Edited and introduced by Jeremy Noel-Tod
* * *
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE PROSE POEM
From Baudelaire to Anne Carson
Contents
Introduction: The Expansion of the Prose Poem
THE PROSE POEM NOW
2017
The End of Days Golan Haji
2016
Merry Christmas from Hegel Anne Carson
Going Nowhere, Getting Somewhere Vahni Capildeo
Children are the Orgasm of the World Hera Lindsay Bird
Antico Adagio Peter Gizzi
2015
Knife Rod Mengham
A Woman Shopping Anne Boyer
Notes Towards a Race Riot Scene Bhanu Kapil
‘There were barnacles …’ Sarah Howe
from Letter Against the Firmament Sean Bonney
2014
from Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine
My Funeral Peter Manson
Flower, Quartet, Mask John Fuller
Reclaiming a Beloved City Clifton Gachagua
Imagined Sons 9: Greek Salad Carrie Etter
Place Name: Flog Man Kei Miller
Rape Joke Patricia Lockwood
2013
from Fairies Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
from Mystérieuse Éric Suchère
Some Fears Emily Berry
from Odes to TL61P Keston Sutherland
The Mysterious Arrival of an Unusual Letter Mark Strand
2012
Chicken Cathy Wagner
Birthweights Chris McCabe
Other Things Alvin Pang
from Adventures in Shangdu Cathy Park Hong
Cry Break Paige Ackerson-Kiely
Short Prayer to Sound Vivek Naryanan
Homeless Heart John Ashbery
2011
Black Sunlight D. S. Marriott
Nightmare Pink Elena Penga
Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre) Warsan Shire
O Elegant Giant Laura Kasischke
2010
Via Negativa Jane Monson
The Experience Simon Armitage
2009
Folkways Anthony Joseph
from Virtual Airport Matthew Welton
2008
Photographs, Undeveloped Ágnes Lehóczky
from Folklore Tim Atkins
Edith Sophie Robinson
The Wren Jen Hadfield
from Bird bird Jeff Hilson
The Hornsman Bill Griffiths
2007
from The Idylls Maurice Riordan
Blue Dog Luke Kennard
2006
If Sina Queyras
Fiddleheads Seamus Heaney
Captain of the Lighthouse Togara Muzanenhamo
from Angle of Yaw Ben Lerner
2004
The Phases of the Moon in London Amjad Nasser
Corruption Srikanth Reddy
2003
from echolocation Mani Rao
2002
from Chapter E Christian Bök
Denigration Harryette Mullen
2001
A Hardworking Peasant from the Idyllic Countryside Linh Dinh
Ted’s Head Rod Smith
Hosea: A Commentary Charles Boyle
The Skull Ring Chelsey Minnis
from The Weather Lisa Robertson
Ode Lisa Jarnot
2000
from Letters to Wendy’s Joe Wenderoth
The Most Sensual Room Masayo Koike
THE POSTMODERN PROSE POEM
1999
The Cough Barbara Guest
1998
Cinema-Going Ian Hamilton Finlay
from Joan of Arc Nathalie Quintane
Neglected Knives Kristín Ómarsdóttir
1997
Little Corona Don Paterson
Seoul’s Dinner Kim Hyesoon
Christopher Robin Czesław Miłosz
Return to Harmony 3 Agha Shahid Ali
Thought (1) Esther Jansma
1995
The Poet Eileen Myles
Prose Poem Ron Padgett
from Kuchh Vakya Udayan Vajpeyi
1994
The Ice House Ian McMillan
How Everything Has Turned Around Pam Brown
Hammer and Nail Naomi Shihab Nye
In the Off-Season Andrzej Sosnowski
1993
from Lawn of Excluded Middle Rosmarie Waldrop
The Word-Gulag Abdellatif Laâbi
1992
Dustie-Fute David Kinloch
dropped on the ground • the small coin Zhou Yaping
from Short Talks Anne Carson
In Love with Raymond Chandler Margaret Atwood
1991
Letters Clark Coolidge
What No One Could Have Told Them C. D. Wright
An Anointing Thylias Moss
Man with a Mower Jenny Bornholdt
1990
Deer Dancer Joy Harjo
from The Stumbling Block Its Index Brian Catling
Chekhov: A Sestina Mark Strand
1989
Inflation Carol Rumens
Quaker Oats Rita Dove
from The World Doesn’t End Charles Simic
Human Wishes Robert Hass
1988
Burnt Hair Meena Alexander
The Hanoi Market Yusef Komunyakaa
reading joanne burns
1987
The First Week of Mourning Shang Qin
The Dogs Yves Bonnefoy
from My Life Lyn Hejinian
1986
The Souvenir Dan Pagis
A Walk Through the Museum Ágnes Nemes Nagy
1985
Hearts Laurie Duggan
The Land of Counterpane Lee Harwood
1984
from C Peter Reading
Many Musicians Practice Their Mysteries While I Am Cooking Bink Noll
1983
Or Else Christopher Middleton
1982
abglanz / reflected gleam Wulf Kirsten
Honey James Wright
A Vernacular Tale Peter Didsbury
1981
The Colonel Carolyn Forché
1980
Meeting Ezra Pound Miroslav Holub
1979
Goodtime Jesus James Tate
Vanity, Wisconsin Maxine Chernoff
1976
Gay Full Story Bernadette Mayer
from Logbook Tom Raworth
The Colors of Night N. Scott Momaday
Portrait of A. E. (An Artful Fairy Tale) Elke Erb
Chile Ottó Orbán
1975
Scissors Shuntarō Tanikawa
A Caterpillar Robert Bly
Cloistered Seamus Heaney
1973
Ape Russel Edson
from The Wild Rose Ken Smith
1972
Chimes of Silence Wole Soyinka
1971
from Mercian Hymns Geoffrey Hill
from Shooting Script Adrienne Rich
1970
The Bookcase Tomas Tranströmer
1969
For John Clare John Ashbery
Milk James Schuyler
from it Inger Christensen
1968
A Case Gael Turnbull
1967
An Old-fashioned Traveller on the Trade Routes Rosemary Tonks
Strayed Crab Elizabeth Bishop
1966
The Flag Pablo Neruda
1962
Vocabulary Wisława Szymborska
1961
Catherine of Siena Elizabeth Jennings
from City Roy Fisher
1960
Borges and I Jorge Luis Borges
1959
from Letters to James Alexander Jack Spicer
1957
Hermes, Dog and Star Zbigniew Herbert
1956
Where the Tennis Court Was … Eugenio Montale
A Supermarket in California Allen Ginsberg
1955
Clock Pierre Reverdy
1954
Meditations in an Emergency Frank O’Hara
1953
Love Letter to King Tutankhamun Dulce María Loynaz
1951
The Clerk’s Vision Octavio Paz
Around the Star’s Throne Hans Arp
1949
The God of War Bertolt Brecht
1948
The Swift René Char
1946
Phrase Aimé Césaire
THE MODERN PROSE POEM
1943
Street Cries Luis Cernuda
1942
Rain Francis Ponge
The Pleasures of the Door Francis Ponge
Crate Francis Ponge
from Vigils John Lehmann
1940
Nijinksi George Seferis
1939
The Right Meaning César Vallejo
1937
Blue Notebook, No. 10 Daniil Kharms
Bourgeois News Charles Madge
1936
Lozanne David Gascoyne
1933
In Praise of Glass Gabriela Mistral
1932
from The Orators W. H. Auden
1930
My Occupations Henri Michaux
Force of Habit André Breton and Paul Eluard
1929
Sunflowers Are Already Black Gunpowder Anzai Fuye
1927
The Dog’s Retort Lu Xun
Snow Lu Xun
1924
Song Saint-John Perse
Hell is Graduated Max Jacob
1921
A Day Rabindranath Tagore
1920
from Kora in Hell: Improvisations William Carlos Williams
1919
Tired Fenton Johnson
1918
Pulmonary Tuberculosis Katherine Mansfield
1917
Hysteria T. S. Eliot
1916
Spring Day Amy Lowell
The Moon Juan Ramón Jiménez
1915
London Notes Jessie Dismoor
Street Circus Pierre Reverdy
1914
from Tender Buttons Gertrude Stein
Winter Night Georg Trakl
1913
from Scented Leaves – from a Chinese Jar Allen Upward
1911
Menagerie Velimir Khlebnikov
1900
Painting Paul Claudel
1899
Absinthia Taetra Ernest Dowson
1897
The Pipe Stéphane Mallarmé
1894
The Disciple Oscar Wilde
The Master Oscar Wilde
1887
from By the Waters of Babylon Emma Lazarus
1886
After the Flood Arthur Rimbaud
Sideshow Arthur Rimbaud
Genie Arthur Rimbaud
1883
The End of the World Ivan Turgenev
On the Sea Ivan Turgenev
1869
The Stranger Charles Baudelaire
Windows Charles Baudelaire
The Bad Glazier Charles Baudelaire
1842
The Madman Aloysius Bertrand
The Mason Aloysius Bertrand
Haarlem Aloysius Bertrand
Acknowledgements
Editor’s Acknowledgements
Index of Poets
Follow Penguin
PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
THE PENGUIN BOOK OF THE PROSE POEM
Jeremy Noel-Tod is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His literary criticism has been widely published and he has been the poetry critic for the Sunday Times since 2013. His books as an editor include the revised edition of the Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry (2013) and the Complete Poems of R. F. Langley (Carcanet, 2015).
Introduction: The Expansion of the Prose Poem
I
What is poetry and if you know what poetry is what is prose – Gertrude Stein1
How do you define a prose poem? I have often been asked this question since I began to put together what follows: two hundred poems from around the world which have been chosen to represent the exciting, surprising, and memorable possibilities of a form that has sometimes been regarded with suspicion but is now suddenly everywhere. Collections of prose poems – such as Claudia Rankine’s Citizen (2014) – win major prizes, and anyone who picks up a poetry magazine will almost certainly spot one. This book includes a range of names that might be expected to feature in any representative anthology of modern poetry in English: John Ashbery, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Rita Dove, T. S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Seamus Heaney, Adrienne Rich. But it also celebrates neglected poets who have written with brilliance in a form habitually overlooked by anthologists. Together, they comprise an alternative history of modern poetry and an experimental tradition that is shaping its future.
How, then, to define the prose poem? After reading so many, I can only offer the simplest common denominator: a prose poem is a poem without line breaks. Beyond that, both its manner and its matter resist generalization. The prose poem has been called a ‘genre with an oxymoron for name’ (Michael Riffaterre), yet it may be doubted whether it is in fact a genre at all; another critic has positioned it on ‘the boundaries of genre’, between the many kinds of other writing it may mercurially resemble.2 Surveying the 175 years of poetry represented here, what emerges for me is the prose poem’s wayward relationship to its own form – and it is this, I believe, that makes it the defining poetic invention of modernity. In an age of mass literacy, our daily lives are enmeshed in networks of sentences and paragraphs as extensive as any urban grid. The prose poem drives the reading mind beyond the city limits.
Poets, of course, have long known that the border between verse and prose is porous. Is the prose soliloquy in which Hamlet exclaims ‘What a piece of work is man …’ really any less a piece of Shakespearean poetry than the blank verse of ‘To be or not to be …’? Sir Philip Sidney informed Renaissance readers that although ‘the inside and strength’ of Plato’s dialogues was philosophy, ‘the skin, as it were, and beauty depended most of poetry’; in the Romantic era, Percy Bysshe Shelley contended that ‘the distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error’; and the French Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé believed that ‘there is no such thing as prose: there is the alphabet, and then there are verses’.3 Put letters together to make words, that is, and you are already working with the basic units of poetic rhythm.
As the critic D. W. Harding noted in his study of rhythm in literature, ‘all the prose we ever read is chopped up into lines; we rightly pay no attention to them’.4 This is because page margins do not mark metre as line breaks do. Yet it is not uncommon for verse-like currents to eddy beneath the placid surface of a paragraph. ‘Prose’, wrote Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of 1755, is ‘language not restrained to harmonick sounds or set number of syllables, discourse not metrical’. But Johnson’s own eloquence as an essayist, observed William Hazlitt – who thought it a fault – was often ‘a species of rhyming in prose [in which] each sentence, revolving round its centre of gravity, is contained with itself like a couplet, and each paragraph forms itself into a stanza’.5 There is one kind of prose poem that employs such cadences to raise its voice very close to verse, from Oscar Wilde’s echoing of the parallelism of the King James Bible (sometimes known as ‘thought-rhyme’) in his homoerotic parables of desire ‘The Disciple’ (here) and ‘The Master’ (here) to Allen Ginsberg’s companionable shado
wing of Walt Whitman’s long verse line in the paragraph-stanzas of ‘A Supermarket in California’ (here). But our habitual expectation when we see a passage of prose is that it will explain, not sing. The information-giving sentence – logical, functional, linear – is the conveyor belt that carries the business of our lives. The rhythm of prose, believed the Russian literary theorist Viktor Shklovsky, contributes to the ‘automatizing’ of perception, which the images and rhythms of poetry work to disrupt – a theory that his friend the poet Velimir Khlebnikov illustrates in ‘Menagerie’ (here), with its startling pen-portraits of the animals of Moscow zoo, often dashed off in a single sentence.6 Poetry, we might say, bends the bars of the prose cage.
As Hermine Riffaterre has observed, the ‘formal framework’ of the individual prose poem is ‘ad hoc’, and often makes its home among other forms and genres.7 These may be recognizably literary, such as the anecdote, the aphorism, the sketch, the dialogue, the essay, the fairy tale, the fragment, the joke, the myth, or the short story.8 But prose poets are also attracted to the poetic possibilities of other kinds of writing, the official purpose of which is to record and inform: for instance, the cut-up journalism of Charles Madge’s ‘Bourgeois News’ (here); the graffitied game rules of Bernadette Mayer’s ‘Gay Full Story’ (‘Change one letter in each essential vivacity missing word to spell a times taking place defunct bird’s name’, here); or the ‘intense yet eccentric research in the rhetorical structure of English meteorological description’ that Lisa Robertson undertook for her book The Weather (here) – beginning with the famously incantatory rhythms of the BBC radio shipping forecast.9 The prose of information, we begin to realize, comes in many forms, and all have the potential for poetry to be injected, like coloured ink, into their ostensibly transparent sentences.
With the exception, however, of the neatly ‘trimmed’ abattoir notice presented as a found poem by Laurie Duggan’s ‘Hearts’ (here), this anthology’s definition of prose poetry does not extend to the wholesale reframing of prose as poetry by certain recent conceptual poets.10 Instead, it attempts to map a tradition of lyric writing in prose form, which begins in the latter half of the nineteenth century with the French poet Charles Baudelaire and a posthumous volume known by two titles: Le Spleen de Paris or Petits Poèmes en Prose (1869). By the end of the century, Baudelaire’s innovation had exerted a wide-reaching influence: on the prose reveries of later Symbolists such as Arthur Rimbaud and Mallarmé; on the fin-de-siècle decadence, across the English Channel, of Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson; on Poems in Prose (1883), the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s last book, written while living in Paris; and, in America, on Emma Lazarus’s biblical evocations of the journeying of Jewish refugees, ‘By the Waters of Babylon’ (1887), which features the Baudelairean subtitle ‘Little Poems in Prose’ (here). A generation later, the international literary revolution known as modernism saw prose and verse mingling in little magazines unconcerned with dividing their table of contents strictly into one or the other. In France, the dream-like strangeness of the Symbolists was redoubled under the influence of Surrealism by young prose poets such as Pierre Reverdy (‘Street Circus’, here) and Max Jacob (‘Hell is Graduated’, here); in America, Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons, here) and William Carlos Williams (Kora in Hell, here) made poetry from the same kind of stop-start paragraph employed to carry the stream-of-consciousness monologue in modernist fiction; and in China – which already had an ancient tradition of poetic rhyme-prose, known as fu – the term ‘prose poem’ (sanwen shi) was first used in 1918 by Liu Bannong, who translated poems by Turgenev. (A decade later, Lu Xun’s great collection Wild Grass (here) evinced the continuing influence of Baudelaire.)11
The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem Page 1