Peter Conners & Mark Tursi

Issue I Questions On The PP/FF Forms

Each contributor was presented with the following list of questions and asked to write a roughly 250 word response to whatever question resonated most with them. Their answers were as varied as the work they produce, and, we believe, equally as thrilling.
  1. What is the difference between a prose poem and a flash fiction?
  2. How do you define prose poetry?
  3. How do you define flash fiction?
  4. My piece (your title here) is a prose poem, NOT a flash fiction, because:
  5. My piece (your title here) is a flash fiction, NOT a prose poem, because:
  6. I refuse to designate my piece (your title here) as either a flash fiction or a prose poem because:
  7. My pp/ff hero is __________ because __________
  8. What restrictions does pp/ff entail? What are the conventions of pp/ff?
  9. Cultural critic Michael Benedikt suggests that "there is probably a shorter distance from the unconscious to the prose poem, than from the unconscious to most poems in verse." In what ways do you think this is true?
  10. The prose poem, in the very least, is "an alternative mode of articulation." Do you agree or disagree?
  11. Robert Bly suggests that the prose poem is more "democratic" than other forms of verse. He argues that verse written in traditional forms are all about "control," and in a way reinforce human being's supposed domination over chaos. The prose poem, Bly suggests, in contrast, is the form that best expresses 20th century ideas of democracy in the sense that it is concerned with sensibility and intelligence, as opposed to order and power. To what extent do you agree with Bly's assessment?
  12. Frederico García Lorca writes that the duende is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept . . . (it is) shadowy, palpitating, is a descendant of that benignest daemon of Socrates, he of marble and salt, who scratched the master angrily the day he drank the hemlock; and of that melancholy imp of Descartes, little as an unripe almond, who, glutted with circles and lines, went out on the canals to hear the drunken sailors singing." How does a pp/ff provoke the duende?
  13. Reading a pp/ff is like biting into a York Peppermint Patty because...
  14. How long is a flash fiction story?
  15. In Adagia, Wallace Stevens writes, "Poetry is a pheasant disappearing in the brush." What is a pp/ff?

 

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