What is prose?

Boom The Cat

What is it? Is it like one line poetry? if so, Im sold.

FinsburyParkCarrots

First of all, nice one liner.

But you do raise a good question. What is prose? It's not simply writing that is typographically arranged in paragraphs. It isn't even merely writing that avoids poetical metre or rhyming line-endings. Conversely, poetry can resemble the typographical form of prose.

What distinguishes prose from poetry? A structural linguist called Roman Jakobson argued that prose communicates "syntagmatically", in that sentences make sense because of the syntactical arrangement of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. Poetry will also use syntax to communicate but it will rely more on creating impressionistic effects through alliteration, assonance, metrical patternings and many more devices, in order to say something perhaps beyond the linguistic realm of our everyday speech.

Prose poetry can make striking use of a combination of effects of language to show the spiritual, the physical, the emotional, the sexual and the political drives of the invididual overcoming the drab constructions of reality often maintained in prose writing.


"They shut me up in prose....": A virtual festoonery of motley rainbows and starwinged unicorns to the person who can identity from where that poetic quotation derives.

dunkman

Boom The Cat wrote:

What is it? Is it like one line poetry? if so, Im sold.

bet you have that feeling of "why did I ask"

nice one Fins :cool:

decides2dream

dunkman1974 wrote:

bet you have that feeling of "why did I ask"

nice one Fins :cool:

hahaha.



damn, that was one verbose answer eh?
i would've said, words that aren't in rhyme-scheme myself. :rolleyes:

FinsburyParkCarrots

decides2dream wrote:

hahaha.



damn, that was one verbose answer eh?
i would've said, words that aren't in rhyme-scheme myself. :rolleyes:

What about free verse then?

grooveamatic

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

"They shut me up in prose....": A virtual festoonery of motley rainbows and starwinged unicorns to the person who can identity from where that poetic quotation derives.

I knew I had read it before, but admit to grabbing the book from my shelf before being certain that "They shut me up in prose" is the title (and/or first line) of an Emily Dickinson poem. And a darn good one at that.

justam

Finsbury, don't let them tease you. It was a good answer!

FinsburyParkCarrots

justam wrote:

Finsbury, don't let them tease you. It was a good answer!

I'm the one doin' the teasin'! :cool:

justam

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I'm the one doin' the teasin'! :cool:

Okay.
Well, carry on...

FinsburyParkCarrots

Seriously though, read this. Switch off the pit for an hour and absorb this:


Prose

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem04.html

Poetry

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html

The distinction is artificial in my view, but this still makes for fascinating reading.

decides2dream

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Seriously though, read this. Switch off the pit for an hour and absorb this:


Prose

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem04.html

Poetry

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem05.html

The distinction is artificial in my view, but this still makes for fascinating reading.

huh??? switch off the pit?!?!?! :eek:


you are just always so full of..............answers.
good ones too.


btw - i think we ALL were teasing.

Boom The Cat

justam wrote:

Finsbury, don't let them tease you. It was a good answer!

A very good answer, only Im not very clever and don't know what most of those words mean, hence why I can't read the links, I find it hard to learn stuff :-/

mookie blaylock 10

in short, prose is long.

burtschips

Poetry and prose can express the same ideas. Is it not just about how you express of the idea. Poetry is poetry and prose is prose. I have never read poetry that I would think could be prose, but I have read passages of prose that I think could be poetry.

Boom The Cat

any examples?

FinsburyParkCarrots

The Waves by Virginia Woolf.

burtschips

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

I want to read The Waves.

decides2dream

burtschips wrote:

Poetry and prose can express the same ideas. Is it not just about how you express of the idea. Poetry is poetry and prose is prose. I have never read poetry that I would think could be prose, but I have read passages of prose that I think could be poetry.

i like that answer.

Byrnzie

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

What about free verse then?

Where dya think Bukowski's poetry falls into the scheme of things? They're like short stories in poem form. Poetry minus the usual trappings of Contrivance, and intentional muddying of the water.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Byrnzie wrote:

Where dya think Bukowski's poetry falls into the scheme of things? They're like short stories in poem form. Poetry minus the usual trappings of Contrivance, and intentional muddying of the water.

Want my honest opinion?

Shite. That's where it falls.

catefrances

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

Want my honest opinion?

Shite. That's where it falls.

you're a hard man fins.

that made me laugh cause i was just reading some bukowski yesterday. and admittedly some of it is shite but then again some of it i like.