better fit

Many poets don’t realize their poems would be a better fit as prose.

special case

Poetry is a special case of prose.

unexpected prose

The prose writer was dismayed that a poem could be made of prose.

better in prose

A poet who was doing something in poetry that could be better done in prose.

special case

Any poem beyond a couple pages in length is a special case of prose.

lapsarian

A lovely paragraph that was a lapsed poem.

embedded poem

Anthology concept: ‘poems’ drawn from works of fiction and prose.

bad prose or good poetry

A line that could be faulted in prose but would be thought of as a feature in a poem.

come up for air

In poetry the right margin is not like in a swimming pool, where the swimmer must make a turn against a wall. The line ends where the swimmer in open water comes up for air.

prose all along

Whether or not cast in meter and/or rhyme, if the lines are readable, then they’re prose.

not de-prosed

Adding a metrical lilt to your lines and hanging some rhymes at the line endings, doesn’t de-prose your poetry. The prose remains despite the meter and rhyme.

chop chop

This or that critic, as a way of calling a poem basic, often balks at its being “just prose chopped up into lines.” Reader, this statement may sound radical at first, but it couldn’t be more obvious. Poetry is just prose chopped up into lines. I mean this to be final, categorical, and no slight to poetry.

—Elisa Gabbert, “What Poetry Is,” The Word Pretty (Black Ocean, 2018)

family language

Prose and poetry are the language’s siblings. That they would share resemblance should surprise no one.

insufficient condition

A prose poem in which the prose never rose to a condition of poetry.

practical plus

To poets prose seems much too practical and potentially profitable.

prose resolve

The prose we write about poems must try not to shrivel before the poems we write.

—Frank Bidart, Counterclaims: Poets and Poetries, Talking Back (Dalkey Archive Press, 2020), edited by H. L. Hix.

ruling passion

Since the age of fifteen poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any tasks or formed any relationship that seem inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric. Prose has been my livelihood, but I have used it as a means of sharpening my sense of the altogether different nature of poetry, and the themes that I chose are always linked in my mind with outstanding poetic problems.

—Robert Graves, The White Goddess (Faber & Faber, 1948)

ur-genre

If a good poet is using prose it's being used toward some purpose or for some effect. Poetry is the ur-genre: It takes and uses whatever resources the language offers. And when the language is lacking resources, poetry may well create a few more elements no one knew were there.

genre renegade

I’ve never accepted that Joyce’s works are classed prose and not poetry.

single line

What prose masks with explanation, poetry exposes in the stroke of a line.