[Hot Topic]: The wonderful art of prose and language poetry!

[Zeo]

We're all familiar with traditional forms of poetry. Often, when people think of poetry, they think:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
My car is green
and faster than you

Or something along those lines. (Lines, stanzas, all that.) However, I'd like to talk about two different poetic styles that break the rules of "tradition." One skirts the line between prose and poetry (aptly named "prose poetry") and the other is a style that dominates meaning in a whole new way--language poetry. Both are less frequently known or talked about when it comes to poetry, and I'd like to introduce you to them.

Please ask if you have any further questions, or would like information about particular poets who write in these styles!  

[Zeo]

Prose poetry

Prose poetry is, as I stated, a form that skirts the line between prose and poetry. In a sense it is poetic prose, wherein it employs the use of poetic devices and imagery to do much the same thing a poem does: communicate a human idea, experience, emotion, or meaning. It isn't prose in the sense that the language used is similar to language you would find in a traditional poem, and it isn't a traditional poem in the sense that it has a form much like prose.

The form originated in response to the division at the time between prose and poetry. As an experimental style (started in the same way lots of great styles are started: in rebellion to already existing styles), it caught on in the poetic world. Although it is lesser known, it is a very powerful and lovely poetic form. For those who are interested in non traditional styles or just trying something new, prose poetry is a beautiful form to consider.
To demonstrate both the form and the power of meaning, I'll give an example from poets.org:

Charles Baudelaire

"Be Drunk"

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

As you can see, although the form is in prose, the language is very poetic. It throws the conventional division of prose and poetry away and gives us another form of artistic communication. (Not to mention, they're extremely fun to write.) And that, my friends, is the basic prose poem.
 

[Zeo]

Language poetry

Poets.org defines language poetry in this way:

poets.org

Language poetry’s purpose was to place complete emphasis on the language of the poem and to create a new way for the reader to interact with the work. Key aspects of language poetry include the idea that language dictates meaning rather than the other way around. Language poetry also seeks to involve the reader in the text, placing importance on reader participation in the construction of meaning. By breaking up poetic language, the poet is requiring the reader to find a new way to approach the text.

Lyn Hejinian (a well known language poet) also has this to say:

Lyn Hejinian

Language is nothing but meanings, and meanings are nothing but a flow of contexts. Such contexts rarely coalesce into images, rarely come to terms. They are transitions, transmutations, the endless radiating of denotation into relation.

Although it is difficult to define exactly, these show the basic principle. Essentially, when we sit down to write a poem, our intention is to convey a meaning, and the language we use is our tool for doing that. Language poetry, however, is about the art of the words: conveying meaning through the language itself. One of the wonderful things about this form is that unlike other forms of poetry, you are free to use language in a whole new way.

The best way to think of this as if it were a painting. When we want to communicate, say, a person feeling sad, we might sit down and paint a person staring forlornly out the window. (A clear meaning, with the image as a tool to convey that.) But language poetry is like an abstract painting, in the sense that the meaning is the interaction you have with the image itself, rather than the "meaning" the artist was clearly intending to convey. It's a whole different approach to poetry, with often very interesting results.