Why Is So Much Modern Poetry Really Prose?
It’s not news that a good deal of contemporary poetry is actually a kind of prose masquerading in the typography of poetry. Just check out any anthology of modern American verse since the Second World War, and it will be obvious. It would seem that “the voice that is great within us” (as one collection is called) sounds in us most often today in a prose voice, although in poetic form. This is not to say it is prosaic or has no depth or passion. It is often very well-written, lovely, lively prose–prose that can stand without the crutches of punctuation, whose syntax is so clear it can be written all over the page, in open forms and open fields. How did this curious state of affairs come about, and how come no one ever mentions it? Perhaps because there has been a kind of considerate silence between poets and friends, between poets and editors. No one wants to commit the original sin of saying flat-out that someone’s poetry is prose in poetic typography. A poet’s friends will never tell
