Question #13) Ever Saskya
on technique: "The
poetic techniques in the prose poem are a combination of decocting
and expanding. Poetry attempts to heat apart-(often) break down/disjoint
the assimilation into parts-what narrative often infers in expanse.
The most instinctive part of the prose poem, for me, is the appearance
of wholeness, which is not actual; this instinctive part allows
me to disjoint and assimilate the parts into a heterogeneous
work, created from fragments, which appears homogeneous; the
narrative quality of the prose poem allows this assimilation
to have expanse, and the disjointedness to adhere in pieces and
present a whole/fixed space of utterance within the swirling."
What intrigues me about this statement is the perception, with which
I agree, that these forms that pull together poetic language
and the traces of narrative from prose appear whole.
My poems, I think, jump from fragment to fragment, compress images
and run out of and outside of time.There is no breathing space in
this distilment. But these other pieces I write, like "Her subject/His
subject," are artificial in a different way; as they expand
into semi-narrative, they create the illusion of wholeness, of
a clearer sense of the relatedness of images, different moments
in
time, different points of view. The artificiality is of another
sort, and deludes one into seeing a landscape, a memory, even argument
perhaps.
Bio:
Martha Ronk has published 7 books of poetry,
including In a landscape of having to repeat (Omnidawn 2004),
Why/Why Not (UC Press 2003), Eyetrouble and Desire
in LA (Georgia)
and State of Mind, and Displeasures of the Table (Sun&Moon).
She is Professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
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