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PROSE_POEM

                                       2003

"Prose poetry"?  What's that supposed to mean?
Most poetry written these days (that gets called
poetry, anyway) is so "free" that very little of
the trappings of formal poetry is left, with
*one* exception: the use of line breaks,
grouping short lines into the visual appearence
of stanzas.

There is also poetry that is not called poetry, 
"song" and "rap" (and maybe even "jingle" or "ad copy").
and that stuff is if anything more rigidly formal than 
the old formal poetry.  Simple, heavy handed  
verbal rhthym and frequent, obvious rhyme is the rule 
in that world.  

Exceedingly polarized, very little middle ground.

Well, one thing about "prose poetry" is that it's 
usually a narrative form, it may even technically be
"fiction", but it is not a "story", which is to say that 
it does not present a problem and a resolution.  

It's often a piece of florid description, 
possibly a story-fragment?

Matters of expectation... if
presented as a story, it's
expected that it will *go*
somewhere, and then a long
description might be regarded
as an impediment, something
to be skimmed through
quickly.

Calling it a prose poem              One of the few ideas I've     
changes this, shifts the             come up with for hypertext    
focus back toward the                fiction in which I can see    
language.                            any point:                    
                                                                   
                                        Use hyperlinks to provide  
My favorite example                     details that provide depth,
of the form is                          but don't obviously advance
Baudelaire's "Out of                    the plot.                  
this World", which                                                 
*does* have a rhythm                      The main narrative puts    
to it, and a steady                       emphasis on plot and     
refrain, the rhthym                       dialog.  Atmosphere,     
is just not applied                       character sketch,       
on a line-by-line                         physical description,   
basis.                                    and so on are pushed off 
                                          into satellite           
                                          prose-poems:                
                                                                   
                                            A prose / prose-poem   
                                            hybrid.                
                                                   
                                                   
                                                   (Also, an expanded 
                                                   form could be      
                                                   provided, where you
                                                   could read all of  
                                                   it straight        
                                                   through.)          

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