Prose Poem Quotes

#1. Time is not ours and we would not own it. It does not wound us to say so.
from the prose poem INNOCENCE

Jay Woodman

#2. The prose poem Walk The Red Road is great stuff and deserves to be read aloud. It compares quite favorably to The Walls Of Emerald by Li Chiang Yen, a Chinese poet of the late Tang period.

Brian Aldiss

#3. From the prose poem "The Universe Thrums on regardless" in my book SPAN.
We are almost nothing in the night. Reduced to warm blobs and the sound of breathing. There is comfort in that.

Jay Woodman

#4. When I start writing a poem, I can usually know quite early on whether it's a lineated or prose poem, but I don't think I can explain how. It's like deciding whether to wear a skirt or a pair of pants.

Matthea Harvey

#5. I think of poetry as a very inclusive term. Still, it's interesting that people want to make the distinction. I love the magazine Double Room for that reason (contributors have to write about their ideas on the prose poem/flash fiction).

Matthea Harvey

#6. I do love the prose poem because it's such a perverse and provocative little box - always asking to be questioned, never giving a straight or definitive answer.

Matthea Harvey

#7. Lehman uses many conveyances - including the prose poem, the sestina, and curt rhymes - to travel across the writing life of a poet whose instinctive romanticism is always bracing and tough-minded, brimming with a rare generosity.

Ken Tucker

#8. Traditionally poetry is written in lines. But the prose poem is the kind of poem that isn't written in lines. It is lyrical prose that uses the tricks of poetry, such as dense imagery. This is a big topic of debate in poetry land. There's no perfect definition.

Campbell McGrath

#9. Ancient days of sorrow
ancient days of pain
-
heartaches of the past
slowly began to wane ...
(from gleaning granules)

Muse

#10. For me, prose is never a poem. Because with prose there are so very few tools to create the music. And one of the most important tools missing is the ability to create silences, as you can in poetry by how you fashion the lines and breaks within the lines and stanzas.

Pattiann Rogers

#11. ..Breaking yet budding,
dying yet living - standing
amongst ruins and rage,
reaching for possibilities
playing hard to get.

Meraaqi

#12. To summarize a poem or put it into prose is quite simply to misunderstand the essence of an art.

Paul Valery

#13. Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.

Henry David Thoreau

#14. How often might a man, after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose? And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great volume of the world?

John Tillotson

#15. If there is anything unique about my writing it is the way that I combine poetry and prose, not just on the level of having a poem here, prose there, but that it really is a true amalgam.

Richard Grossman

#16. I do not just want you at your best.
I almost do not care
where your Happiness lives,
but please,
let me visit your pain?

Take me to the place
where your sadness goes,
and show me the tragedy
that no one knows.

Meraaqi

#17. Nothingness
... there in this place
where nothingness takes
but for the glimmer
a steadfast shimmer
all would be consumed ...

Muse

#18. When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

Kenneth Koch

#19. Depths of Friendship
... under fathoms deep
of dark and bitter cold
an eerie oscillation
reverberated brash and bold ...

Muse

#20. Tiny Giggles
Silly giggles of laughter
I store upon a shelf
I give some to other
I save some for myself
I am rich beyond all measure
Though not with worldly wealth
I store up these treasures
For my heart and soulful health.

Muse

#21. Solace of Silence
surreal synapses
of a melancholy drone
a dream per chance
she dared not be alone ...

Muse

#22. Poetry is a language for when you can't quite write prose about something, you can't quite say it, but if you do a poem, it kind of gets to the point.

Sakyong Mipham

#23. I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.

Charles De Lint

#24. Have trembled beneath the pressure of a light beam.

Jay Woodman

#25. I used the word 'prose' in the Trans-Siberian in the early Latin sense of prosa dictu. Poem seemed to me too pretentious, too narrow. Prose is more open, popular.

Blaise Cendrars

#26. Prose unfolds in time; and time contains both obstacles and revelations. Prose develops, the way characters and situations do. It requires a flow. A poem is an instant, lightning across the sky. Prose is before the storm, the storm, after the storm.

Molly Peacock

#27. From the reader's view, a poem is more demanding than prose.

Mark Strand

#28. Poetry teaches us things that cannot be learned in prose, such as certain kinds of irony or the importance of the unsaid. The most important element of any poem is the part that is left unsaid. So the poetry frames the experience that lies beyond naming.

Sam Hamill

#29. The Bane
... where coxswain's dirt
and seaman's shirts
brushed bawdily upon her chest ...

Muse

#30. When somebody discusses my work with me and peruses a poem or two, they get to see a piece of who I am. Because when it comes to poetry, I let it all spill forth. Any other way of writing prose would be a disservice to the art of poetry.

Nicholas Trandahl

#31. Bring Down The Walls
I will bring down the walls
that surround me today.
I will no longer be kept quiet
Meek enough to drown today ...

Muse

#32. When a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry.

Sybil Marshall

#33. The Inner Self
... What makes us who we are
should be glorified
personified
and sung unto the stars!

Muse

#34. If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.

Hilary Mantel

#35. hough we travel the whole over to find the perfect match,we must carry it with us a light or it's playing hard to catch.

Ana Claudia Antunes

#36. Chains
chains that hold me to the ground
chains that keep me solidly bound
chains that tether my heart to you
chains that only one truth ...

Muse

#37. Sleeping Atlantis

Silent cool waters
dancing upon her skin ~
silent cool water
ushering dreams within...

Muse

#38. Unquestioning automatons
blindly marching to the beat -
an eerie crunching sound
hoards of shuffling feet ...
(from silent moments)

Muse

#39. To my mind, most prose poems are more prose than poetry. They don't possess most of the qualities of a poem.

Pattiann Rogers

#40. A Coy Aversion

...a flutter
too shy
to be seen...

Muse

#41. However, if a poem can be reduced to a prose sentence, there can't be much to it.

James Schuyler

#42. Hasten Little Maiden
...
stop and listen
for pearls of wisdom
stop and listen
as the river glistens ...

Muse

#43. To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

John Ciardi

#44. Parting
One is strong, a child now grown
The other weak, a parent aged
-
The strong once feeble
The weak once mighty
-
Time, the infinity
has marked them ...

Muse

#45. A dog, I have always said, is prose; a cat is a poem.

Jean Burden

#46. Ode to the Chamber
... linger here amidst the chamber
in which we embrace our love
talk to me of sonnets
and call me turtledove ...

Muse

#47. Now is History as fast as the mind remembers.

Kirby Wright

#48. Calico Kitty

My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime...

Muse

#49. You were the poem I never knew how to write because no words could describe the wind you cannot see, but feel.

Shannon L. Alder

#50. If you have feelings about reading, you feel the rhythm of prose or of a poem like music. It awakens something in your soul and then of course you study, read, you grow up and you begin to understand the message and that is the first step towards understanding life.

Maria Kodama

#51. Let my life as Poet begin. I want the life of the Poet. I have labored for over twelve years, one thousand pages of prose. Now, I want the easiness of poetry. The brevity of the poem.

Maxine Hong Kingston

#52. The River Swish

Deftly maneuvered through
the dark green abyss ~
The wooden raft seemed
in tune with this ~
Canorous rush of the
river swish....

Muse

#53. Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

J.K. Rowling

#54. Tender Ember
... Barred and branded
to be forever unloved
I was a tender ember
seeking solace from above ...

Muse

#55. I think my prose - mine and that of others - sometimes slips into a cadence or rhythm that can replicate or come close to the music in a wonderful poem, and then it returns to the sound of prose.

Pattiann Rogers

#56. Lollypop
... the passion contained merely kisses
placed upon lips, neck and cheek
these young lovers of the castle
of which our fairytale speaks ...

Muse

#57. Without play at many levels of language, from phonemes to logical structures, a poem is merely prose with linebreaks added.

Helen Vendler

#58. Flames moved towards him
and dropped within
-
singed and marred
his tender skin ...
(the frightful plight tale)

Muse

#59. I ache not from need -
but from my heart's gluttony of you.

Muse

#60. We speak of memorizing as getting something 'by heart,' which really means 'by head.' But getting a poem or prose passage truly 'by heart' implies getting it by mind and memory and understanding and delight.

John Hollander

#61. The most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.

George Steiner

#62. Gratitude
... here at home our faith dwindles
political division
causes tensions to kindle -
we should never forget
who stands at the door -
who shields us with armor
and shall forever more ...

Muse

#63. Cradle of Solitude
For we know not why our tribulations
are given as such
our fragile forms
created from the dust ...

Muse

#64. Honor Lost

Ambulant sunshine pierced
the soot covered glass ~
the feeble man wandered by
in this ritual morning pass ...

Muse

#65. Do You Believe
Do you believe
that I have loved you
since the dawn of time?
Do you believe
that we were destined
to be intertwined? ...

Muse

#66. It has been a Prosy day for us, but for some people it has been a wonderful day. Someone was rapturously happy in it. Perhaps a great deed has been done somewhere today- a great poem written- or a great man born. And some heart has been broken, Phil.

L.M. Montgomery

#67. The tragedy of love is in its ending,
the blessing - everything else.

No love ever deserves to end.

Akif Kichloo

#68. I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

Pattiann Rogers

#69. Soul Sister
Evoking all my inner goodness
with bastions of time
I cradle your heart
sisterly into mine ...

Muse

#70. They shut me up in Prose - / As when a little Girl / They put me in the Closet - / Because they liked me "still" -

Emily Dickinson

#71. One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

May Sarton

#72. Do You Believe
... on this road of life
on this day
I take you
now husband and wife ...

Muse