Unsounding the darkness

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of genre in an attempt to circumscribe the prose poem as a coding of adjacencies of prose and poetry. Its starting point is that both poetry and prose are loose groupings, internally divided by heterogeneous and sometimes obscure criteria inherited from Aristotelian poetics and Latin approaches to prosody. It singles out Charles Baudelaire as the first practitioner of the form because he was selfconscious enough about his creative practice to have committed his thoughts on paper in what reads like a proto-manifesto for the prose poem. ‘Unsounding the darkness’ does not purport to propose a taxonomy of the prose poem, but rather argues for the kinship between prose poetry and the prose poem, conceiving as it does of prose poetry as a form that evolves from an encounter with place and time. The prose poem is a product of that form, inheriting the lyric quality of poetry and the prosaic quality of prose fiction in the conviction of rhythm. The paper seeks to open up questions as to the validity of the distinction between prose poetry and the prose poem in the twentyfirst century. It argues for a continuum of erasures rather than for new taxonomies.