There’s something I like about prose poems–the freedom to get a little wild, whacky, I guess. A poem in stanzas is so, well, “poemish.” It has a certain dignity and it has rules, wants to be respected in a particular way. (Although, we’ve all seen some wild poems written in formal poetic forms.) I guess the prose poems says to me…Ramble On! I do like to ramble, go off on a subject and make long, drawn out, sentences connected with ands and buts and so’s and …’s and —’s. It’s a way of draining my brain, of letting all the many variations on a theme have their say without feeling they have to be tied up in a bow.

I have two anthologies of prose poems. One is No Boundaries, edited by Ray Gonzalez, which has selections by 24 contemporary poets including Charles Simic, Robert Bly, Amy Gerstler, Naomi Shihab Nye and Cambell McGrath. Great American Prose Poems, edited by David Lehman, is the other one. It covers a much wider swath of time and poets starting with Emerson and winding through T.S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Mark Strand, Frank Bidart, Anne Carson, Rita Dove, Mary Ruefle and many more along the way. Here’s playful piece by Louis Jenkins about, well, of course…

The Prose Poem

The prose poem is not a real poem, of course. One of the major differences is that the prose poet is simply too lazy or too stupid to break the poem into lines. But all writing, even the prose poem, involves a certain amount of skill, just the way throwing a wad of paper, say, into a wastebasket at a distance of twenty feet, requires a certain skill, a skill that, though it may improve hand-eye coordination, does not lead necessarily to an ability to play basetball. Still, it takes practice and thus gives one a way to pass the time, chucking one paper after another at the basket, while the teacher drones on about the poetry of Tennyson.

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My husband once entered a zucchini in the county fair and won a blue ribbon for the largest of the year. I think he still has the ribbon pinned to his wall. We haven’t had a garden the last two years but before that we had them for twenty, in Oregon and here in L.A. The rite of turning the soil, planting seeds, watering, watching the seedlings pop out of the composted soil was always amazing. Every year the zukes and the tomatoes and chard, beans and corn were so delicious. You know, real taste, not what we settle for out of the store these days. I read the poem below by Naomi Shihab Nye to him tonight and he got a good chuckle out of it. I asked if he had any pictures of that giant zucchini so this sent him on a quest to go through six boxes of photos. Couldn’t find that particular one, but here’s a photo of some of the bounty from a few years ago.

The Mind of a Squash

Overnight, and quietly. Beneath the scratchy leaf we thicken and expand so fast you can’t believe. Sun pours into us. We drink midnight too, blue locust lullaby feeding our graceful sleep. When you come back, we are fat. Doubled in the dark. Faster than you are. Sometimes we grow together, two of us twining out from the same stalk, conversational blossoms. Bring the bucket. Bring the small knife with the sharp blade. Bring the wind to cool our wide span of leaves, each one bigger than a human head, bigger than dinner plates. Wait till you find the giant prize we have hidden from you all along–no muscle-rich upper arm exceeds its size. But the farmer doesn’t like it. Too big for selling, he says. Only for zucchini bread. Never mind. We like it. We have our own pride.

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In case you live in the L.A. area and in case you’re interested in exploring the world of the prose poem, you might like to participate in a workshop at the Ruskin Art Center on October 14th taught by Sarah Maclay. I guarantee it will be a good romp. Sarah’s a terrific poet and workshop facilitator. Here’s the scoop…

The Prose Poem
October 14, 2006 9:30am - 4 pm
The Ruskin Art Club 800 S Plymouth Blvd LA CA 90005
$75: Send $35 Deposit to the Ruskin Art Club
310-669-2369/ 640-0710

What is a prose poem, and how does it force us to re-examine our notions of what, in fact, a poem might be? This workshop will examine the many ways in which this seeming paradox cannot be understood as simply narrative or paragraph, and is very often neither. What, instead, does it seem to allow, or even promote? Where did it originate? And how does it skew our expectations of both poetry and prose? Participants will have the opportunity to workshop their own prose poems (or other poems) after we’ve looked at examples from some of its many explorers: Arthur Rimbaud, Russell Edson, Killarney Clary, Mary Jo Bang, Robert Hass, Carolyn Forche, Nin Andrews, W.S. Merwin, Lynn Heijinian, Rene Char, Franz Wright, Karen Volkman, Allison Benis, Mary Ruefle, Charles Simic, Robert Bly . . . and others.