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Re: flash fiction vs prose poetry
For whomever:
For the example as a learning device I offer this brief bit of information/
The Puzzling Prose Poem/ Baudelaire and Bly
Charles Baudelaire completed fifty prose poems before His premature death at the age of 46. In combining certain of the restrictions of poetic form with the freedom of prose, he sought a form of language capable of conveying the complexity, cacophony, and unexpected juxtapositions of city life. Like his verse poems, they are rich in psychological insights and reveal the ability to select precisely those tiny details that raise the banal to the ironic. But the medium of prose enabled Baudelaire to exploit aspects of his talent less suited to verse poetry, especially wit and irony, while the greater freedom allowed him to create verbal patterns and rhythms that subtly underpin or throw into question the surface meaning of the language..
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Never Be Sober
Charles Baudelaire
from
The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo
You must always be intoxicated. That sums it all up: it's the only question. In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time which breaks your back and bends you down to earth, you must be unremittingly intoxicated.
But on what? Wine, poetry, virtue, as you please. But never be sober.
And if it should chance that sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak solitude of your room, you wake up and your intoxication has already diminished or disappeared, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything that flees, everything that groans, everything that rolls, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them what time it is and the wind, the wave, the bird, the star, the clock, will reply: “It's time to be intoxicated! If you do not wish to be one of the tortured slaves of Time, never be sober; never ever be sober! Use wine, poetry, or virtue, as you please.”
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Baudelaire believed that the prose poem would be the major form of the twentieth century because of its suppleness and the subtlety of its music. In his collection (What have I Ever Lost By dying?) Robert Bly brings together a harvest of prose poems.
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A Potato
Robert Bly
from What Have I Ever Lost By Dying?
The potato reminds one of an alert desert stone. And it belongs to a race that writes novels of inspired defeat. The potato does not move on its own and yet there is some motion in its shape, as if a whirlwind paused, then turned into potato flesh when a ghost spit at it. The skin mottles in part~; potato cities are scattered here and there over the planet. In some places papery flakes lift off, light as fog that lifts from early morning lakes.
Despite all tile eyes, we know that little light gets through. Whoever goes inside will find a weighty, meaty thing, both damp and cheerful, obsessive as a bear that keeps swimming across the same river.
When we open our mouth and bite into the raw flesh, both tongue and teeth pause astonished, as a bicyclist leans forward when the wind falls. The teeth say: “I could never have imagined it.” The tongue says: “I thought from the cover that there would be a lot of plot...”
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A Caterpillar My Daughter Brought to Me
(for Mary)
Robert Bly
from What Have I Ever Lost By Dying?
She comes and lays him carefully in my hand-- a caterpillar! A yellow stripe along his back, and how hairy! Hairs wave like triumphal plumes as he walks.
Just behind his head, a black something slants back, like a crime, a black memory leaning toward the past.
He is not as beautiful as my three-year-old daughter thinks: the hair falling over his mouth cannot completely hide his face-- two sloping foreheads with an eye between, and an obstinate jaw, made for eating through sleeping things without pain of conscience....
He rears on my hand, looking for another world.
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here is one of mine.
Hunted By That Stealthy Creature
Hummingbird wings and darkness beyond the hill, I only remember the garden-aroma of the dense valley. You see, this time needs an image to rest upon. Imagine something like the lines upon the freeway running into a reticent vista. High-speed closing in upon itself. I am going to make some minor corrections within the tilting apparatus of the recliner. Breath becoming more sluggish and ponderous, as I crave the dark side of the moon. I remember the laughter of its black mottled skin. This is a lovely leather chair. I remember the bristled color within its distant voice. Thick black that whispers with the song of shadowy tree-bark slick with the shine of wet leaves. I presume this dream is made for me—maybe only its hide. A tangible fade within the forest that is my tangled fantasy. I remember a glint-eyed yellow touch upon a glance too near. A jungle animal moving upon padded silence. A very nice thought, indeed. But it needs character. I still remember the scream of my palms along its unctuous surface. A sticky-stumble that grows glued within its motion. Soft substance all its own—right here. I remember the magic deep within its carried cares, taking my relaxed shape into its full collapsed embrace. Like a foggy mist. I only know mountains rise inside this obscure tropical reserve—like a faded vision. So quickly as I lean back into its death of depth. A snapped flag in a brief wind. Newspaper adrift within uplifted air. I crave the song of the crickets—now. I will have to share it with my ghost, for I am dying prey. A slight push shifting back even further. Reaching momentously into black holes! A stillness like a dragonfly upon the end of a lone stem. As I slump back, I will place these modifications within my sifted memory. Do you understand?. That way you will note the changes I make from the other horizon, from the other side. I have retrieved the summer rain breaking through the canopy. I crave the cumulus stretch of unbuckled white clouds. Please come to me now in the shredded silver downpour. Please begin to lift the bronze weight from my body. Let me begin my eternal float upon the slow river. Murmuring so deep, I crave the buttered wings upon moths. I am only a caterpillar-creeping nerve, a thin suspended limp thread, a lonely whisper in the breeze. I crave the night sky within its cupped dipper-moon skimming the cream of stars. I am thirsty for the inky milk-fuzz of the journey to begin. Correspond with me now where my bones melt into the plump flesh of the beast. I crave the felt-black cloth upon the panther's sleek back to come carry me away. Let us slink off together into the honey thick darkness. Lost in the fur that is the cat's purrrrr.
© R. H. Peat — 3/25/98 — 9:56 PM
Form/ Prose poem/
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