Question #3) In considering
similarities/differences between prose poems and flash fictions,
Andrew Michael Roberts discusses James Tate’s Memoir of
the Hawk: “The book’s cover advertises the contents
as poems, yet the line breaks are arbitrary, and many of the
pieces are so narrative that one might consider them short fictions.
Who’s to say?”
At a writing festival I attended recently there
was a panel discussion on prose poems and flash fictions where
the facilitators and attendees spent a good half an hour tossing
around different definitions, gingerly inching forward to some
clear-cut idea of what separates prose poems and flash fictions
from one another, as well as the larger realms of poetry, prose,
and nonfiction. Having become exasperated, I spoke out: “Does
anybody care what it’s called if it’s shit?” I
could hear the vents above me creaking for a moment, until the
conversation resumed, lightly skipping over my intrusion. I don’t
blame them. The remark was hasty, flippant, obvious, and in a way,
attempted to derail the conversation into a false resolution. But
I think I’m right. Definitions of the prose poem are widening
all the time. Often, any attempts at definition are ultra-dependent
on the facts surrounding the author. I recently read a piece of
criticism where Larry Levis’ Black Freckles (shamefully
out of print) was referred to as a series of long prose poems inclined
toward narrative. Levis’ reputation relies almost exclusively
on his poems, but he himself dubbed the pieces in Black Freckles short
stories. To my mind, what’s most important about the
book (and ultimately, any book) is that the pieces are successful
in their forms— even if we (or the author or editor) chose
not to name those forms. Anthologies such as The Party Train have
gone so far as to include Hawthorne, Thoreau, Stein, Hemingway,
and other writers as trailblazers of the prose poem in American
literature. The prose poem? Each of the writers named
above is best known for their fiction (with the exception of Stein,
whose
work still delightfully defies categorization.) Here comes the
original question again: who’s to say? Here’s another
question: what’s more important, that we are able to clearly
and articulately bag and tag every chunk of prose (or poetry, for
that matter) we read or write, or that we know what the work, the
art, is asking of us? Is each prose poem or flash fiction
or whatever name you want to use, a factory-fresh can of worms?
Indeed. I hope
they’re beautiful worms, glowing and singing....
Bio:
F. Daniel Rzicznek is currently completing his MFA in poetry at
Bowling Green State University, where he is also assistant poetry
editor for Mid-American Review. His prose poems have appeared in Meridian, Sentence:
A Journal of Prose Poetics, and, Quick Fiction.
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