Now that the shadow has dissolved the heavens' blue dome,
I can see Andromeda again.
I stand pressed to the window,
Rapt and shrunk in the galaxy's chill glare.
"Nostalgia of the Infinite,"
di Chirico:
Cast shadows stream across the sunlit courtyard,
gouging canyons.
There is a sense in which shadows are actually cast,
Cast as Ishmael was cast,
Out, with a flinging force.
This is the blue strip running through creation,
The icy roadside stream on whose banks the mantis mates,
In whose unweighed waters the giant water bug sips frogs.

How much of a surprise is it to know that the lines above are actually re-arranged prose? They are an excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. Her prose is often poetic and often seems to 'work' when rearranged into free verse.

So - in the era of free verse - is it possible to write poetry accidentally? Can what is intended by the author to be prose validly be labelled poetry? Do labels matter?

Ah - the eternal 'problem' of PROSETRY. Some prose works are pure poetry with a bit of plot thrown in to keep us extra attentive. If the plot and character development are equally good, the writing can be superb.I nearly ditched Annie Proulx's 'The Shipping News' because her poetic prose finally got on my nerves.

Yes, many paragraphs of a prose work can be lifted verbatim and rearranged to taste in free verse. Why not? I can probably produce dozens of favourite works where such paragraphs are unadulterated poetry, and meant to be so, especially for the heightened expansion of place or mood. I am a great believer in prosetry, kept within believable constraints. Such skill takes practised expertise; it is not 'accidental'.

Ah but suppose, for a given piece of prose, that it is accidental? Suppose there was never any intention to write poetic prose, just prose. If someone lifts the prose, arranges it thus and so, and proclaims it to be poetry, then what? It's almost like some of Winston's found poetry - the words have been 'found lying around' as it were and the poetry lies in unlocking their potential.

OK, I do take your point. I should have considered a bit further. Especially, as I, myself, have taken passages of personal letters written to me by very different people of very different educational backgrounds, and boldly lifted the exact words on to a blank page with superimposed 'break lines' - because I recognised sheer poetry in the original word choices, innate composition, and universal feelings.

That will teach me to make quick responses. I'm glad you bounced back.

I tripped up on the stairs the other day - and a flood of accidental poetry came out...

This touches on a lot of other discussion threads. I suppose you can call lots of things poetry if you've a mind to and if there are no rules, no-one can disagree with you.

Will your re-arranged prose ever be memorable though - will it make it into the annuls of the nation's favourite poets? For me, only if it says something new or says something old in a startlingly different way.

Poetry often stems from the subconscious mind - so obviously the answer to the question is - Yes!

How else would it be possible to explain writing an answer to a question and realising that you have in fact written a poem?

On a separate note, where is the dividing line between poetry and prose?

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby;


“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”

Chris et al: Your post that comes from 'The Great Gatsby' has me in mind of the following by Hunter Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', possibly the nearest to poetry that his prose comes that I have read of his, and that also deals with a similar theme. ...
(''..Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting – on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.)
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark – that place where
the wave finally broke and rolled back. ''

I love that Tommy, the novel it comes from too.

A poetic yearning for what is past. Gatsby makes the mistake of thinking he can recapture it. Hunter knows the past can be seen, but equally knows it has gone.

Good post - love those lines.

Is accidental poetry a similar affliction to diarrhoea? Just wondering mind . . .

Mebbee - but some people shit flowers of course...

Dave,

This one`s been bothering me all week. I can`t help mixing it up with Freda`s `tone unit` thing. Was your prose example originally a piece of consecutive prose, or are random lines taken out and placed according to your own preference?

I wonder if the reason we can come across snatches of `poetry` like this has to do with the old idea of`The Music of the Spheres`- a sort of underlying harmony of sound?

And exactly how do we distinguish poetry from prose?

(I`m glad I`m off on holiday)

Dave,
If you've had an accident and written a poem about it, does that count?

http://www.writeoutloud.net/public/blogentry.php?blogentryid=37581

Harry - little lines.

Hope you're enjoying your holiday Harry. It was a piece of consecutive prose with no apparent pretensions to be anything else. It may be unfair to use something from Annie Dillard. She won the Pulitzer Prize because her writing is so powerful. But the point is that she appears to have had no intention to write poetry. But all that's needed is line breaks and hey presto, that's what it is.

Interesting stuff. I've often found that certain prose/poetry entries could be confused with the conveniently "chopped up" articles in newspaper features. My exception would be that powerful writing commands its own devotion and admiration and could conceivably be found in both areas of creative effort. But that would probably be more by accident than design as the serious writer would be intent on one way of putting over a pov rather than relying on some hit/miss system of communication that indicates uncertainty or
lack of belief on his/her part.