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The Prose Poem (Web Issue IV)
Edited by Peter Johnson
Reviewed by Tom Hartman

	The Prose Poem (Web Issue IV) Edited by Peter Johnson pjohnson@sequent1.providence.edu

In A Tradition of Subversion, perhaps the only book-length discussion of the prose poem in English, Margueritte S. Murphy argues that the prose poem "is an inherently subversive genre." This necessity to subvert, she writes, to undermine the conventions (and, in the bargain, readers' expectations) of both prose and poetry, is perhaps the only thing that distinguishes this genre which "has few, if any, conventions of its own."

Murphy's is perhaps the most clear-headed assessment of the prose poem I have ever read. Additionally, her comments indicate why some readers (and writers) shy away from or dismiss this form altogether: because it continually problematizes our notions of both poetry and prose. It stretches whatever generic fences we might build around it: some prose poems read like microfiction; some run closer to parables; others are mere fragments (albeit shimmering ones); still others exhibit the devices and musicality of poetry while dispensing with form. To those who champion the prose poem, the fact that one never knows quite what to expect is precisely what makes the genre so delightful.

Whatever you think of prose poetry, there's no denying that some of its leading practitioners – Charles Simic, James Tate, Russell Edson – are to be counted among the most original voices in contemporary American letters. These writers and others can be found regularly in the pages of The Prose Poem: An International Journal, the only publication devoted exclusively to poetry in prose.

No, The Prose Poem has not converted to Web-only publication (the newest edition is $8 on newsstands), but its Web edition is worth noting. Unlike many sites of its kind, it is much more than an electronic brochure, the sole purpose of which is to pimp sample copies and subscriptions. The current Web Issue (No. IV) features a healthy selection of poems from the print edition. As an added Web-only bonus, some are accompanied by author commentary. Chard de Niord's "The Music" is just one example of the delights readers will find here:

If fish are notes in the river, then the song is never the same, even if the water is. Heraclitus was wrong. The current is motion is all. You touch a dancer as she pirouettes and she’s still the same dancer. So there is a song that never gets played because the fish are always swimming in a way that rejects notation? If they stopped where they are right now, would they configure a song? Are they swimming, therefore, forever toward a melody? If so, you could say then that any song is the prescient catch of a school of fish at various depths, a quick and natural analogue for composition, the trout song, the bass song, the perch song. But the mind is the antinomy of a river, says Mr. Tsu. It is not the song beneath the surface that the fish suggest, for those songs never exist in time, but the fixed clear notes above the surface that are pinned to a sheet, on bars. The music we hear is played by musicians who have learned the difference between an idea and a score. So, Kepler was wrong also about the spheres, and Scriabin about the spectrum, and David about the hills. None of these things contain music. Only the mind thinks they do. Only the mind would ruin their silence with a symphony.

Web Issue IV also debuts a beefed-up archive of representative work from TPP dating back to 1997. Of particular note is work from Robert Bly, Naomi Shihab Nye, and David Ignatow, not to mention Russell Edson's delightful poems "The Goldilocks Compulsion" and "Sleep":

There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that he'd grown so tired of sleeping.

He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so tired of sleeping. . .

He needed a sleeping master, who with a whip and a chair would discipline the night, and make him jump through hoops of gasolined fire. Someone who could make a tiger sit on a tiny pedestal and yawn. . .

If you're a fan of Edson, Morton Marcus' lengthy review of The Tunnel: Selected Poems (also in the archives) is required reading, probably as thorough an overview of Edson's parables-gone-haywire as you're likely to find.

Overall, editor Peter Johnson has given us a wealth of material. While TPP's Web Issue IV isn't a 'zine per se, it is certainly the site to investigate if you're a fan of poetry in prose or if you're interested in discovering this hybrid form.

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A graduate of Columbia University and The University of Pennsylvania, life-long New Jerseyan and New York Mets fan, Tom Hartman now lives in Philadelphia where he's an Associate Poetry Editor at Painted Bride Quarterly. Over the years his writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Photo Review, City Paper (Philadelphia), and Philadelphia Weekly. When he's not writing he spends far too much time hating the Atlanta Braves.