Do You Know?
What is a prose poem, a flash fiction? They are both bastardy forms. Fuck, they should be hanging out. Simpatico, I feel. Or at least enough I walk your toad, you walk mine. Fueled on hops and piss. I guarantee you Max Jacobs would have bought. both forms a dank. aperitif. Hell, so would Kim Chinquee. But, noooooooooooo. So. So. Tell me. What is the difference? Fire away.
Tags: Faygo!, flash fiction, GOD, Just yammering, Prose poem, rotel, Small steaks need big knives
I think the distinction is artificial, and the attempts to build walls around forms in general serves scholars more than it serves writers. In practice (in best practice), the borders are porous, and the forms are more part of a continuum than a set of adjacent steel-lined boxes. The exception (the sometimes blazingly beautiful exception) is the other extreme of hyper-formalism, whether it be in poetry or Oulipian machinemaking or show-don’t-tell, wherein the constriction serves not as a straitjacket so much as an invitation to a new and potent variety of debauchery.
I recently spent a semester teaching a course on flash fiction, a form I gave a productive year to trying. I found the same thing there I found in every other form, which is that the great writers (Lydia Davis, Deb Olin Unferth, Diane Williams, etc. — and most of them are women) rip your feet out of your shoes the way a good car accident will, and that the preponderance of writers in the form don’t do anything to your feet. What bothered me most about giving serious attention to the form was that most of the talking about the form was being done by writers whose identity was invested in the form and in defending the form, and so who said a lot of things about the form that didn’t add up to much at all. It was a real disappointment.
hasn’t this been talked about enough? i feel like i’ve heard this conversation more than i’ve heard the conversation about mfa’s.
The distinction is: whatever your editor feels like calling it
(My next prose semester is in flash fiction – I’ll look up those writers. Would you share a few titles from your reading list? Thanks.)
word
The prose poem is an epiphany, the flash is a character with a yearning.
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The prose poem don’t dig holes, the flash don’t catch fish.
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Minors forms
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Prose poem: black humor. Flash: fart.
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The two genres cannot decide how to divide the revenue.
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This distinction was made by one of my teachers in an MFA poetry workshop last semester. These aren’t his exact words, but it’s helped me to see where the two are separate and also where they overlap and crawl into bed together. So: A prose poem, like a lineated poem, is read horizontally and the language serves the line. Flash fiction or short shorts, like other kinds of fictions, are read vertically, for the narrative, or even the ghostly trace of a narrative. That obviously doesn’t mean language is more activated in a prose poem than in a piece of flash fiction. Amelia Gray’s “AM/PM” proves that. But are those even flash fiction? Is “Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee” a book of long Tate prose poems? Is Mary Ruefle’s “The Most of It” a book of short stories?
This distinction was made by one of my teachers in an MFA poetry workshop last semester. These aren’t his exact words, but it’s helped me to see where the two are separate and also where they overlap and crawl into bed together. So: A prose poem, like a lineated poem, is read horizontally and the language serves the line. Flash fiction or short shorts, like other kinds of fictions, are read vertically, for the narrative, or even the ghostly trace of a narrative. That obviously doesn’t mean language is more activated in a prose poem than in a piece of flash fiction. Amelia Gray’s “AM/PM” proves that. But are those even flash fiction? Is “Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee” a book of long Tate prose poems? Is Mary Ruefle’s “The Most of It” a book of short stories?
This distinction was made by one of my teachers in an MFA poetry workshop last semester. These aren’t his exact words, but it’s helped me to see where the two are separate and also where they overlap and crawl into bed together. So: A prose poem, like a lineated poem, is read horizontally and the language serves the line. Flash fiction or short shorts, like other kinds of fictions, are read vertically, for the narrative, or even the ghostly trace of a narrative. That obviously doesn’t mean language is more activated in a prose poem than in a piece of flash fiction. Amelia Gray’s “AM/PM” proves that. But are those even flash fiction? Is “Dreams of a Robot Dancing Bee” a book of long Tate prose poems? Is Mary Ruefle’s “The Most of It” a book of short stories?
In a small sense, and if we want to separate them, flash fiction alerts itself to the fact that it will near 100% of the time use both characters and narratives. Prose poems, on the other hand, can be abut one thought or object without ever having a narrative or character.
re: tate, I would say no. Those definitely feel like short stories, with character growth much more prevalent and setting description much more… there… than in his shorter work. Also remember, he doesn’t write prose poems! there are line breaks, even in The Ghost Soldiers. seemingly arbitrary ones, but they are there.
tangential: it would be funny to give Tate to someone who reads poetry aloud in that way where they pause at every line break
I love the stuff that comes out in Wigleaf, because these things seem to embody story and poem simultaneously. Also effortlessly. These things resist paradigm. They turn on a line, and lodge in the heart. The recent Robison piece being an ultra fine example.
Not sure if this adds much to the discussion. :)
Like my uber pal klipschutz sez: (whose poem of the same name was once hung in the window of City Lights Books)
“It’s like 19 ways of looking at a burrito!”
I meant thirteen, actually.
13 Ways of Looking At A Burrito.
My point.
If you intentionally write either you may be a ridiculous person.
prose poetry is what people who “don’t get poetry” call their flash fiction that doesn’t have much of a narrative in order to make people think they get poetry.
and the lyric essay.
flash fiction and poetry and the lyric essay and just about every other catchphrase are meaningless distinctions used by editors and writers to try to define what they do in order to try to sell that shit. in other words, it’s branding.
Quit being so fucking grumpy. Go get drunk and write a sonnet.
sorry, i’ve got a sinus infection that’s making me the most negative person ever.
pp : tweet :: ff : text — (?)
if intention means anything, the difference is that.