“Objects thrive as subjects in prose poems“ The Guardian

Today is National Buy a Book day which encourages us to keep reading instead of just watching and especially to read from the tangible, paper bound object vs kindles etc. Some argue that paper means trees being cut down but there are masses of second hand sources and more recently, even recycled paper prints.

And a quick search of poems about books reveals a rich library – here is an extract from Rebecca Hazelton’s “Book of Memories”:
“In my seeing there was a blank and he filled that blank
with words, there were words for darkness which made it lift,
there were words for cover which ripped them off,
there were legs that crossed and hearts that crossed,
promises red and read, and the pluck of banjo had a name
for that twang, and the way he called the world into notice,
that had a word, too…”

Whilst in this extract Roger Mitchell pulls down “A book on a shelf”
“…Here it is
in a book I found on a shelf. The person
who lives here bought it at a library
stock reduction sale. No one had read it.
It looked interesting thirty years ago.
It was practically new, the back uncracked.
But the person did what those before her had,
put it up on a shelf and never found
a way back to it. The history sits there,
unread, unbelievable, somebody else’s.
Even I have only looked at the pictures,
at the man smiling between the cold pages…”

The two poems illustrated here are prose written as poetry– not quite that hybrid Prose Poetry defined as: “A prose composition that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry.” The Poetry Foundation [my italics].

In short, it looks like prose but reads like poetry so basically use paragraphs rather than lines but include some familiar poetry devices i.e. metaphor, symbolism, etc

The topic for today’s MTB prompt is

• go to the last book you bought/read (or make it a favourite one if you can’t remember)
• write a prose poem about it
• in approx 200-300 words

Suggestions: you can include the title and topic, physical characteristics, how it makes you feel, what attracted you to it etc

Useful links:
Glossary Prose Poem
Prose Poetry examples (Poetry Foundation)
Poetry devices

Note: We have tackled prose poetry at dVerse several times before – the last time was 2017 so its worth revisiting

So once you have posted your poem according to the topic’s guidelines above, do add it to Mr Linky below then go visiting others as that is half the fun of our dVerse gatherings.