The Poetics of Prose Poetry in Elizabeth Smart’sBy Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Abstract

In her insightful introduction to Elizabeth Smart’s By Grand CentralStation I Sat Down and Wept, the late, poetically gifted, BrigidBrophy writes that it is one of the ‘half dozen masterpieces ofpoetic prose in the world’. Clearly, after reading the novella, one understands what Brophy may mean by ‘poetic prose’, but Brophy’s statement also begs numerous questions. For example, whatmakes it poetic prose? What is poetic prose read like? And howdoes it differ from non-poetic prose? And, more important, whatmakes it poetic prose?When negotiating with notions of poetic prose, one usually marks the Symbolist poets as the point of departure, Baudelaireas the poet of departure and, specifically, his text Le Spleen de Parisas the text of departure for it is in Le Spleen de Paris that we clearly seethe origins of poetic prose and how that style becomes the foundationfor the majority of prose poetry that is subsequently written.In his essay ‘Vibratory Organism: crise de prose’, Roger Shattuckproposes that ‘the opening paragraphs from "De la couleur" representBaudelaire’s first poeme en prose After the two initial paragraphsthe rest of the chapter on color breaks down into shortparagraphs mostly of one sentence and of a discursive nature’(Caws and Riffaterre, p. 26). Shattuck then quotes Baudelaire’sdedication of Petits poemes en prose to Arsene Houssaye in whichhe writes, ‘Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas, dans ses joursd’ambition, reve la miracle d’une prose poetique, musicale sansrythme et sans rime, assez couple et assez heurtee pour s’adapteraux mouvements lyriques de l’ame, aux ondulations de la reverie,aux soubresauts de la conscience?’ Shattuck also suggests that Baudelaire’swriting in the colour poemKeywordsSleepless NightFunny BusinessSonic LevelPoetic ImageImpressionist PaintingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.