Hi Jill and everyone else!
I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmed. Didn't know there was that
much interest in prose poetry and have saved the postings to read more
slowly, so many thanks, all.
Sorry for delay in replies, too. I have been caught up in a citation
nightmare for a piece I am contributing to an internet collaborative art
project which is going to be shown online at Tokyo Museum of Photography
and which is a mixture of verse, prose and theory quotes. (How's that
for mixing genres! With hope, my little contribution will be so buried
by the other artworks few will see it and I won't be flooded with emails
asking me questions about it.)
The line question is interesting, if I can go back to that, first. For
me a line is a breath, that is, a new breath for each line. This is
important to me because I am concerned with a notion of voice and also,
because the way you are made to breath by the lines, including cesuras
such as tab spaces or blank space in the middle of a line where you keep
breathing through the silence and also the slash (/) where the breath
stops. What this can do is change the timbre and rhythm and introduce
another rhythm which can cut across the so-called natural or major
rhythm of word placement and create a voice which is minor, the voice of
HIV for example. My line verse is written for performance (and I have
been called a performance poet, whatever that is?) It still has to work
in some way on the page and publishing print versions is generally more
convenient but it comes more to life when performed usually in
electronic formats. For example, I have produced video poems which use a
reading with visual graphics which cut across the literal aspects of the
words and recorded or live to air radio. Time and finance is a
constraint, since electronic production is expensive and very time
consuming, even with modern computers.(And I am getting a little over
spending all night on a video editing console!) For my current verse
project, I do have video and film footage I would like to use in a
multivoice/multimedia format but also am happy with print publication.
One day, I may get enough money to live on and produce an electronic
version. (Just thinking about writing up the "stage direction" is enough
of a nightmare.) Zenia, aside from the book version, I also imagined as
an electronic performance piece, but I have gone pass it, somewhat, now.
(It is feature film length, for example.)
Prose poetry and a prose novel I am writing now, in a lot of ways seem
so connected to me and connected with this idea of voice I am playing
around with. Tomorrow, when I am not so tired I will tell a little story
about how I got to this problem, maybe, which includes interesting
narrative problems which to me prose poetry may help provide a solution.
I posted the URL so others could follow the various links. Anna's
article on Ficto-criticism I like too because it includes poetry and is
a different take on the subject to other discussions which make
ficto-criticism sound like some sort of neo-Platonic prose story
telling.
Anyways, best wishes (and I read your prose poems Jill, so thanks for
posting them... keeping them for another read, too.)
Chris Jones.
On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 10:58, Jill Jones wrote:
> Hi Chris,
>
> I went back to look at what Tom and Moya were saying in Text. Firstly, I note
> they were responding to an article written by Kevin Brophy. Ill check that out
> as well when I get a spare moment (Its all gone a bit to shit here today a
> couple of tragedies, which are not mine directly but knocking us around none-
> the-less).
>
> However, I do see that Tom says at one spot quite clearly that narrative is not
> prime in the prose poem (it was something I specifically wanted to check), hes
> sticking to that lyric gun, but then he immediately says this about prose
> poems: This is the implicitly dramatic context of a you-and-me. Call me
> oldfashioned but drama implies narrative to me.
>
> But moving right along, he then says the prose poem lends itself to sequences,
> a lyric epic is the phrase he uses, and he notes works such as Ponges Soap
> and Paz Eagle of the Sun, and its infinite variations. >From my point of
> view, this is one way I have used the prose poem as a sequence (one of the
> poems I posted a few days ago, The reborn did you read it? is part of the
> sequence), often using the present tense to hold time and move through it at
> the same, dare I say, time. Tom says that the present tense is important in the
> prose poem as well, but Im sure there will be exceptions to this. He also
> mentions that there is often a circularity in these sequences. I dont think
> there are any rules.
>
> I was also then interested to move onto Moyas comments. Among other things she
> draws attention to the fact that a lot of prose poem stylists in Australia are
> women and she quotes from two of the most well-known on the subject. Ill just
> post the quotes here in case they might spark your thoughts further. Both
> quotes come, I think, from that old Brooks and Walker anthology Poetry and
> Gender, gosh 1989, time for anothery, I think. But just gliding past that for a
> mo, heres what is said.
>
> jo burns says the prose poem, the poem in the prose is more humble, or perhaps
> more patient, more subtle. it knows the potential, the freedom of not being too
> obvious. the prose poem says find me.
>
> Pam Brown says 'snapshots of conditions. Incidents of emotion. Episodes from a
> long running serial. Chronicles of a transition which is never completed'.
>
> Here is another prose poem of mine, an early one which has that circularity
> happening and also the dreamy thing. Interestingly, it was first published in
> an English poetry mag, oh way back now. Despite Tom and Moyas contentions, I
> still think the Australian mainstream is scared of anything out of the ordinary
> (and I note, in passing, that our mate Paddy MacCauley has been at it again,
> see Weekend Oz Review last week). But here's the poem:
>
>
> Carefully. Maybe the wide countries are gone
>
> These are the old steps, the slippery dream, narrow but you know you're passing
> down into
>
> playgrounds in faded green, cold iron, paint always peeling. Huge backyards,
> wide countries of childhood, flickering home movie memories - rough montage,
> awkward juxtapositions of time and character, odd snatches of songs now
> call classics but the words were never clear.
>
> We lived as if nothing else existed, or as if we didnt exist. Always the
> silent question over which we've pulled an old gauze curtain (we sometimes
> struggle to push it aside). Watching, we catch our breath, we are breathless,
> we choke at times on dust, acres of bush, or grass, concrete, tar. Even now
> we're holding on. It must have been much clearer than these jerky washed-out
> colours, sharper than the black and whites. We're still waiting for the silence
> mysteries dancing somewhere nearby, like the first magic rainbow, mysteries as
> you stood waiting at the edge for years. No-one called you down, called you
> back, you held on to the rail, the edge of falling down into the dream, down
>
> the long driveway edged with bushes, dark trees, a turn at the end, dusty side
> passages littered with minor arcana of households. Dark green carpet in the
> silent lounge room draws you and scares you, you sleep walk there once, you are
> eight. Maybe you sleep walk through it all, out to the edge, grey corners of
> the cobweb verandah, prickles, undergrowth against the back fence.
>
> It's a country probably conquered now, divided, renamed, given a new language,
> burnt off like scrub, paved over. But it's buried somewhere deeper than that,
> under old photographs in a drawer, all falsification round the fortress of
> memory. Again you're in a holding pattern at the edge. You wonder if you can
> ever make the trip - is there a gate still creaking at the top of the driveway,
> still a twist in the gravel at the end?
>
> Carefully, these are the steps into a wide country.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Jill
>
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