An Introduction to the Prose Poem

Dale Smith on An Introduction to the Prose Poem:

The poems anthologized here are then divided into twenty-four sections that include titles like “Anecdote,” “Object Poems,” “Flash Poems,” “Aphorism,” “Rant,” “Sequence,” etc. Such divisions of formal possibility help readers look at prose poetry in completely new ways. Instead of this lump category—prose poetry—there arrives an active transmission of specific practices that give the prose poem a flexible and insightful formal possibility all its own. What can be accomplished within the prose poem differs from other prose and verse media. Clements and Dunham therefore argue for ways to look at prose poetry as an imposing development in contemporary practice, and they help us understand how this has happened and why it’s important.

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