- prose poem
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a composition written as prose but having the concentrated, rhythmic, figurative language characteristic of poetry.[1835-45]
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Work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of poetry (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose.The form took its name from Charles Baudelaire's Little Poems in Prose (1869). Other writers of prose poems include, in the 19th century, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, and Rainer Maria Rilke, and in the 20th, Amy Lowell (in her "polyphonic prose") and such contemporary poets as John Ashbery.* * *
a work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of a poem (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose.The form was introduced into French literature by Louis Bertrand (Bertrand, Aloysius), with his Gaspard de la nuit (1842; “Gaspard of the Night”). His poetry attracted little interest at the time, but his influence on the Symbolists (Symbolist movement) at the end of the century was acknowledged by Charles Baudelaire in his Petits poèmes en prose (1869; “Little Poems in Prose”), later titled Le Spleen de Paris. It was this work that gave the form its name, and the Divagations (1897; “Wanderings”) of Stéphane Mallarmé and Illuminations (1886) of Arthur Rimbaud firmly established prose poetry in France. Other turn-of-the-century writers who composed prose poetry were Paul Valéry, Paul Fort, and Paul Claudel.Prose poems were written in the early 19th century by the German poets Friedrich Hölderlin and Novalis, and at the end of the century by Rainer Maria Rilke. The 20th century saw a renewed interest in the form in such works as Pierre Reverdy's Poèmes en prose (1915) and in the works of the French poet Saint-John Perse. Other notable practitioners of the form include Max Jacob, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, Amy Lowell, Kenneth Patchen, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, Robert Bly, N. Scott Momaday, and Rosmarie Waldrop.Additional ReadingStuart Friebert and David Young (eds.), Models of the Universe: An Anthology of the Prose Poem (1995); Michel Delville, The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre (1998).* * *
Universalium. 2010.
