Elle - on hiatus, and yet Poe was not an overly religious man. I think that this was definitely a prayer to some degree, but also the narrator looking to the future and dreaming about his hopes and wishes. It's an interesting contrast to the type of writing he normally does. It's kind of like an oxymoron to the writer. The depth of Poe is just barely tapped into. He was an interesting character to say the least.
I usually use complete sentences in my poetry as well, albeit complex structures. Still, I think that the way I personally express ideas in prose is very different from my poetry. Charlie's is too, actually. When he writes prose vignettes, they are very poetic but still definitely prose.
For my own, I'll use the same example: "the air itself seemed to have given up and died"
That is not a line that I would ever use in poetry. It is too bulky for what it says, and the word choice is too dull for poetry. I would either go concise so that I could move on quickly, or completely reenvision it while keeping the same rough meaning (and probably dragging in some imagery as well).
the air surrendered
and died
OR
the air itself
surrendered and
died
These are both super simple, to the point and could be worked into a poem's rhythm pretty easily, given the right line breaks and such. "Died-- surrendered" would also work.
OR (more likely)
The air died,
hung
immobile,
white flag fallen
long ago
And from there, I would just keep the sentence going because that's just part of my style. Anyway, I think that there are definite distinctions between poetry phrasing and prose, just as there is a major difference in rhythm between the two. Whether something is "prose poetry" or not really depends on the mix of poetry and non-poetry techniques and personal preference. Personally, I write in a rhythmic sort of way no matter what it is, but my word choice and sentence structures are entirely different for prose. Someone else might have no discernible rhythm in their prose but use lots of other techniques. Who is to say which would make it more "poetry" for someone?
Hmm, interesting discussion. I want to throw out a disclaimer that I am in no way as educated on this subject as Cinn, Dave, Aundria or Marci!
Form poetry has little appeal to me. I dislike having to make my words fit a pre-designed structure. Some of the ones I've tried have worked well, and some have been abject failures, but I don't enjoy writing them.
I do, however, enjoy writing rhyming poetry. *shrugs*
I understand rhythm, but find meter a difficult concept to grasp and even more difficult to utilise.
So, I love writing free verse poetry. It gives me the freedom to express myself, to experiment and be creative, and it means I can focus on other things such as improving my word choices, my imagery, etc instead of worrying about technicalities like how many syllables I've got.
But I find prose poetry hard to write. Weird, huh? When I write prose, I don't use much imagery. Osirantinous has a very similar style to me, and neither of us spend much time describing our characters or surroundings. I have one short story in my port where even the gender of the main character is unknown, let alone anything about what he or she looks like. It's something we're both working on! But prose poetry feels like taking away the plot and leaving just the description. Sort of. Maybe.
Cinn's example above of 'prose' made me think of some of Charlie's poems where he uses full sentences and breaks them up. I don't think my free verse could be turned into prose just by removing the line breaks, thus it is poetry. I can turn my prose poetry (I tried writing some for Darleen's contest) into poetry with a few handy line breaks and tweaks...but not without the tweaks. Does that even make sense?
So if the definition of prose is full sentences, then my free verse poetry is usually (and I haven't hunted through to see if this is in fact true of all my poetry) poetry and not prose. But I should, theoretically, be not only able to write prose poetry, but also to use a lot more imagery in my short stories.
Dave I always appreciate your input. You never cease to amaze me with your knowledge. Thank you for your contribution here, and I hope you'll join us for future discussions!!!
When read aloud, the two are indistinguishable. The verbal reader controls the tone and pacing through vocal inflections and pauses for dramatic effect.
On the written page, the line breaks in Free Verse provide an additional tool to guide the reader. However, it is not a matter of black and white. There are many shades of gray, pink and chartreuse all blended together. Mr. Poe's poetic technique in his fiction motivated me to pursue the study of poetry in the first place. My favorite authors are people who are prolific in both poetry and poetry-infused prose: Mr. Poe, Joyce Carol Oates, and Sonya Taaffe, to name a few.
After "Invalid Entry" , I have determined that Mr. Poe was a meticulous craftsman, whose singular purpose was to project a specific emotional effect upon the reader, as he explained in his treatise The Philosophy of Composition. As editor and publisher of magazines, his primary goal was to produce literary performances which would attract enough of an audience to support his lifestyle and pay his debts. Many of his pieces told of the transition from light to darkness, but in this poem he has his narrator, who was a religious man, express profound joy upon meeting the woman of his dreams, a kind of Gothic precedent to the pop tune You Are My Sunshine, which would certainly appeal to many during that era of Romanticism. Selection of the name "Maria" along with other religious references would cement an even broader audience.
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