Prose poetry has a foot in two genres as described by the Academy of American Poets: While it lacks the line breaks associated with poetry, the prose poem maintains a poetic quality, often utilizing techniques common to poetry, such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, and rhyme. The prose poem can range in length from a few lines to several pages long, and it may explore a limitless array of styles and subjects.   (Source: https://poets.org/glossary/prose-poem)

"Graduation" by Edgar Kunz inspires the first poem prompt and "Dutch Elm Disease" by Valencia Robin, the second poem prompt.  Notice the differentiated challenge in each prompt.

Write a prose poem about a person in a very specific moment. Include sensory details and focus on poetic language versus prose language (which includes more articles and transitional phrases). Go for the jugular to concisely capture a specific scene, a specific source of tension.

Write a prose poem about someone’s adverse reaction to surprising news – whether its humorous, tragic, or paralyzing.  How can you also use the setting to comment on the scene?

PoetryBones writers note their experience with the challenge:

• Though I was given more freedom because of the prose form, I actually wrote more concisely.  
• My poem storyline built momentum toward a significant point instead of meandering in the way that prose storytelling can.  The poem got to the point more directly. Didn't expect that.
• I used more specific word choice to create immediacy and intensity, like a poem does -- even though I was working with longer lines. 
• In an effort to be less 'prose like' I cut articles and transition phrases, and I thought it would seem artificial.  Instead the poem was more concise without being artificial. 
• This experiment helped me recognize my own rhythm.  I was choosing words to purposely fit a rhythm that was developing, which seemed to innately be my own voice and rhythmic style.
• Is there something about this form that leads us to intense stories, or was it the example poems that did it, that set our minds in that direction?  The poems I heard in the breakout room were intense and direct.

​

Bird
by Niki Herd

​Yesterday, at Shepherd and Gray, the parking lot was
filled with birds, black birds, actually grackles. It was a grackle
lot; instead of a bumper on a car, there were ten grackles, instead
of a sunroof, fifty grackles sat high, their bodies shimmers
under cheap strip mall lights as shoppers delayed their spending
to pull out phones and take shots, such spectators we were,
like that summer in July, when I was left again
to wonder who was the child and who the adult,
that Sunday evening that hung in the air like bug spray
when my father, the one who fed me and gave me his last name,
stood two stories on our family porch, every neighbor,
in all manner of dress, drawn from their homes, in the street
      watching.
Let me tell you how he spread his arms wide, like the man
he was before Vietnam, or before the schizophrenia.
Let me tell you how a child learns the alphabet by counting,
how she learns only 2 letters separate the words hero and heroin,
how he stood high on the ledge of a porch the child never much
liked because there was a crack in its wooden center as if the
      world
was waiting to open its jaws to swallow her body whole.
Let me tell you how that July evening didn’t hold death,
but instead was the preface to death. The point being he jumped.
Some will say there are worse songs to sing, others might believe
      it
a tragedy, but who are we to question the Gods when a man
unconcerned with the inconvenience of his presence shows up
in a parking lot winged as an army of himself? Eventually, lights
went dark in the shops and each watcher retraced their steps back
      home
to find their families, to rejoice over food, to laugh and settle the
​      night;
and the birds, steadfast they stood, not quite ready for flight--

PoetryBones has studied other notable prose poems
but toward different writing goals.  See:

• C.K. Williams' Blades in the "Hazy Memory" prompt
• Arielle Greenberg's The Expert in the "What Work Is" prompt

Other great prose poem resources:

Confusing words or simply wondering about the similarity in sound but the polar differences in meaning is where the tension for your poem might be found.  The confusion around pairs of words might be attributed to their being homonyms or homophones, because there are multiple meanings to the word or even additional connotations. Sometimes the confusion can occur in the speaking of the word, depending on which syllable is stressed, the meter of a sentence, learning words in another language, and even the tone when the word is spoken.   This confusion is the impetus for today's poetry writing challenge.

 "Oblation" by Tanya Grae introduces the free write prompt, and "Persimmons" by Li-Young Lee precedes the poem prompt.  

​Write about words you confuse or have confused in the past.  Write about the juxtaposition of these "sound alike" words.   Include their meanings, or use one of the words in the poem and imply the other, as Grae does in the poem "Oblation" wherein an "ablation" process is being described.  Write about the situations where the words come up; describe parallel things that are happening in relation to these situations.  If you need commonly "confused" words, here are some suggestions.  (Write for 10 minutes.)

 Write your “confused words” poem.  What do these confusions mean? Feel free to explore the parallel stories, the tangents that go with the words, as Lee does in "Persimmons."

 This last poem plays on the various meanings of the word "lie." 

Comedians and "confused words"  Norm Crosby's classic act includes malapropisms and Ismo, Finnish comedian, capitalizes on language differences.

Today's session was designed for exploration, and the consensus was that the exercise allowed for fresh thinking, writing in riffs, and a playfulness that may have been absent in our current writing practice or writing trajectory.  Allow yourself to explore proverbs and adages in full or "fractured" forms.

Can you think of a proverb or adage that is true in your life?  How does each poem treat a proverb?  Try your own approach after reading the two poems. 

These poems "fracture" proverbs -- a popular Rita Dove writing exercise -- to new but still truthful effect.  Read them, then try the effect yourself. 

    Proverbs from Purgatory
​    BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ
It was déjà vu all over again.
I know this town like the back of my head.
People who live in glass houses are worth two in the bush.
One hand scratches the other.
A friend in need is worth two in the bush.
A bird in the hand makes waste.
Life isn’t all it’s crapped up to be.
It’s like finding a needle in the eye of the beholder.
It’s like killing one bird with two stones.
My motto in life has always been: Get It Over With.
Two heads are better than none.
A rolling stone deserves another.
All things wait for those who come.
A friend in need deserves another.
I’d trust him as long as I could throw him.
He smokes like a fish.
He’s just a chip off the old tooth.
I’ll have him eating out of my lap.
A friend in need opens a can of worms.
Too many cooks spoil the child.
An ill wind keeps the doctor away.
The wolf at the door keeps the doctor away.
People who live in glass houses keep the doctor away.
A friend in need shouldn’t throw stones.
A friend in need washes the other.
A friend in need keeps the doctor away.
A stitch in time is only skin deep.
A verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
A cat may look like a king.
Know which side of the bed your butter is on.
Nothing is cut and dried in stone.
You can eat more flies with honey than with vinegar.
Don’t let the cat out of the barn.
Let’s burn that bridge when we get to it.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Don’t cross your chickens before they hatch.
DO NOT READ THIS SIGN.
Throw discretion to the wolves.
After the twig is bent, the barn door is locked.
After the barn door is locked, you can come in out of the rain.
A friend in need locks the barn door.
There’s no fool like a friend in need.
We’ve passed a lot of water since then.
At least we got home in two pieces.
All’s well that ends.
It ain’t over till it’s over.
There’s always one step further down you can go.
It’s a milestone hanging around my neck.
Include me out.
It was déjà vu all over again.
 
    Lloyd Schwartz, "Proverbs from Purgatory" from Cairo Traffic. Copyright © 2000 by Lloyd Schwartz. 
    Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57653/proverbs-from-purgatory

Treat the provocative titles of these math principles as words only.  For example, tell me about the presence of the “diamond principle” or the “excluded third” in your life. Or, think of this prompt as writing an alternate theory for the mathematical principle.  Whatever you do, DO NOT look up the mathematical principle. (Write for 10 minutes)

Look up the mathematical principle from your free-write, and write a poem that combines your imagined writing from the first prompt with some details of the actual principle. (Take 12 minutes total, really! Two minutes of "research" and 10 minutes of writing. Go!)