Experimental Poetry 7173

EXPERIMENTAL TEXT POETRY TYPOGRAPHY

(the style, arrangement, or appearance of printed letters on a page)

PROSE POEM Prose is anything written down that does not possess any poetic meter. Poetic meter is the rhythm of a poem. Whether you've heard any of Shakespeare's famous sonnets or the latest hip-hop song burning up the charts, chances are that you've noticed that many poems or songs have a certain rhythm to them. This rhythm is based on different factors, including the syllables per line and what syllables are naturally emphasized or stressed if someone were to read the poem out loud.

There is more to poetry than poetic meter, of course. Poems are often image-driven and emphasize visual descriptions, including metaphors, while prose tends to focus on aspects such as narrative, characters, and plot arc. In addition, poems also play with the sound of language using repetition and rhyming.

Characteristics of Prose, Poetry & Prose Poetry Prose Written in paragraphs Tells a story rather than describes an image or metaphor Generally, has characters and a plot   

Poetry Written in verse Written in poetic meter Focuses on image-driven metaphors Might have a narrative, but it might not or it might be harder to understand Prose poetry Looks like prose (written in paragraphs) Focuses on images Includes instances of poetic meter Contains language play, such as repetition    

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Prose Poetry Form Prose is the ordinary language that people use in speaking or writing. It does not treat the line as a formal unit. It has no repetitive pattern of rhythm or meter. In a prose poem: The writing is continuous and without line breaks. The piece may be of any length and may be divided into paragraphs. A single sentence or sentence fragment can be a prose poem, as can multiple paragraphs. The natural rhythm of thought can lead to rhythmical cadences in a prose poem. Internal rhyme and alliteration and repetition can be used. Some such trait of poetry must be present. Otherwise it is prose, not a prose poem. It lies between free verse and prose. Usually has compressed thought and intensity.  

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Poet Gary Young has a very concise approach to prose poems. In an October 2006 craft workshop, his guidelines included: Use the spontaneity and drive of the sentence. Allow your writing to be subtle and subversive, to warp and seduce, so the reader accepts something in a prose poem that they might resist in formal poetry. Be concise. Ask yourself if you can justify everything that is in your poem, each phrase, each word, each comma. If you're unsure, remove it. The prose poem is a lyric. But embrace the trans-genre possibilities of the prose poem. Commandeer the exposition, the recipe, the definition. Embrace the surreal, "a bit of arsenic, a bit of starlight". "It's the moves in the poem that excite me the most. In a prose poem you can travel such distances."

Examples of Prose Poems 'I discovered a journal' (Gary Young) 'I discovered a journal in the children's ward, and read, I'm a mother, my little boy has cancer. Further on, a girl has written, this is my nineteenth operation. She says, sometimes it's easier to write than to talk, and I'm so afraid. She's offered me a page in the book. My son is sleeping in the room next door. This afternoon, I held my whole weight to his body while a doctor drove needles deep into his leg. My son screamed, Daddy, they're hurting me, don't let them hurt me, make them stop. I want to write, how brave you are, but I need a little courage of my own, so I write, forgive me, I know I let them hurt you, please don't worry. If I have to, I can do it again.'

Intoxication Fr. “Enivrez-vous” (Eng. literal translation “Be Drunk”) Charles Baudelaire (from Petits Poèmes en Prose, 1869, translated by James Huneker, 1919) One must be forever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken without cease! With wine, with poetry, with virtue, or with what you will.”

A BOX. Out of kindness comes redness and out of rudeness comes rapid same question, out of an eye comes research, out of selection comes painful cattle. So then the order is that a white way of being round is something suggesting a pin and is it disappointing, it is not, it is so rudimentary to be analysed and see a fine substance strangely, it is so earnest to have a green point not to red but to point again.

A RED STAMP. If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust, if they dusty will dirt a surface that has no extreme grace, if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue.

REFINISHING Wood has no future. It saves all scratches. At twenty-three I helped a woman sand her table down to grain. I touched every inch of that table, used a belt-sander but took the corners by hand, not wanting to burn through. I had it clean in days, then set to clearcoating. I could count my years in its surface as the tiny histories of the people who had eaten there vanished.

When we lie together at night and I'm asleep, do I ever run my fingers down your back? I have the sensation sometimes of running underneath the skin, like a splinter.

PERFORMANCE POETRY  Performance poetry uses the stage as the page, transforming poetry readings into theatrical events. While the recent resurgence of performance poets is seen as a reaction against mainstream, print-based poetry, the style harkens back to the classic role of the poet, who recited notable happenings, emotions, and perceptions.And while traditional poems utilized standard structures, in part to serve as mnemonic devices, contemporary performance poetry calls upon experimental rhythms as a means to engage an audience in the listening experience.

The recent growth of performance poetry can be attributed to the popularity of slam, a selfidentified movement dedicated to creating real-time discourse between performer and audience. While poetry slam cannot be categorized like a sonnet or a haiku, any form or style of poetry can be turned into slam by virtue of the poet’s performance on stage. This inclusive art form invites all people to participate, whether as a poet, audience member, or judge.