It can be assumed that the prose poem as a genre undermines the boundary between prose and poetry. Following this proposition, it may seem clear that the appearance of the prose poem was equal to questioning the distinction between prose and poem; however, this is not the case. Margueritte S. Murphy highlights the fact that definitions of prose and poetry were undermined long before the French prose poem came into existence. Murphy gives the example of Wordsworth, who opposes the traditional distinction between the language of poetry and prose (9). Eighty years after Wordsworth’s famous “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”, Walter Pater states,
I propose here to point out certain qualities of all literature as fine art, which, if they apply to the literature of fact, apply still more to the literature of imaginative sense of fact, while they apply indifferently to verse and prose, so far as either is really imaginative. (qtd. in Murphy 9–10)
Thus, Pater praises “imaginative prose” (ibid.) and also points out different modes of expression in cases of prose and poetry. At the same time, he claims that prose should be analyzed according to “poetic” norms because prose as well as poetry belong to the fine arts (10).
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When analyzing the prose poem as a genre, it appears vital to take its constructedness into consideration. Delville puts forward Derrida’s theories as applicable when analyzing the prose poem as a genre and his “principle of contamination” (12). The prose poem “gestures to its own constructedness and, more broadly, to what poststructuralism generally diagnoses as the arbitrariness and undecidability of boundaries”. Joyce’s “Giacomo”, which was published after his death, seems to encapsulate the main preoccupation of the twentieth century that was the conflict between the lyric and narrative continuity. The work of Joyce escapes both linear narration and poetic closure, which results in the presentation of “the movement of desire itself” (Delville 13). Delville marks the connection between Baudelaire’s and Joyce’s works. Both of these authors wanted to reflect “the lyrical impulses of the soul” (19) and portray the modern and urban environments. Both Joyce’s and Baudelaire’s characters share the commonplace as inspiration. There is also a significant correspondence between the works of Joyce and the prose poem. Delville argues that Joyce’s epiphanies which were later developed into extended works of fiction can also be called prose poems despite the fact that Joyce himself rejected such categorization: he rejected labels as such.
Delville also mentions the potential of the prose poem as a subversive genre. He observes, “to many readers and critics, the prose poem is a piece of prose that wants to be a poem and derives at least part of its meaning from its ability to defeat our generic expectations” (ix). Thus, it can be concluded that the reader’s expectations play a vital role in the conceptual significance of the prose poem. It appears that the reader’s expectations are erroneous, but in fact, this error may lead to the correct interpretative path. Delville admits that the power of prose poetry is its reclaiming functions and modes which are normally associated with prose, and it is also crucial to disregard traditional generic taxonomies and perceive this genre as a dialogue between the aesthetic and the nonaesthetic (e.g. linguistic) grounds of literature in general (ibid.).
The innovative aspect of the prose poem has been highlighted by various critics. Michael Riffaterre discusses its reference to the intertext as an “invariant constitutive feature of the genre. Monroe and Murphy connect the prose poem to Bakhtin’s theories and this genre is defined as “dialogical” and “heteroglot” (Delville 8). Delville concludes,
[b];oth studies describe the genre as the locus of convergence or conflict of various discourses, which in turn reflect a variety of extradiscursive realities including a number of specific social, political and ideological agendas. Ultimately they suggest that the prose poem exists mainly by reference to other genres, which it tends to include, exclude, subscribe to or subvert. To some extent, this emphasis on the inherently ←18 | 19→intertextual and heteroglot dynamics of the prose poem is indispendable in the context of a form whose very name suggests its ambivalent status as a genre writing across other genres—a self-consciously deviant form, the aesthetic orientation and subversive potential of which are necessary founded on a number of discursive and typographical violations. (8–9)
One of Delville’s hypotheses is that analyzing the prose poem as a genre allows us to make statements about genres in general: there is no “pure” genre and each generic category is linked to other genres/another genre which it appears to eliminate (9). This statement was also made by Tzvetan Todorov who claimed that “even a ‘new’ genre automatically exists by reference to one or several previously existing ones” (qtd. in Delville 10).
It is assumed that the hybridity of the prose poem is the reason for its popularity. “Arbitrariness and instability of generic boundaries” of a prose poem are also features of postmodern aesthetics. Hence, Delville mentions Barthes, Baudrillard and Derrida when discussing “centaurial neologisms” (the “poetic novel” or the “lyric short story”). He enumerates G. Stein, S. Anderson and K. Patchen as the representatives of “hybrid forms” (x) who made such forms fashionable.
Delville underlines the prose poem’s “discursive and formal hybridity” as the feature referring us back to the boundaries and rules governing genres. He argues, “many writers have turned to the prose poem because of its ability to reflect upon the methods, aspirations, and internal contradictions of poetry and thereby invite us to ask questions that address the problem of dominance and subversion, tradition and innovation”. Later he concludes, “[what] is at stake here is the extent to which poetry, like any other discourse or cultural practice, can have claims to larger concerns in the world outside text”.
1.2 The Prose Poem and the British Tradition
The prose poem is a rather rare phenomenon in English before the 1960s (Murphy 12). The paucity of prose poems in English, compared to their French counterparts, can be accounted for by differences in versification codes, these being very strict in French, far more so than in English. S. Monte in his book Invisible Fences: Prose Poetry as a Genre in French and American Literature (2000) notes that the origin of the term “prose poem” dates back to the beginning of the eighteenth century (16). He quotes Cervantes, who famously admitted “the epic may be written in prose as well as verse”. Monte also suspects the existence of prose poem in critical works such as Longinus’s “On the Sublime” since this essay underlines the importance of the impact of literature on the reader and ←19 | 20→diminishes the significance of the form. Analyzing the history of Literature, Monte arrives at the conclusion that even the selected works of Aristotle may be read as prose poems. Monte chooses the abovementioned works to highlight the arbitrariness of the division into poetry and prose. However, his later musings are focused on the modern version of prose poems. Based on an analysis of numerous publications, Monte concludes that “it is a form that somehow captures, or attempts to capture, a particularly modern experience”. He also wonders about the connections between historical development and the appearance of the prose poem, concluding that the link between the two is not particularly strong, and historical events were leaning towards the rise of the novel rather than prose poetry. In this sense, it seems that the key reason for emergence of the prose poem lies in bourgeois aesthetics which this genre came up against (Monte 16–17). Monte also quotes Wordsworth, who assumes that “there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition” (17).
Santilli notes that O’Beebee defined the prose poem as a “lack”. This lack is also reflected in the absence of the prose poem in English literature which, according to Keene, is a sign of ignorance towards modernist poetics (qtd. in Santilli 15). Santilli’s analysis of English texts is romantically based and she herself admits that she omitted the genre’s connection to modernist tradition, pointing out that “the English prose poem will always appear somewhat odd,