Focus on Technique: Prose Poetry

When first studying poetry nothing seemed more ridiculous than the concept of  "Prose Poetry".  It's like turducken, it didn't feel natural.  Yet, this is a technique that I've come to embrace most commonly in my own personal poetry.  The concept of prose poetry is simple.  According the Academy of Poetry,  "While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme." In other words the prose poem still has the same internal structure that traditional poetry has and relies primarily upon emotions or imagery in order to invent its heart.

Is it really poetry?  Yes.  Is it really prose? Yes.  That is what makes the artwork so interesting.  Take for example You have to be always drunk by Charles Baudelaire.

That's all there is to it--it's the

only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks

your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually

drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be

drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of

a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,

drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,

the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything

that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is

singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and

wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:"It is time to be

drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be

continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

This poem has a clear structure of changing from light hearted to the "turn" into something deeper.  It speaks clearly like a poem with out any doubt.

On the other hand take Edgar Alan Poe's "The Tell Tale Heart" in the last couple of paragraphs:

No doubt I now grew very pale; --but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased --and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound --much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath --and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly --more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men --but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed --I raved --I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder --louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! --no, no! They heard! --they suspected! --they knew! --they were making a mockery of my horror!-this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now --again! --hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

Again you can see the spirit of a poem but this time it is an overtly prose piece.  Yet when one compares the structures the following elements seen in Baudelaire's piece such as: repetition, turn, and imagery proving both prose can be poetry and poetry can be prose.  By this one might say perhaps this is the ideal of all writing.  That which can convey a feeling and tell a story all at once in vivid imagery is the most divine art of all.