The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A prose poem is what it says on the can: a piece of prose that is a poem; poetry, but written in prose. It's a contradiction, an oxymoron, a paradox. The prose poem can be erotic, satirical, funny, elegiac, surreal, angry, descriptive, mystifying, fragmented, fast, slow, realist, fabulist - there is no genre, style or subject that is the especial province of a prose poem. Why, then, does a poet decide on typing without hitting return? Why dose a poet forgo the possibilities of enjambment and caesura? Why write a prose poem?' (Author's introduction: 7)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
‘Unconscionable Mystification’? : Rooms, Spaces and the Prose Poem
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: New Writing , vol. 12 no. 3 2015; (p. 265-281) 'Since the 19th century, when a number of French writers – most conspicuously Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud – introduced what we may think of as the modern prose poem into European literature, prose poetry has been part of a debate about the contemporary usefulness of existing literary modes and genres. While early French practitioners partly used the form to problematise traditional poetic prosody, once this aim was achieved prose poetry remained a significant contemporary literary form. In the context of contemporary developments in prose poetry, this article discusses John Frow's observations that texts are able to perform or modify a genre, or only partly fulfil generic expectations, or be comprised of more than one genre. It also discusses the authors Rooms and Spaces project, which explores ways in which prose poetry may be considered ‘poetic’; how it may be room-like and condensed; or open and highly suggestive (sometimes both at once); and how prose poetry is intertextual and polysemous. Prose poetry may be generically problematic but the authors suggest that this may make it an exemplary post-postmodern form; and that reading prose poetry may provide significant insights into how unstable genre boundaries really are.' (Publication abstract)
-
‘Unconscionable Mystification’? : Rooms, Spaces and the Prose Poem
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: New Writing , vol. 12 no. 3 2015; (p. 265-281) 'Since the 19th century, when a number of French writers – most conspicuously Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud – introduced what we may think of as the modern prose poem into European literature, prose poetry has been part of a debate about the contemporary usefulness of existing literary modes and genres. While early French practitioners partly used the form to problematise traditional poetic prosody, once this aim was achieved prose poetry remained a significant contemporary literary form. In the context of contemporary developments in prose poetry, this article discusses John Frow's observations that texts are able to perform or modify a genre, or only partly fulfil generic expectations, or be comprised of more than one genre. It also discusses the authors Rooms and Spaces project, which explores ways in which prose poetry may be considered ‘poetic’; how it may be room-like and condensed; or open and highly suggestive (sometimes both at once); and how prose poetry is intertextual and polysemous. Prose poetry may be generically problematic but the authors suggest that this may make it an exemplary post-postmodern form; and that reading prose poetry may provide significant insights into how unstable genre boundaries really are.' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 30 Jul 2014 10:14:06
