Flash and the prose poem
I remember the first time I read/heard a prose poem and was suddenly enveloped with a sense of oh, okay, this is a thing. At Calvin College’s Festival of Faith & Writing I sat in an auditorium and heard Stephen Dunn in discussion with Scott Cairns about “At The Smithville Methodist Church.” I imagined this poem as a piece of prose. I saw how easily it told the story of a moment. Immediately I thought two things: 1) why can’t I do this? And 2) would this be okay? The answer to both is of course. We are “allowed” to try anything. I was also at this point deep into Robert Bly and the form called ghazal—and how it meanders and leads us back, round and round to a certain place. I imagined a prose poem much like a ghazal—that unwittingly tricks us into a small epiphany, by mostly juxtapositioning 2 seemingly unrelated ideas, the contrast showing them up more clearly and recasting them in a different light, possibly a third way. I love these moments. That crack us ...