ABSTRACT

Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice vigorously engages with the Why? and the How? of prose poetry, a form that is currently enjoying a surge in popularity. With contributions by both practitioners and academics, this volume seeks to explore how its distinctive properties guide both writer and reader, and to address why this form is so well suited to the early twenty-first century. With discussion of both classic and less well- known writers, the essays both illuminate prose poetry’s distinctive features and explore how this "outsider" form can offer a unique way of viewing and describing the uncertainties and instabilities which shape our identities and our relationships with our surroundings in the early twenty-first century. Combining insights on the theory and practice of prose poetry, Prose Poetry in Theory and Practice offers a timely and valuable contribution to the development of the form, and its appreciation amongst practitioners and scholars alike. Largely approached from a practitioner perspective, this collection provides vivid snapshots of contemporary debates within the prose poetry field while actively contributing to the poetics and craft of the form.

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|17 pages

Protean Manifestations and Diverse Shapes

Defining and Understanding Strategies of the Contemporary Prose Poem

chapter 3|12 pages

“In the Eye of the Beholder”

Prose Poetry in Dialogue Between Reader and Poet

chapter 4|14 pages

Nobody's Storybook

Reading Russell Edson for the Wrong Reasons

chapter 5|16 pages

“Borders on Edges, Where Skin Stops, or Begins” 1

The Prose Poem's Relationship with the Discourses of Fashion and Food, with Particular Reference to Charles Baudelaire, Gertrude Stein, and Harryette Mullen

chapter 6|18 pages

The Contemporary Vernacular

Exploring Intersections of Architecture and Prose Poetry

chapter 7|13 pages

“Image Machine”

Gaspar Orozco's Book of the Peony and the Prose Poem Sequence as Perceptual Trick

chapter 8|16 pages

Writing the Prose Poem

An Insider's Perspective on an Outsider Artform

chapter 9|16 pages

“A Form of Howling. A Form of Chanting. A Form of Looking Out for Each Other”

Poetics and Politics of the Contemporary Indian-English Prose Poem

chapter 10|16 pages

Collaboration, Conversation, and Adaptation

The Prose Poetry Project and Renga Attitude

chapter 11|14 pages

Framing Catastrophe

The Ekphrastic Prose Poem

chapter 12|14 pages

“An Interlude Suspended” 1

Historical Biography Through the Lens of Prose Poetry

chapter 13|15 pages

Who Are the Contemporary Symbolists?

The Prose Poem and the Decorative-Subjective Approach

chapter 14|16 pages

One Foot; Many Places

The Prose Poem's Art of Standing Still While Travelling