About workshops

Workshops on Neopoet are groups that meet for a certain period of time to focus on a certain aspect of poetry. Each workshop participant is asked to critique all the other poems submitted into a workshop. A workshop leader helps coordinate -- they set the agenda, give participants feedback on whether their submissions and critique are at they level expected of them, and after the workshop is over, give feedback to participants. 

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Prose as poetry: the prose-poem

Status: 
Program description/goal: 

Description: To review the history and philosophy of "prose-poems" related to poetry. After sharing examples of critical opinions and literary criticism, we will share our favorites. In the last part of the workshop we will write a poem and a prose poem with the same basic content to see the value of each.

Leader:
Moderator(s): Eumolpus

Objectives: Personally, I have a prejudice against prose-poetry which I would like to get over, and hope this sharing will lead me on my way. My objective is to see to what extent prose can achieve what poetry cannot, and why we call prose like compositions are put in the bubble of "poetry" and is published along side poems everywhere, including Neopoet. The idea is for each participant to establish their own definition and boundaries, and back them up.

Level of expertise: Open to those who have put in a good part of the 10,000 hour mark. (referring to the bestseller book that to do anything well you need to put in 10,000 hours). Poets that have read at last 50 books of poetry in their life, and read literary essays about the craft.

Subject matter: Prose as poetry- History, philosophy. and the experience of reading and writing
"prose-poems". To establish some criteria.

Length: 
35 days
Number of participants (limit): 
12 people
Skill level: 
Date: 
Wednesday, December 4, 2019 to Saturday, November 21, 2020
Short description: 
Review the history and relevance of the "prose-poem", write a poem and prose-poem and discuss different effect and goals. For each to establish a personal criteria.

Comments

I really hate Prose Poetry it mostly seems to me to be poor Flash Fiction.

As I said neither do I. But since virtually every poet since Baudelaire has tried their hand at, and the literary journals keep publishing them, I want to see if I can transcend it and see what all the shouting is about. That’s the challenge. We need to challenge ourselves and expand our appreciation, or have a clear fix on our aesthetics.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Yes we have to be open and I have seen prose poetry that I love even if half of me me baulks at calling it poetry. lol Its always good to explore something new.

So are you in?

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

What an odd workshop. I myself am fairly odd so I'll give it a shot if you'll have me....stan

Thanks for joining and being open to it. This will be challenging because I don’t really get it yet and I want to have some appreciation of it. Like it out not it’s everywhere today

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Please.
Haven't read that number of books to be honest, would that really hinder my participation?

❤❤❤❤❤❤

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
........Robert Frost☺

Please follow me on Instagram
https://instagram.com/poetry.jo?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

Over all the years you have been reading poetry don’t you think you’ve read 50 books of it, or the equivalent of 1 book a year! Of course you can join in!
By defining what prose poetry is we will discover and help define what poetry is to each of us.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Just being around this site for a year is the equivalent of 10 or 20 collections. You know how to read poetry. But you have also read a lot because you are a poet seeing poetry around you. Online or on the streets. The workshop hopefully will help all of us answer for ourselves what poetry is and how it’s different to prose. It will also hopefully open up another avenue of expression.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

a USA poet read my works on yahoo and advised
You write lovely
write a few lines as in prose ---to convey something--- an idea maybe
Then translate it to simpler poetry
like verses freestyle mainly
more concisely
AND
A poet you will be
I followed him totally
Am I not a prosaic poet
Eumol
Do tell me

As we will explore what “concise prose” is. To me that’s exactly what a prose poem may be, not poetry
But we will all consider these things. That is the purpose of this workshop

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

....when the lights go out and the world appears dark then just remember that someone out there cares for you and lights the lamps of your mind within.....PROSE

Modified poem or poetry

.....when all lights extinguish
and the world appears darkened
then know and just remember
that someone out there
straying at the zenith
or in the distant horizon
cares for you

then lights the lamps of your mind
within you sparkle like a flickering candle
the world has a new vision
a fresh light has now been seen
O Poet is it ye

Proposal: 2 weeks about what prose poetry is, goals of prose poems.
2 weeks reviewing famous prose poems (Baudelaire, Borghes).
2 weeks writing a prose poem and matching poem (with prompts)

No one can say what a prose poem is. People debate who invented the exact term, but most say it was Baudelaire. He was the first notable poet to write in, as he put it, “a poetic prose (prose poetique)”. His book in 1869 “Paris Spleen” was short paragraphs in prose of some event or person told, like a story, but with elevated imagery and sound of words. So it didn’t quite sound like the normal language of prose. We shall look at one in the next chapter of this discussion.

Despite the obvious difficulty of defining what language and poetry is, there are some boundaries. No one will say it the same way, nor two dictionaries, but most will agree in some of these about what poetry is:
• Shape, and the idea of the “poetic line”
• Poetry relies on repetition. This was the most relevant aspect suggested by Annie Finch in “A Poet’s Craft” a must read for poets
• Poetry has musical quality - is not common speech. Traditionally rhyme and meter, but free or blank verse relies on cadence and rhythm.
• Some would say rules of composition (ballad, ode, sonnet etc)
• Use of metaphor and imagery in “charged language” .
• “the arrangement and relationship of basic elements in a work of art, through which produces a coherent whole.” (Robert Hass, “Little Book on Form”)
Paul Valery said that prose has direction, it is a story that goes from A to B. Poetry, in contrast dances with itself. I have thought much on that quote I read years ago, never forgot it. But poems certainly can tell stories, from Homer to Beowulf, the earliest poetry. I think that statement was that poetry was breaking through the need to tell a story, and exist in imagination of sound and meditation. This defines modern poetry, we don’t often “tell stories” in our poetry. We dance around a poetic idea, find meaning in the images that soar somewhere in our brains.
What if we took a sculpture and painted it meticulously. Would it be, “painture” or “sculping”? What would they gain and loose? The sculpture would loose the force of carved stone on the viewer, the painting the ability to admire the composition. But what would be gained? A meaning in a third way.

I have big prejudices about the prose poem. I find them hard to read, hard to digest, and just hard without take-away. But there is something there- every poetry anthology and every major poet has tried their hands at this form. It’s everywhere. There must be something there I’m missing. So that’s what I would like to find in the prose-poem. The third way.

So let’s begin by asking ourselves what we think a prose poem is. This is hard because we have to think what poetry is, and then relate it to prose. But let’s all try. It’s so important to be honest with yourself to say what poetry is TO YOU, and live by your rules. Then say what a prose poem is to you, and what you hope to get reading it. Discussion for 2 weeks.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Poetry has been always related to verses, line breaks, rhymes, and rhythm. Some times there's a story to tell or a message to deliver. Poetry prose however is more subtle I think. No breakes, no rhymes are necessary.
From what I have read recently, I understand that prose poetry is very much like a short short paragraph with a subtle story, with details. Those details meet the images that usually enrich the piece of poetry to immerse the reader.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
........Robert Frost☺

Please follow me on Instagram
https://instagram.com/poetry.jo?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

if its just you and I,or a few more, no difference in this workshop to me. we will discover together.

I suppose the most difficult issue here is to question whether there is enough connection to them both as to call "prose poetry" a type of poetry. That means being treated as poems, put in poetry anthologies as poems, put in collections with poems, and calling it poetry. To me it is prose written with an abundance of poetic devises- sound like alliteration, image, metaphor, but without music or cadence. It is not read aloud as a poem, or read aloud it sounds like prose.
The biggest problem I have is for most prose poems they are hard to read, to keep your place. A poem using stanzas and lines creates space between the flow of images and action, gives the reader a chance to digest a phrase and let his eyes easily go back to that place when reading. That is the concentration of language attributed to poetry. Many prose poetry poems today are now experimenting with using "/" OR ">" to break up the sentences.
Don't you find reading something/ that looks like this/ easy to read and keep/ your concentration?
Or worse> something that looks like this> drives me crazy.

But that's not it. Most prose poems lately are streams of consciousness, like its very easy to just ramble on in your head and write down what goes left right and center in the same sentence. That type of writing is a tool to the poet to express freely the words and images, but at what point does it become ART?

Most important, we leave a good poem with the sound echoing in our minds, the music of certain lines repeat over and over the mind. There is a take away from the poem, a lingering resonance from the power of the cadence of words that form an image that sticks.

What I think I am looking for in prose poetry is firstly presenting it is a way that can be read. Some would argue "art" isn't supposed to be "easy" . Well, it's not supposed to be hard either, at least just to read it. The second is for focus. The idea of a prose poem should be like a sonnet- focused on a particular event or short tale with a wallop at the end that expands with meaning and feeling in the mind. It should be short. One or two paragraphs. People are writing pages and calling it a prose poem as opposed to a short story or creative prose or a "poetic- prose ". Take Melville and Moby Dick- for example, the whole of the book is written with metaphors, symbols, charged words and amazing language. It is a novel, not a prose-poetry novel.There are many like him.
These are rules I think I am establishing for myself to accept prose poetry and sell it as literature.
It should not be put into the poetry universe like lyrics, lullabies, greeting cards, psalms, performance rap, or fortune cookies. It is prose first, and should be put there. In other words, i want someone to tell me why it is considered a poetic form at all.

That's where I want to start. Somebody tell me why prose-poems are called poems.

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

I read so many of the so called prose poetry paragraphs. To tell the truth I would never classify them as poetry.
I wish more participation would bring forth more enlightening ideas.

❤❤❤❤❤❤

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
........Robert Frost☺

Please follow me on Instagram
https://instagram.com/poetry.jo?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

which might just be the root of this shop is trying to determine the difference between prose poetry and poetic prose. Ya'll have any ideas on this?

For me that's the point. There is no difference ANYMORE as far as I can tell. In the beginning of the idea of a "prose-poem" the there were a few rules or boundaries. It would be short, a paragraph or two. It would resemble a sonnet in that it would end with a bang- a metaphor, or a poetic reach of meaning. It shares with poetry metaphor, abstract imagery, and with the intellectual aspects of poetry, but does not use meter or rhyme. It is spoken as ordinary speech is spoken with no reference iambic or trochee or any other metrical aspect of poetry.
So for me, if it is just prose written "poetically" as some writers do, like Melville for example, its poetic prose. If it is a short paragraph or two with poetic idea done in prose with every aspects of poetry without considering the sound, it can be called a prose-poem. IT IS A TYPE OF PROSE, not a type of poetry. Poetry is about sound. This view is shared by TS Eliot and many others.
Referring back the Valery, if it is "poetic prose", it is simply a very shorty story or that like prose goes from point A to B, it is a work of prose . If it dances around itself, as a poetic idea, as is written in prose, it may be called then a prose-poem.
All good. For me, don't call it a type of poetry, call it a type of prose. Don't publish it poetry anthologies as poetry. Publish it as a type of prose. Let's stop accepting everything that wants to call itself poetry is therefore poetry. That's like music: some would say the sounds of the traffic are type of music. But if music is not "organized sounds", then there is no meaning to the word. Without meter, cadence, what can be the meaning of the word "poetry"?

your thoughts?

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Sorry been bogged down and hospitalised will catch up over the weekend if thats ok.

always the poet. A great metaphor.
glad you're with us.
(I mean in this workshop!!!)
whatever ills you, hope you get better. Health first!
Mark

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

One is length. Although there are epic poems most modern poetry is fairly short ( Wesley Snow will be an exception. ) The second is the sound. There can be flowery prose such as in the Hobbit stories but there comes s point when the use of poetic devices becomes obvious. when that line is crossed it becomes poetry not prose

Go to the Edit tab, find the Participants list and add their name, including your own, it will auto-complete including their member number, which is a handy spell check. Until you do this participants will be unable to submit works to the workshop. Works should definitely not be posted on this thread as it rapidly becomes unwieldy and confusing.

Please trust the process, it has been built and refined over 12 years.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

Glory is of the sun and down the shafts of his splendid pinions run tiny rivers of peace.
Most of the time, the tiger pads and slouches in a burning peace and the small hawk high up turns the slow pivot of peace.
Peace comes from behind the sun, with the peregrine falcon, and the owl, yet all of these drink blood.

The above is obviously prose.....or is it?

Glory

Glory is of the sun , too, and the sun of suns,
and down the shafts of his splendid pinions
run tiny rivers of peace.

Most of the time, the tiger pads and slouches in a burning
peace.
And the small hawk high up turns round on the slow pivot
peace.
Peace comes from behind the sun, with the peregrine falcon,
and the owl.
Yet all of these drink blood
......D. H. Lawrence

The difference? aside from the structure there is none that I can see.

You have a go, it seems I'm not getting through.

But you more than anyone know that we never post works or examples on the Workshop thread, it rapidly becomes unwieldy and confusing as your last imagery shop did.

Members need to be added as workshop participants and then works or examples can be posted as links to the workshop.

This keeps it a lean, clean, workshopping machine, focussed and clear.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

Stan I would see both those as having a poetry structure the first is written in sentences but not written continuously as prose would be so it feels like poetic structure.
What is called a prose poem is more densely packed and written with less white space I think.

I enter the thread of the workshop that now exists, click edit, scroll down to participants list, and try to enter the names (mine, Rula, Samary, Scribbner, Loveldly) but can only enter one name.
I've tried every trick I know to enter more than one name. I give up. I'm driving you crazy, it ain't worth it. You don't need it, and I don't need the insults.
Having been part of workshops in the past, I do not see how the flow of information above is any different from them. I don't know what I'm missing.
Don't try to explain, it will just frustrate you more. as they say in NY, lets forggetaboutit..ok?

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

What was so hard?
You can now run the workshop.
I'll add anyone else who asks to join too but ask that you do adhere to the Workshop format. Poems and examples are not posted on this thread but linked to this workshop.
It works.

If you really want to 'forggetaboutit' just click the edit tab and change to 'Concluded'
As you say, you don't need the insults and I can't figure out why you and you alone are the only person who doesn't understand how they work.

cheers,
Jess
A new workshop on the most important element of poetry-
'Rhythm and Meter in Poetry'
https://www.neopoet.com/workshop/rhythm-and-meter-poetry

So we have to link things to the workshop not post directly on the thread?
Glad its all easy for you ... many of us are computer numpties .. could you explain ...

Have to do a new edit for each name

Thank you scribbler , that is the type of information I would need to do things on this site, to do a new edit for each participant is not intuitive to me. I think the best is drop this small workshop.

What I learned from the research I did was ,in my opinion ,“prose-poetry” is poorly named. It should be “prose vignettes”. It is not poetry and should not be published alongside poetry as poetry.
That’s my final takeaway. For me, case closed. Thanks for your interest and participation!
I will cancel the workshop tomorrow

Eumolpus
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance
ee cummings

author comment

Any shop that gets even a few people to thinking is a success

Isn't that getting to be the problem with writing in general... people write in different ways and label it inappropriately and those labels get adopted by people. Poetry is so broad and we have the concept that if I write it and call it poetry it is.
Much of the prose poetry I have seen is more akin to flash fiction than poetry but there is the odd piece where musical devices, figurative language and word choice do align the piece towards being a piece of poetry.
I was reading a piece the other day where the poet was explaining why he had written in prose style and why it was the only way to have written it. Will try to find it and share the reference. My brain has forgotten where I read it ! lol

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