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Hello all, after 4 weeks away it feels great to be back again with you all. One of the advantages with vacation is that you have time to read, and this is what I have done. This year I have read novellas, short novels that often have grown to fame later on. I’m sure that many of you read them back in school, but the Swedish canon did not include the same books. One thing that I thought about is how poetic, prose can be, and it made me think about what really is the difference.
Portrait of Natasha Nesterova (On a Garden Bench) by Mikhail Nesterov
First of all a text use the familiar poetic devices such as rhymes, meter, alliteration and repetitions. Maybe prose use a little bit less, but still it is always there, and many pieces of poetry is not overloaded with these either. As a matter of fact many of the Meet the Bar prompts could have been used for prose as well as poetry.
How about line-breaks and punctuation then we might ask?, for sure poetry looks different on a page, and we have discussed that before at a previous Bartalk. But on the other hand there is prose poetry that looks exactly like a piece of prose, but we immediately know it’s poetry.
Then there are metaphors and similes, but prose can contain a lot of those as well.
So if it’s not about how a text is written it could be, why it’s written. Is the purpose different maybe? The prose should tell something, a story or a narrative, tell about facts or give a statement. But poetry can can have the same.
Take a snippet of prose like this from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness:
The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.
To me this paints a tableau that could just as well been poetry as prose, but now it gives us a place just before Marlow enters the narrative. It gives color and emotion, but the purpose is to place the character in the scene.
When researching the internet I see that this has been discussed for ages, and to some extent it might be a meaningless topic, but I would like to hear from you, poets and authors, what’s the true difference between prose and poetry?
Maybe the difference is just how a librarian classify your book.
dVerse 
Happy Monday.. let us hear what you have to say? I’m all ears.. and the bar is stocked with drinks to cool you if you’re hot.
Today, when listening to a novelist read a portion of her new novel, I thought once again of the same issue. And indeed, some of my favorite poems read more like a super-flash prose.
In 2012 I did a d’Verse prompt “Defining Poetry” which addresses your question — like you, I saw that many people have addressed it. There are many prescriptionists who know exactly how poetry and proses should differ. Click on that link to see what I think about prescriptionists.
From a language point of view I see very little difference between prose and poetry (at least today).. except maybe line-breaks… anyone who claim to see the difference I would really doubt. Though there is always a library classification at the end… so it is either or…
Good to see you tending the bar again, Bjorn! I’ve been “away” with a family wedding and weekend camping trips. This is an interesting topic…not easy to define the difference between “poetic prose” or “prosaic poetry”! I’d say poems tend more toward brevity, have a different “shape” than regular paragraphs of prose, and do not require complete sentences…poems distill thoughts instead of explaining everything.
Yes there is often a difference in length, but there are some very long poems as well… Think of paradise lost for instance 🙂
Yes, perhaps the only certainty is that an exception can be found to any definition 🙂
Indeed… and in today’s world we can find flashfiction that uses a few 100 words… 🙂
Brevity? What anbout Homer’s works, the Mahabharata, Beowulf and all the rest of the epic poems — perhaps the first great literature centered on rhyme and rhythm
True enough…then again, there is haiku 🙂
Actually when it comes to older work, literature was always poetry. It was written so you could remember it by heart… so to some extent these classical works are to be considered prose… But yes it shows the difficulty in divisions.
A little silent here.. your bartender will be sleeping soon.. I will catch up in the morning… 🙂
welcome back björn and cool on having been able to read so much
i’m not quite sure about the difference of prose and poetry – maybe poetry can be more abstract? just a guess – ha
even if i try to write prose it sounds like poetry – just without line – and stanza breaks…
Exactly the same when I write prose.. (Sometimes even at work).. I think maybe poetry is more abstract, but I read Thomas Pynchon – and that was fairly abstract too…
Post-modernism with abstraction and vagueness hit a fad in both prose and poetry with both lacking both for the most part before the movement, no? So vagueness doesn’t work either, I think.
Again, looking for something unique to poetry always fails.
Interesting topic. Sometimes, it is hard to read the difference between prose and poetry. Sometimes, it id hard to see the difference. Line breaks are an obvious visual but then poetic forms such as sonnet, villanelle, triolet – are rhymed, rhythmed, spaced in a way the cannot be mistaken for prose. Unless it is stated a form is a prose poem, to me, it comes across as paragraphs of prose. Then there are writers like James joyce, written in paragraphs but not following the “rules” of prose. And then you get haibun with combination of poetic prose and poem. Emily Dickinson, Poe, Byron….one does not mistake as prose. So many times then, I think it is the writer who will define their work for us. Free verse, can be read as prose, depending on the writer. I have read many writers of prose with a flowing poetic style. I have read writers of poetry with a terse, straight forward prosy style. So again, I think it is the writer who defines what they write.
Maybe you are right.. It’s the purpose of the text, rather than the text that defines it…
It is hard sometimes to define.
On balance, I think you are right, Kanzensakura. The creator decides. Some poetry is unmistakably poetry, and some poetry seems more prosaic. No matter – it is the intention which counts.
A fascinating topic, Bjorn – I don’t think there can be a definitive answer.
Sleep well.
It really is hard to tell at times but some forms are unmistakeable. I read a fiction author that is often, very poetic in her descriptions but she will say flat out, she is a writer of prose. I have been reading The Alienist, a book I started years ago and put down and just last week, began again. It is unmistakeably prose fiction. It is interesting to think about. And then you have James Joyce with his hybrid style and there you go!
Welcome back Bjorn. Sleep well! See you later. 🙂
Sleep is coming now..
I was at an Arvon course a year or so ago and the definition of poetry was that it had line breaks placed well. That, the tutor assured us, was what differentiated poetry from prose.
A fave of mine is: ‘It’s said that prose is words in the best order and poetry is the best words in the best order’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge who wrote The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner).
Perhaps it’s different things to different people?
Interesting question, Björn.
Sometimes I use line breaks and other times do not. Emily Dickison’s poetry cannot be mistaken for prose but then, James Joyce always comes to mind and it may look like prose, but reads like poetry. Little Women cannot be mistaken for poetry because of its forms. So, it is up to the writer to say, this is my short story, this is my poem, regardless of rules. I’ve seen poetry posted that to me is prose. I am not going to tell the writer – no- but my perception doesn’t change. It’s all just a big pot of mixed vegetable soup at times, isn’t?
Yes, it really is different for different people😄
🙂
Welcome back! Glad you’ve returned. Maybe the difference is how the writer feels about the work – if I think I’m writing poetry, it’s poetry. But if I think I’m writing prose, well ……..
Yes I think it’s up to the writer to decide…
Hi Bjorn,
Good to see you…I will go straight into it. A good piece of written work is a good piece of written work. This is why what applies to poetry generally works for prose.
However, just like a sonnet is different from haiku, and a glosa from a pantoum, prose is recognizably different than poetry in the way it looks on the page.
But there are poetry that looks exactly like prose on the page.. if you look at HOWL for instance, it’s definitely poetry, but it can still appear like prose on the page.
“Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning.” Perhaps the difference is in the latter portion of the definition … hidden meanings.
Indeed.. but to me, this definition can also apply to many pieces of poetry.. and there is poetry that does not fulfill the definition.. that’s what makes it so interesting.
I consider myself a prince of prose; everything I write is telling a story. or describing something, usually sprinkled with dialogue. Poetry that adheres to strict form & format tends never to be mistaken for prose. but I wish I had a dollar for each time I’ve heard, “Your prose is so poetic”, which I am grateful to hear. I wrote a prose poem as a review of a movie, McCABE & MRS MILLER, including poetic lines from the Leonard Cohen score for the film, & it was 40 pages in length. My audacious “cinemagenic” poems, taken from my own Western unpublished novel, combined with my 60 years of being a movie buff, & my decade as a professional actor, up to 43 episodes & 86 pages already is an example of where one can go with poetry. I see no barriers whatsoever, unless endeavoring to conform to a style or form for MTB. I tend to write hybrid haibun a lot these days, adoring the unabashed prose sections, framed with haiku, tanka, lunes, & American sentences. We, of the dVerse clan are all adventurers & pioneers, & it thrills me to go out on the trail treasure hunting.
Maybe it’s prose that’s restricted, not poetry….. But I think it’s up to ourselves to decide what we define as poetry. I have also heard that my prose is poetic.. which I sometimes intentionally avoid..
My thoughts are simple: If the author calls it a poem, it is a poem. If the author calls it prose, it is prose.
Or, if the author does not speak about his/her words, I would say that the reader can decide what it LOOKS like and label it what he/she will.
Yes that is very true.. and many author with poetic language prefers to call it prose because it sells better. 🙂
Hi Bjorn!
Good to have you back. If the poetry form is free style, there is an overlap of prose and poetry as I have seen in modern prose poem.
However, if its form and structure, I can easily recognize the poem by its layout on the page, structure and use of more tools like rhyme, alliteration and meter. Prose for me would be little straight forward but sometimes the distinction blurs between the two when I am reading writers who makes use of magic realism for example, where the prose is written so poetically and imaginatively.
See you tomorrow ~
Maybe the poetic author embeds his or her poetry into the prose to sneak it in.. It’s so clear when you listen to an audiobook for instance. When I took a course in creative writing (prose) the first thing we did was looking at poetic tools… and all those tools are used in writing of prose… Layout is an important difference though..
One of the main differences between poetry and prose I’d say is rhythm. In poems, it is suggested by line breaks and rhymes – or even by forms. Besides even though prose can have images they are usually more concentrated in poetry.
There is something about the rhythm and concentration of images. I’ve noticed that some poets are not that great at writing novels (they do better with short stories) – perhaps because the writing is too dense and then it’s difficult to go the whole distance that a novel requires.
Actually I have found that the hard way… writing even a short story, requires planning and structure.. but a poem or flash-fiction can be structured in your head…
I always approach my prose as if it is poetry. I strive for it to have form, rhythm, lyricism, and evoke images, be layered and imaginative, and, just as in poetry, every word counts.
I have found that if I read longer pieces if the poetic language is used interleaved with less poetic language, it is easier to appreciate them both.. and one of the things I liked with Novella’s is that every word counts, but in a 1000 page novel it seems to be too many words sometimes.
1000 page novel! Wow! My two published novels are around 300 pages each. I would say that a 1000 page novel needs some whittling down, unless it is a series. I do agree that using words poetically in a novel can be overdone. My editor always reigns me in, if I get carried away poetically.
Sometimes prose is so good it becomes poetry.
Sometimes poetry is so bad it becomes prose.
You’ve made an interesting point here, Ken!
Ha, I love that! Yet prose has its merits too…
Ha.. I just have to mention an author who is definitely not poetic IMHO .. Ernest Hemingway… definitely very good prose. But as a poet I love it..
Funny–I thought of the same thing when I read your post.
Prose expresses
touches emotions
PoeTry expresses
touches
un
ordin
ary..
Or one can follow the
Standard DicTionary
way of doing it.. but
nah
not
me..
Art IS creating
something NEW
IMHO
if it ain’t
THAT
ART
i ain’t
goin’
tHere..:)
Art is definitely an element.. prose can also be a license agreement for your iPhone.. and that is something entirely different.
Yes; the standard definition of prose is precisely that.
Hello, Bjorn, nice to have you back at the bar!
Ah, this is a heated debate, isn’t it? I am not always sure what is poetry and what is prose, especially in the case of prose poems… As a writer, I have sometimes written some prose paragraphs which later turned into poems and vice versa, so perhaps there is some truth in the fact that it is whatever you intend it to be.
As a reader (regardless of the writer’s intention and regardless of its shape on the page), if I feel the hairs on my neck standing up and my hear beating faster, then it’s poetry.
Ha.. yes I have had my neckhair standing up when reading novels.. but maybe that’s poetry too then. The only think I know is that I know myself when I have written poetry and when I’ve written prose.
The only thing I would say is that with a novel I do have an expectation of some kind of ‘narrative’, some character development, some overarching theme or story, and that those works that are beautifully written but do not fulfill that do disappoint me. My definition is quite generous – I would put Virginia Woolf’s novels in the novel category, for instance, although they are also (most of them) poetry.
Great topic, Bjorn. I find I gravitate to novelists who are also poets, savoring each turn of phrase. I enjoy someone like Kingsolver, for example, and Faulkner. Though I do confess the need for light reading in between–a good old detective story, for example.
Sorry to be so late in getting here–but it’s good to welcome you “home.”
I have started to appreciate poetic texts more and more… Dickens is also a great example who interleaves poetry in his texts..