This Line Is Not For Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry, edited by Jane Monson, pub. Cinnamon Press 2011, price £8.99, ISBN 978-1-907090-51-6
At long last! What a delight to see an anthology of British prose poetry. As the editor, Jane Monson, points out in her spirited introduction, the prose poem as a form has been ‘accepted for decades in France and America’ but ‘has until very recently been largely neglected in the UK (and this in spite of the fact that its practitioners have included: Oscar Wilde, S T Coleridge, T S Eliot, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf…)’. She asks: ‘Why has it been the case that British editors, writers, publishers, teachers and general readers still seem to know so little about the prose poem, or refuse to engage with it?’
The seeming absence of a definitive terminology for the form may suggest that the genre is speculative and in its infancy, but it can in fact be traced back to the work of nineteenth century French poets. To be sure, there has been a greater uptake of the form in the USA – but, even there, opposition has been forthcoming, ironically chronicled by Louis Jenkins, a well-known exponent of the form, in a piece called ‘The Prose Poem’ which begins:
The prose poem is not a real poem, of course. One of the major differences is that the prose poet is simply too lazy or too stupid to break the poem into lines. But all writing, even the prose poem, involves a certain amount of skill…(1)
Some people admit to being puzzled by prose poems and ask: Are they poems in prose or a small slice of poetic prose? Aren’t they sometimes the same as flash fiction? Is a blocked shape and justified right-hand margin compulsory? Can a prose poem be just like a traditional poem, but with wrap-around text formatting? And then there’s that whole question of a possible interface with certain Japanese forms, like the haibun… As Jane Monson says: ‘a precise definition has been elusive at best…’ Interviewed at Aldeburgh in 2007, Louis Jenkins stated that he did not have any answers for people in search of ‘rules’ about the prose poem, including the frequently occurring question of right-justified margins; he said he just does it that way because that is how he likes it. So it appears that the prose poem is still evolving and can evoke a strong reaction, for or against; so what exactly is the attraction for those of us who instinctively love the form? Does the expansiveness of a prose poem provide an approach that is different to the sharp focus of a traditional poem? I think Louis Jenkins came somewhere close to answering these questions in the same interview, when he added that it was ‘the freedom of the prose poem’ which first attracted him, ‘its flexibility which allows language that is lyrical to co-exist with that which is prosaic’.
Although prose poems in the past have displayed a range of functions, e.g. to convey a philosophical discourse, a tendency existed to expect that the form may perhaps play host to a narrative of some kind: what Nikki Santilli, in the foreword, refers to as ‘mainstream microfictional prose poems’. This anthology contains many fine and varied examples of such work, but also sets out to explore the form further – or wider – by ‘showcasing a variety of styles, tones and structures’, including prose poems which experiment with the form, sometimes by deploying the techniques of traditional poetry, e.g. use of white space or indented lines; reference to the haibun by ending with a brief verse form; or by engaging with metaphysical subject matter more traditionally addressed in lyric poetry, but without ‘the sharp music of short lines’(2). But even a long-line poem directs the reader via the poet’s selection of line endings and the emphasis that this implies, so perhaps what unifies the prose poem – in all its many possible formats – is that it leaves more room for the reader to operate within the text. As in real life, they sift the details of a subject or event and extrapolate beyond the text in a way that is perhaps more tentative and naturalistic, less obviously directed by the writer.
Nikki Santilli says that she hopes the book ‘will operate above ground as an introduction to the genre…’ I think the anthology has definitely succeeded in this aim, showcasing a wide range of poets and styles, with subjects ranging from social satire to the surreal. Also, it has to be said that, working in a minority literary form on a small island with an illustrious poetic tradition, it is all too easy to have been deemed to have broken the rules and, in some quarters, the prose poem has been regarded as an upstart form – or no form at all; so it is wonderful to see poets of the stature of Georg Szirtes and Pascale Petit represented in this volume, emphasising the point that the prose poem is most certainly not just a cop-out for those unable to write a traditional poem.
This collection is worth buying just to revel in the inspirational range of prose poem styles; also for the dazzling, metaphysical mastery of Georg Szirtes; and the sheer heart-rending humanity of ‘Unavailable’ by Sylvia Fairclough, which was able to achieve so much in so few words, using prose poetry to echo the non-fiction formats of a juggernaut bureaucracy:
Unavailable
Someone had folded her clothes and put them on the bed, stripped
now to a thick plastic sheet. On top of her nightie was a menu card;
under ‘special requests’ she had scratched rarsbries.
In smudged red ink, someone had stamped: UNAVAILABLE.
1. From The Winter Road by Louis Jenkins, pub. Holy Cow! Press, Minnesota, USA, 2000. 2. The Making of a Poem, ed. Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, pub. Norton, USA, 2000 (page 140).
….Review-essay by Beverly Ellis