August in Poetry: Boston, Faherty, Schwader, MacAllister

This month we have a reprinted column from the Blood and Spades column by the brilliant Bruce Boston, as well as a host of reprinted poetry from other luminaries–JG Faherty,  Ann K. Schwader, and Carol MacAllister–of the HWA. The poems were selected this month to exhibit the versatile styles and voices of our members, and next month we have a number of additonal pieces which define our poets’ originality and their unique perception of the world.

***

ILLUMINATING THE PROSE POEM

by Bruce Boston

*

The human mind is prone to create labels in order to understand the world around it.  Language is a system of labels, and it works well when describing the physical world.  Apples and oranges.  Guns or butter.  Dick, Jane, and Spot.  Yet when one enters subjective realms, such as that of literature, labels become less precise. They tend to blur and overlap.  Take the example of the prose poem. At first glance this seems to be a contradictory label.  How can something be prose and poetry at the same time?

*
The standard definition of a prose poem runs as follows:  A prose poem is a poem without line breaks, a poem that appears in the form of prose upon the page.  What makes it a poem is that it uses the techniques of poetry: a significant part of its effect involves how it plays with language by means of rhythm, assonance and dissonance, internal rhyme, metaphor, etc.  Prose poems also tend to be relatively short, generally running less than a page, and at most two or three pages.
Why create a poem without line breaks?  Are there advantages to this approach, or is the author merely too lazy to figure out where to break the lines?  The answer lies in the origins of the prose poem.

*
By the mid-nineteenth century formalist rules for writing verse were well established, and strictly enforced by the French Academy.  The prose poem — first penned by Aloysius Bertrand in 1842 and later gaining wide recognition in the work of such writers as Baudelaire and Rimbaud — was a reaction to such strictures, seeking a natural form of expression through language that was more akin to the human heart and imagination than a formal set of rules.

*
Yet the rise of free verse throughout the twentieth century, and its ascendancy over rhymed poetry and its strict rules, would seem to undercut the need for prose poems.  One might have expected the prose poem to have died out.  On the contrary, although it has never gained ascendancy, the prose poem continued to flourish throughout the twentieth century and remains a widely published form today.  Both poets and fictions writers as illustrious and diverse as Gertrude Stein, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Julio Cortazar, James Joyce, Clark Ashton Smith, surrealist Tristan Tzara, and many others, have published prose poems.  In fact, if one were inclined to excerpt passages from the novels of fiction writers who wax poetic in their language, such as Nabokov, Lawrence Durrell, Mervyn Peake, Djuna Barnes, to name a few, these passages could stand alone and meet the basic definition of a prose poem.  In literature, labels become less precise. They tend to blur and overlap.  Enter flash fiction.

*
In 1992 I published a book of twenty-two prose poems titled Short Circuits (Ocean View).   However, looking over this collection in terms of contemporary literary terminology, half the pieces in this book would no longer be dubbed prose poems, but would now be considered flash fictions.  Likewise, if one examines the work of Thomas Wiloch  (1953-2008), one of the leading writers of prose poems in the genre field for two decades, this same double definition applies.  In fact, it is difficult to say whether Wiloch’s last book, Screaming in Code (Naked Snake, 2006), even with its pronounced surrealist influence, is a collection of prose poems or a collection of flash fictions.

*
Although the term flash fiction is relatively new, dating back no more than twenty years, the form is not.  In fact, not only do many prose poems of the aforementioned writers qualify as flash fictions, Aesop’s Fables, penned more than two and a half millennia ago, also fits the bill. Briefly, a flash fiction contains the basic elements of a short story — protagonist, plot, resolution — all highly compressed.  There is no agreed upon length for a flash fiction, though a thousand words can be considered an outer limit.  However, there is nothing in the definition of flash fiction that says it cannot be written in a poetic voice like a prose poem. Just as there is nothing in the definition of a prose poem that says it cannot tell a story like a flash fiction.

*
As a writer of poetry, when should you consider turning your poem into a prose poem?  Speaking from my own experience, I have chosen the prose poem over the poem as a means of expression not when I was too lazy to determine the line breaks in a poem, but when I was unable to determine ones that worked.  No matter how I broke the lines, they did not seem to me to result in a successful poem.  And if I changed the wording to accommodate the line breaks, I then lost significant aspects of what I was trying to express.  The overriding authority of the French Academy in the world of poetry has long been consigned to history, yet there are still constraints to the language used in poetry, at least good poetry, even when it is free verse.  The poetic demands of the prose poem are less strict and allow the author to be more expansive.  Thus the prose poem is true to its name and differs from poetry in more than the question of line breaks.  A prose poem, quite simply, gives you greater latitude to be prosy.

*
Another instance when I’ve chosen the prose poem over the poem has less to do with aesthetic considerations than economic ones.  When I have a poem that tells a complete story, I’ve discovered that it is often not only easier to market, but more lucrative, if I convert the poem to prose and allow my voice and the content of the piece to be more expansive in the process.  In 1992, Wisconsin poet Roger Dutcher and I published a collaborative poem titled “Unextinctions” in the small press magazine Figment.  I subsequently saw a market report for an anthology to be published as a mass market paperback by Daw Books.  The anthology was titled Alien Pregnant by Elvis and the editors, Esther Friesner and Martin Greenberg, were looking for “short tabloid tales.”  In terms of content, the poem Roger and I had written seemed perfect for this anthology, but like most mass market paperbacks, the anthology was not open to poetry. Consequently, I rewrote the poem as a short prose piece, adding a phrase or word here and there, appending a new description or expanding upon one already present.  The changes were not that great, but the new version stood as a flash fiction (and as a prose poem), although it would have no longer worked as a poem with line breaks.  Incidentally, the prose version did sell to the anthology.  (see both versions below)

*
Just as there are no definitive labels in the world of literature, there are no definitive rules concerning when something should be written as a poem as opposed to a prose poem.  However, if you have never tried writing prose poems, I encourage you to experiment with the form.  In some instances, you may not only discover a more effective means of expression for what you are trying to say, but you may learn something about your voice as a writer.

*

*

UNEXTINCTIONS
by Bruce Boston and Roger Dutcher

*

A great leathery bird
circles over the red tiled
rooftops of old Pasadena.
A herd of tiny horses,
no bigger than dogs or sheep,
is spotted on the Serengeti Plain.
A giant man-eating tiger,
with teeth like scimitars,
rampages through the villages
northeast of Maradabad.

At first the scientists scoff,
dismissing such reports
as they would a flurry
of Sasquatch or UFO encounters.
Yet sightings at first taken
as misidentifications,
as the hallucinogenic
dream fulfillments
of ecologic romantics,
soon become daily realities
too numerous to deny:
the miraculous reappearance
of species long extinct.

The tabloids have a field day,
a chance to report the truth,
but their banner headlines
must compete with those
of more respected journals:
“TRILOBITES CLOG TUNA NETS!”
“TUCSON: GIANT GROUND SLOTHS!!”
“T. REX ALIVE AND WELL!!!”

Droves of the flightless dodo
invade and amble at random
through St. Peter’s Square,
driving away the faithful,
outnumbering the pigeons
and fouling the flagstones,
far out scoring the Pope
as a tourist attraction.

And finally, as a logical
extension of natural history
gunning in reverse gear,
as an illogical extrapolation
of an ecosphere run amok,
our very own progenitors
both actual and apocryphal
–Australopithecus, Java Man,
Piltdown, Cro-Magnon–
begin to materialize
in increasing numbers.

Hirsute and filthy,
clad only in uncured skins,
they wander down from the hills
or in across the prairies
to prowl our neighborhoods,
to invade our finest malls
and shatter our plate glass,
to crouch upon our fenders
and fiercely pummel our hoods.

And although we confront them
with rifles and handguns aplenty,
although we slaughter them
by the score and score again,
their grunts and cries of rage
continue to fill our streets,
to track our lives and dreams,
confirming what we should
have known all along.

Nature does have a sense of humor.
It is a dark and wild one.
And having violated her
more than once too often,
we have now become
the object of her mirth.

*

UNEXTINCTIONS

by Bruce Boston and Roger Dutcher

*

A great leathery bird circles over the red tiled rooftops of Pasadena. A herd of tiny horses, no bigger than dogs or sheep, is spotted on the Serengeti Plain. A giant man-eating tiger, with teeth like scimitars, rampages through the villages northeast of Maradabad, leaving eighteen dead and dozens injured in its wake.

At first the scientists scoff, dismissing such reports as they would a flurry of Sasquatch or UFO encounters. Yet sightings at first taken as misidentifications, as the hallucinogenic dream fulfillments of drugged-out tree huggers, the would-be fantasies of ecologic romantics, soon become daily realities too numerous and frequent to deny: the miraculous reappearance of species after species long considered extinct.

The tabloids have a field day, a chance at last to report the truth, actual events as preposterous and sensational as their endless fabrications…but their banner headlines must soon compete with those of more respected journals:

The London Times “TRILOBITES CLOG TUNA NETS!”

The Washington Post: “TUCSON: GIANT GROUND SLOTHS!!”

National Geographic: “T. REX ALIVE AND WELL IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS!!!”

Huge dragonflies with wings like six-foot exclamation marks swarm across the Autobahn, blocking exit signs, alighting on windshields and fenders, sending marvels of German engineering careening on collision courses and slowing the fastest traffic in the world to a crawl. Droves of the flightless dodo, honking an ill-timed Hallelujah Chorus, invade and amble at random through St. Peter’s Square, driving away the faithful, outnumbering the pigeons and fouling the flagstones, far out scoring the Pope as a tourist attraction.

On the muddy and polluted delta of the Mississippi, a school/herd of fish/mammals with incipient gill/lungs and stubby leg/fins inches its way onto a sandbar, blinking at the naked sun as if they were the first creatures to ever see it uncloaked by water, reject the vision and turn around, retreating as one back into the murky depths.

And finally, as a logical extension of natural history gunning in reverse gear, as an illogical extrapolation of an ecosphere increasingly run amok, our very own progenitors both actual and apocryphal — Ardipithecus, Australopithecus Piltdown, Cro-Magnon — begin to materialize in increasing numbers. Hirsute and filthy, clad only in uncured skins, they wander down from the hills or in across the prairies to prowl our neighborhoods, to invade our finest shopping malls and shatter our plate glass windows, to crouch upon our fenders and fiercely pummel our hoods.

And although we confront them with rifles and handguns aplenty, although we slaughter them by the score and score again, their incoherent grunts and cries of rage continue to fill our streets, to track our lives and our dreams, confirming what we should have learned long ago, what we perhaps should have known all along: Nature does have a sense of humor. It is a dark and wild one. And having violated her more than once too often, we have now become the objects of her revenge and all-consuming mirth.

-Bruce Boston

***

*

“The Dentist” – by JG Faherty

(2006), Wicked Karnival

It eats me up inside

This rage

Overpowers me, takes control

A secret beast

Makes me hurt them, cause them pain

They don’t know when it will happen

But I know

When I hold the tools once more

Sharp, pointed

My hands become instruments of torture

They want to scream, to shout

To cry

I don’t stop; I go deeper

Deeper still

I smile behind my mask

Their blood is my joy, my goal

I want to laugh

I am the bringer of their pain

I hate them

Their vile, rotten mouths offend me

*

***

Art copyright Sandy DeLuca 2013*

**

“Natural Selection” – by JG Faherty

(2005), ScienceFictionFantasyHorror.com

I kill them when I see them.

I have to; they’re evil, horrible creatures.

Hairy legs, poison fangs,

Multi-orbed alien features.

They hide within the shadows,

Lurking, waiting, pouncing on their prey.

Dissolving from the inside,

All who come there way.

Cold and calculating,

No emotions, fear, or sympathy

Death on eight legs

They remain my morbid fantasy.

No light undertaking,

Their dried husks litter my collection

The ultimate predator,

Carrying out my natural selection

*

***

“The Mushroom Garden” – by JG Faherty

(2010), Death in Common: Poems From Unlikely Victims, ed. Rich Ristow, Bandersnatch Books

Bloodless, pale faces glow

like putrid toadstools,

surprised by the glare of the flashlights.

I saw them first. I was first

on the scene. First arriver.

First with the sticky, slimy

taste of death on my tongue.

The first shall be last,

and the last shall be first,

the Good Book says.  Why?

Why?  He wouldn’t say. Maybe

someday I’ll know. Maybe

I’ll never know. Maybe

no one will. Everything

by the book and yet

I did everything wrong.

Another prize at the end

of another maze. The house

next door. A quiet fellow.

I never thought about him.

Then open windows delivered

the smell of death. My Sally

always says I’m too nice.

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

Christ, I’ve heard that

On the job and in the bedroom.

I wonder what Sally thinks now.

Who really gets punished?

When I went inside Eaton’s home,

calling his name, a foul stench

choked me.  There were no sounds,

no reply. Empty house. Clean.

Tidy. The porcelain sink gleamed.

But the basement door – the stink

greeted me halfway down.

In my mind, another death certificate

to fill out, another senseless ending.

What this time? Heart attack?

Broken neck? Bee sting?

A memory surfaced: an old man –

stroke, half-eaten by his cats.

Death is a lonely business. Doubly

so when you live by yourself.

Of course, Eaton wasn’t alone. I learned

death can blossom in flashlight’s glow:

Bulging eyes. Scraps of paper sticking out

from silently screaming mouths.

So many of them: like a wet garden

of broad, white capped mushrooms.

Something moved and I turned

slow. Too slow.

A wrinkled face

rushed me. Screaming.

The glint of a knife.

Pain – my ribs. It’s worse with every breath.

Then, the luminous white mushrooms

bursting wet and cold beneath me. Bloodless,

Their pale, putrid faces, glowing.

Welcoming me into the garden.

*

 ***

Art copyright Sandy DeLuca 2013

***

“In Webs of Autumn” – by Ann K. Schwader

(Previously Published in her 2011 Hippocampus Press collection, Twisted in Dream)

*

The webs of autumn thicken in this light

grown golden with its lowering to earth

laid ready as a grave.  Approaching night

is whispering pale spiderlings to birth

in our neglected corners: flecks of things

regretted or recalled too late, whose worth

still weights imagination.  Lacking wings

once more, we linger in the early gloom

until its warp & weft ensnare us, bring

a sacramental silence.  To presume

beyond this moment contradicts a rite

our blood remembers like a myth entombed

in webs of autumn.  Gilded with that light

which cannot last, they bind us to the night.

*

***

**jjArt copyright Sandy DeLuca 2013

***

“The Chase” – by Carol MacAllister

(Previously published in THE BLACKMOOR TALES, Northampton House Press)

I hide in dark

corners of your day,

slither in long shadows

cast across your path.

My voice teases under

wind’s gusty breath.

As light fades,

you may see me nearing,

you may hear my hungry cries.

As west consumes the day,

you will feel my craving breath

touch your supple flesh.

In blue twilight,

terror parts the silent veil.

The chase begins.

***