Prose Poem Prompt
One of my favorite forms
Prose poems are exactly what they sound like: it’s a poem that uses paragraphs as its form (i.e. no line breaks). It still has lots of poetic elements: attention to image, sound, rhythm, emotion, but the form is contained. Generally the poems are one paragraph, but this is not a hard and fast rule. They can use standard punctuation (or not). They often contain some kind of story, but probably not the kind you’re used to reading in fiction. Prose poems also make frequent use of surrealism–nothing is quite as it appears. These add a fantastical or strange quality to the poem.
common elements of prose poems: narrative, play, surrealism, repetition, lists, non sequitur, concrete images
Ideas for your prose poem:
an alternate history (perhaps of a family member or an event)
confront a fear (make something abstract into something concrete/absurd)
give directions (mix the weird and the mundane)
transform an object into a feeling (roll it over until it becomes something else)
Examples:
The Human Figure in a Dress by Mary Jo Bang
The White Paws by Dara Yen Elerath
How to Tell the Difference Between a Raven and a Crow by Bethany F. Brengan
How to Build a Thirst Trap by Leigh Chadwick (but also basically anything on this page)
Singing Funeral by féi hernandez
A Story About the Body by Robert Hass
From “Citizen,” I [A woman you do not know wants to join you for lunch] by Claudia Rankine
Ghosts (Homage to Burial) by Emily Berry
Information by David Ignatow
Nostalgia by Matthew Minicucci
Women of the 1980s by Maryam Ivette Parkizkar
vessels by Scott Ferry
A Marriage at Ancestral Hall in Sun Village by Shelley Wong
Want more prose poem goodness? Karan Kapoor has an excellent course on prose poems from the Forever Workshop that I really enjoyed.