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. I’ll check that out
as well when I get a spare moment (It’s 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), he’s
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 Ponge’s 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 I’m sure there will be exceptions to this. He also
mentions that there is often a circularity in these sequences. I don’t think
there are any rules.

I was also then interested to move onto Moya’s 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. I’ll 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’, here’s 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 Moya’s 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 didn’t 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