Like traditional poetry, prose poetry makes use or metaphors, symbols, imagery, and figures of speech. Unlike traditional poetry, prose poetry does not utilize stanzas or line breaks. Prose poems read like poetry but look like prose, having a narrative paragraph structure. Like verse, prose poetry has a poetic quality, often making use of repetition, rhythm, alliteration, allusion, and other poetic devices.
Campbell McGrath, an American poet born in 1962, wrote a prose poem titled “The Prose Poem.” It begins: On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken.
Here, McGrath’s language is very poetic. He makes use of imagery, rhythm, and alliteration. However, this work does not read like traditional verse with short lines, line breaks, and stanzas.
I like prose poems because they can paint vivid pictures to tell stories in a compact format. I’ve written several prose poems such as, “Silk Dreams” and “Moon Rabbit.” Both of these prose poems appear in my chapbook, Molten Muse, available February 23, 2024. Poetica Review, a UK publication, will be publishing two of my prose poems in their Spring, 2024 edition, “Athena On the Beach,” and “Mary Magdalene at 7-11.”
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