreak. Marlatt, despite
the fact that her lines almost reached the right hand edge of the page, was
extremely conscious of it to my listening ear. That turn counted. It always
does, whether the writer is aware of it doing so or not.
In the prose poem the sentence counts (or the not-sentence? In that review
James sent us to, I found the Waldrop & Prevallet most interesting in this
matter).
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
Listen. If I have known beauty
let's say I came to it
asking
Phyllis Webb
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