Charles Simic famously said that the prose poem “has the unusual distinction of being regarded with suspicion not only by the usual haters of poetry, but also by many poets themselves.” While there is evidence of the prose poem originating in 17th Century Japan, its popularity can be accredited to 19th Century France. Poets such as Baudelaire and Verlaine were so disillusioned with the Alexandrine verse, they enacted a rebellion through the prose poem.
Instead of lineated verse, the prose poem is fairly self-explanatory: it is a block of text, undivided. A sense of feeling can be included in distinguishing prose from poetry, or as Jeremy Noel-Tod says in his introduction to The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, “…our habitual expectation when we see a passage of prose is that it will explain, not sing.” The form is a deceptive bug: to the eye, it behaves like a story, but to the heart, it loves like a poem. And when I write a prose poem, I rarely set out to do so. It is only when I am most of the way through crafting the piece that the form chooses me.
This is what happened when I began writing my poem, We Left the Garden. A line I later deleted began, “Your sights set agoggle, rimmed with gold and dead ash.” I am still a fan of this line, but it didn’t belong. Though it is no more the notion of something rimmed with colour is still present, as per the first line:
“I fall from the oyster tower in my pearl-rimmed frock.”
I’m not entirely sure what film it was, but I saw something on the TV with an oyster tower, and in my mind it transformed into a spiral-staircase-lighthouse-tower situation. I pictured myself running up to the top just to fall back down again. At the time, I had been feeling like an outcast in the poetry scene. I have my feet firmly in the era of Sylvia Plath, Auden, Eliot, Mare, and poets even earlier. Because of this, I often find it difficult to seek a place for my poems, which is evidenced by my being labelled “too obscure”.
As I was writing, I was reminded of Emily Brontë and how she was the stranger in her family; with Charlotte being particularly cruel in this regard. Not only do I have an affinity with Sylvia Plath, but my connection to Emily is something to behold; though her propensity for giving animals a lashing is something I actively abhor. She wrote Wuthering Heights without any romantic prospects, and that is much like myself. I gave such good advice in high school that a friend once said, “You’ve never had a boyfriend, but you give really good advice.”
The second line of the poem is the kicker here:
“To mock the troglodytes with their Marlboro lights and drops of mead.”
In a bizarre, oxymoronic way, the poets with more modern sensibilities who are wholly against rhyme have become the troglodytes “with their Marlboro lights”. They are unwilling to dig deep into more complex poetry, like the editors of a magazine that rhymes with battle. They are not only egotistical, but believe they are the arbiters of poetry; having once told me that “all abstract poetry is bad” and to encourage it would be “bad advice”.
To make a metaphor out of tragedy, one could argue that those I quarrel with are akin to the corpse-water from the cemetery in front of the parsonage that polluted the water of the Brontës (what may have caused their deaths). I describe them as “ogres” with smiles “bright with metaphor”. My focus on language continues later in the poem:
“To my left, an Oxford comma hops like a bluebottle, from shot glass to goblet.”
I am interpreting the poetry scene as an elusive party. And I don’t belong at this party, or I don’t feel as though I do. Giving life to things such as the Oxford comma not only provides a unique humour, but is rather effective in illustrating my feelings. With a prose poem, it is almost as restrictive as other forms, but there are pockets of freedom.
In The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, Seamus Heaney’s 1975 poem, Cloistered, is included. Like I, Heaney opens his poem with a narrative of colour:
“Light was calloused in the leaded panes of the college chapel and shafted into the terrazzo rink of the sanctuary.”
While all poems tell a story, the prose poem allows one to engage their inner novelist. You aren’t writing a novel, but the narrative elements are free to play in the puddles, much unlike when you are dealing with lineated verse:
“There once lived a red-headed who had no eyes or ears.”
—Blue Notebook, No.10 by Daniil Kharms (trans. Robert Chandler)
I have noted before how titling a poem is the most difficult of tasks. This is what ties everything together, and is the deciding factor in how you want to approach your reader. Do you want to surprise? Shock? Deceive? For my poem, I was listening to Rhett and Link’s podcast, Ear Biscuits. Rhett spoke of an album called Thank God We Left the Garden by Jeffrey Martin. I was quite taken with the turn of phrase, but being more of spiritualist, I opted to drop the first part.
The more I thought on it, the more it fit. I have long since done things differently to others; effectively leaving the garden. With connotations to Adam and Eve, I stray from what is expected of me. Great innovators will always endeavour to make waves. And that is at the heart of my poem. As both a writer and person, I refuse to conform. This trait has pulled me into many-a conflict, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We Left the Garden chose the clothes it wanted to wear (the clothes being the poetic form). As history shows, the prose poem is an act of rebellion. For a poem about such, what better way to honour that by wearing the rebel’s clothes?
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Courtenay's Corner 