JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC Archives

POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC  2003

POETRYETC 2003

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Re: prose poems

From:

Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and poetics <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sun, 2 Feb 2003 15:07:05 +1100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (80 lines)

On Sat, 2003-02-01 at 02:13, Douglas Barbour wrote:
I mean, I wonder: does what is generally called a
> 'prose poem' more or less have to be fairly short, shorter than a single
> page?


That's an interesting question, too. I seem to remember Genet being
referred as a prose poet and perhaps for want of a better description
_Prisoner of love_ was referred to as a prose poem. One story I read
about that book was the publishers thought the old man had gone senile
when they first read the manuscript. It looks almost like reportage
toward the beginning of the book and at times a confessional genre but
both these descriptions don't hold for the book as a whole, so maybe
prose poetry is the easiest way out?

I promised Jill a story around this question of narrative.

The above book makes me think of a problem I have had, also. I use to be
a professional writer and got paid good money for doing this. Even more
way out sounding jobs like writing pornographic phone horoscopes for the
modern het couple (non-sexist porn) came really easily simply by
applying narrative and genre forms (point of view and so forth) but then
I got a job producing a magazine for injecting drug users funded to
prevent HIV in that population. It sounded fairly easy and I did the
usual research, talked to lots of people, went on field trips and so
forth and understood why previous health promotion attempts had failed.
But when I came to write articles and put the magazine together none of
the formal skills I had would work with this publication. I became an
illiterate expert and each article rather then being quick to write was
a really slow and difficult process, as was the editorial side of
designing the magazine. Not even the serial writing forms which I knew
very well would work. Anyway, an issue was produced, using an
underground circus layout style and each issue after still remained a
slow and difficult process. The narrative which sort of came out of this
slow and difficult procedure reminds me of the sort of implicit
narrative or becoming narrative in _Prisoner of love_ (which was
published in English translation while I was working on this magazine.)

Another big help was David Herkt who managed to get enough money
together to put out a journal called _Junk mail_. I then wrote a paper
called "Making a Users voice" which got me into even more work then I
could handle... this notion of voice, as an outside always decentred
voice which is inside. The State hired us junkie poets to write from an
injecting drug user point of view which they thought of as peer
education but there was no such point of view, once inside this peer
education setup. A psychologist I worked with threw her formal training
out the window, too.

Phenomenology which is the epistemological basis of a lot of my formal
training, along with my psychologist friend, works as a plane which is
laid out with a horizon, and as knowledge proceeds the horizon recedes
so that you are always approaching the horizon, as a relative horizon.
This allows point of view, movement across abstract space and so forth
and most formal narrative theories operate with this plane. But the peer
education situation I mentioned above is already on the absolute horizon
without a god's eye view of the plane. So there is no longer a point of
view to speak of or any relativism to speak of, or put another way, the
state was asking us to do the impossible, and paying us a good salary to
do so. In this situation, which involves a double set of
impossibilities, the only possibility is to produce narrative as direct
time rather then an external spatial image of time which treats time as
a spatial illusion. There is no metaphor involved in this. Also, the
compositional plane on the absolute horizon cannot preexist but needs to
be laid out with narrative. (The word narrative is problematic here and
the distinction between lyric and narrative cannot be maintained, also,
but I'll stick with narrative here just out of convenience.) This
actively forces another theory of narrative which can no longer be
formally and phenomenologically understood. Basically, narrative becomes
and in this peer education example as a passive or static synthesis of
divergent incompossibilities which produce a users voice not from
preexisting morphologies (the form or morphology of the junkie) but as
immanent intransient production.

anyways... that's my theory of narrative, for now.
I don't think this applies only to peer education, also.

best wishes

Chris Jones.

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager