Hi Chris,

I found Tom's remark that prose poems do not have narrative to be 
rather odd. I agree with Rebecca that lyric and narrative can be found 
in many forms. And I go more with Anna's comment about indeterminacy, 
or maybe inbetween-ness. I think Jo's work functions in this way - a 
blurring accentuated by her not using caps.

I find that the paragraph allows me to move the thought of the poem at 
a different pace to the way I do in lineated writing (though you could 
see the paragraph as a 'line' I suppose). But that's just me, I don't 
want to pin my method on anyone else. In the last couple of years I've 
written a number of prose poems. Most of them have a narrative, either 
implied or overt. So here's one of each, I guess. The first is from my 
most recent book and the second Rebecca published recently (some 
formatting has been lost in the second but nothing drastic):

Unknown

And here I am unknown, the newspapers read my world and a telephone 
calls not my name nor number but my memory. It is enough now to accept 
each short line or greeting, as I have said and answered these things 
too. On the street I search, the signs wink, drag air, they invite 
change or salvage. I return, looking again at the colours under the 
slightly red afternoon lights, the gun of an afternoon. Here I know how 
to behave but outside it is a longing that guides me, the checks of 
wisdom and the thick red tongues of an answer I fear forgotten at times 
on the lights. And where ink leaves a thicker trace through the layers 
so you think it knows the question you wrote and it spreads the search. 
And if there is a name attached to me like a form then which one will 
it be? This stretch has been a long one, almost as long as history, 
which doesn’t name you. As if I began, uneasily but never stayed the 
course.


The reborn

There’s a rumble, an exit storm, though for days the house has been 
quiet. Two years since he was shot, see outside there, where they 
planted the olive. She believes he is reborn and she searches faces for 
his eyes - as if it was a sad accident. That’s not what the 
neighbourhood rides with. We say we got the dirt and maybe it’s so. 
We’re the big band of rumour - pow, pow - we got the beat on bruisings 
and the junk trade, the muscles for pain and the cops wink. All that 
rap at the corner shop, the kiddy exchanges with smokes, and milk and 
the headlines. This was always the news about his muscle and deal, but 
she believes like a mother, like the unforgiving ground as she saw him 
go down. What is taken, not forgotten. So, easy to talk and so we must, 
that it goes round, spins and hustles - ching, ching, ching - while she 
keeps the black watch. We don’t touch that and we cannot go with it. 
Our chorus is banal as the next exit storm when boys roar in, then the 
gate clangs and they retreat out somewhere. We chime in because we 
know. And we are doing it again.


Cheers,
Jill


On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 11:40  AM, seiferle wrote:

> Dear Chris,
>
> Interesting questions. I remember attending a panel on the lyric poem 
> and then later a panel on the narrative poem and finding the same  
> poems being used as examples! There's so much variance in how the poet 
> defines a lyric versus a narrative poem, particularly if the lyric 
> can, and often does, have narrative elements.
>
> My own feeling about this is that it is a matter of time. That a lyric 
> poem is, for whatever else one may say of it, a single moment of time. 
> And a narrative poem is a movement in time. So I would think that a 
> prose poem, like a poem that is not a prose poem, could be either 
> lyric or narrative. And of course, if it were lyric, it could also 
> contain narrative elements.
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>
>
> I have just been reading about prose poems at:
>>
>>  http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/oct02/letters.htm
>>
>>
>> Tom Shapcott in this article suggests that prose poems are lyrical, 
>> that
>> is, do not have narrative. I was wondering if it were possible to 
>> have a
>> prose poem which contains some element of narrative?
>>
>> Also:
>>
>> Anna Gibbs noted in her paper on feminism and fictocriticism
>> (TextOctober 1997):
>> http://www.gu.edu.au/school/art/text/oct97/gibbs.htm,
>> that the prose poem is one of the 'indeterminate forms' of 'literary
>> detritus' that fictocriticism makes use of.
>>
>>
>> I was wondering if anyone was interested in commenting on prose poems?
>>
>> Also, would anyone who writes prose poems (or similar?) be interested 
>> in
>> posting examples they may have? joanne burns is one recent example I 
>> can
>> think of in the Australian context which does something different in
>> terms of prose poems (also perhaps blurring dramatic monolog into 
>> prose
>> poem.)
>>
>> Finally, maybe one for the translators, is there something which could
>> be said about the French language which may have contributed to French
>> prose poems? (Please excuse the crudity of that question, but I don't
>> know how to formulate it... so you can tear into the question if that
>> helps.)
>>
>> I am also thinking of Genet's books, esp Prisoner of Love, as prose
>> poems with (lyric)narrative.
>>
>> Comments on what I said, not expected, but if anyone can say 
>> anything, I
>> would be interested to hear.
>>
>> best
>>
>> Chris Jones.
>
>
_______________________________________________________
Jill Jones
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~jpjones

Latest book: Screens Jets Heaven. Available now from Salt Publishing
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