[stylist] Poetry and Prose

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

To continue along Chelsea's thread, poetic prose is just the application
of poetry writing to prose. It manifest itself in descriptive sentences
relying on imagery, metaphor and other poetry techniques including but
not limited to alliteration, repetition and cadence-like structure. The
most significant difference distinguishing poetry from poetic prose is
of course length and structure along with the fact that prose doesn't
have to follow poetic rules. Even free verse has rules and guidelines in
terms of format and structure. Prose doesn't necessarily have, or
follow, the same rules.

Oh, another part of poetic prose is the ability to structure sentences
more like poetry than prose. For example, when writing poetic prose, you
don't have to pay as much attention to certain punctuation or sentence
structure. It can be a much more expressive way of writing. I don't feel
I'm explaining this correctly because I don't mean this style of prose
allows one to throw out the rules of grammar; I just mean you can adopt
a much more poetic style of writing within a sentence. I'll try to find
a good example of what I mean and post it.

Bridgit

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Chelsea
Cook
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2014 10:20 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] Poetry and Prose


Hi Vejas,

I thought I'd chime in on the poetry vs. prose discussion, since I have
experience with both and write most of my own poems in free verse. Keep
in mind that my feelings are somewhat experiential, I started to write
poetry before reading much of it myself in braille.

Free verse doesn't necessarily need a form. Think E. E. Commings, who
hardly used any punctuation at all in his work. That said, you can still
have fun with line length and wordplay; free verse is great for this.
Every line doesn't have to have a certain number of syllables-unless you
are specifically writing a haiku or limerick-but your idea does bring up
a technique I used in one of my recent poems. The first line of a stanza
was one word, the second line two, third three, etc. When I got to five
words, I would reverse the trend. To me, free verse allows for the
challenges to be slightly more creative in terms of structure, but I've
never been good at rhyming, so others may disagree.

As to whether free verse is prose, I would refer you to Myrna's
excellent definition. I once saw a statement that "Poetry is a
compressed language," and that meaning has always stayed with me. So
when writing poetry, I try to use as few and yet as powerful words as
possible. I am intrigued by the concept of prose-poetry and will have to
read that Wikipedia article. While a lyrical/musical quality is
important and essential in poetry, it can also show up in prose, and
sometimes this is the goal as with a well-written speech. You want the
audience to remember what you say, so you try to match words and use
poetic techniques that will easily catch on in oral form, even though
you are technically writing prose.

I hope this helps you out.

Chelsea
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