Prosy+Poetry

Today in class, we talked in relation with Reginald Shepherd's essay about how __As I Lay Dying__ could be considered prosy poetry (or if you prefer, poetic prose). I would like to examine more closely why this would be as far as Faulkner's style goes. The prose part is mostly cleared up; it is written as a novel with paragraphs and quotation marks. Except for in Vardaman's chapters and in the italic sections, the punctuation is correct. Coherence of the paragraphs and juxtaposed ideas was touched upon in class. We established that when the ideas don't have an immediate correlation in our brains, it makes a piece of literature more poetic. But what does it add to the prose side of a piece?

Looking at specifically Faulkner's piece, there was much repetition, use of the word "like," or "as though," and plenty of places where I had to retrace lines and words to attempt to figure out where an idea may have come from. Repetition of sounds or sometimes words are used to elicit a certain experience, but then, so is it in prose. Comparisons are made in poems and prose alike. On the prose side of the novel, the use of the similes added to the narrative quality; even though much of it was stream of thought, I could not help but think that some parts were being elaborated on for the reader's sake. On the poetic side of the novel, the similes add aesthetics and slow the reader down for reflection and further consideration of what it is the narrator is describing. And in prose when two seemingly unrelated ideas are placed side-by-side, it is assumed the author did it to point to a truth or as a rhetorical strategy, whereas in poetry this side-by-side placement is more of a playground for the reader's mind (not so much business).

So what do you think? Also, could a piece of writing always have this duality to it? I'm not sure...sometimes I'm tempted to just side with Addie and say that they're all just words...1203644483

Yeah when Br. Tom mentioned Faulkner as a poet rather than an author, it puzzled me at first, but then I started to understand. There are moments in prose when there is a particularly beautiful speech or passage in the novel that can possess certain lyrical qualities. On the other hand there are poems that have a mini-story or plot, giving them a quality normally associated with prose. I'm not trying to shoot down your question because I think it is an interesting one, but I don't think it is necessarily important to debate what should be labeled as prose or poetry. To me it seems that Br. Tom is taking that openness that can be used when trying to interpret poems and prose and broadening that to the actual definitions of prose and poetry, if that makes any sense.user:MSu-c

While I agree that Faulkner has some beautiful passages that certainly could qualify as prosy poetry, I like to think of it as poetic prose. Though KLe did not make this distinction, I do think one exists. That extinction exists in the intention in which the piece of work is presented. You could clearly take one of the chapters from //As I Lay Dying// and present it as poetry, like when Vardaman recalls the cage and the rat using up all the oxygen or even Cash's short chapter about the coffin not being level. As a whole, though, I think Faulkner's work qualifies as poetric prose, because it follows the definitions of a novel, but contains the artistry of poetry. There are passages in //As I Lay Dying// where I did have to slow down, where after I read it I had to take a moment to pause and consider it. These are the poetic moments. While I still have a little trouble wrapping my brain around prosy poetry, I have no trouble accepting poetic prose. I guess that is because having the ability to produce poetic prose effortlessly or unconsciously is one mark I look for in a good writer. Poetic prose can be found in any work largely regarded as a classic, but this is the first time I have seen these such passages regarded as poetry alone. Maybe in time, the idea will become more comfortable with me. My only remaining question is, then, does a distinction have to exist between poetry and prose? Has the modernist movement so blurred the lines between the two that one can pass for either one? 1203652930

I think we finally agreed, in class, that if a writer says it's poetry or prose, than we have to accept it for what the author says it is. We cannot assume that something is poetry when it is really prose or vise versa. We have been trained since kindergarten that poetry is visually described in a certain way as well as prose, but we have just recently been exposed to the variations different writers have applied to their work. I think that the piece from the poetry book about a woman visiting the colonel's house was extremely fascinating not just because of the content, but the fact that she considered her journal entry to be poetry after someone pointed it out. Comparing that to As I Lay Dying is a little different because we don't necessarily know if Faulkner meant for some of his sections to be considered poetry. Certain parts of his novel can surely be read as poetry. I think that a majority of the writing is prose. It is simple because it is coming from the minds of children. But then again, the same sentence can be classified as something much more profound and poetic. It's all in the way one looks at it. 1203900977

Interestingly enough, Faulkner was first a poet, but when that failed, he began writing novels. This fact may account for the poetryness of the prose, not the other way around. This is prose, with a hint of poetry. There are some aspects that are more poetic than others. Most of Darl's chapters have more of a poetry element to them, while as Cash's have much less. Like AHa said, it contains the artistry of poetry, not necessarily the traditional form, meter, or rhyme schemes. I think that when we think of his prose as poetic, it is the way that we are saying it and he intended for us to think of it as such. user:PSp-c

I would define As I Lay Dying as prose poetry, without a doubt. I made some comments in class the other day about how poetry to me was always defined as having some type of meter to it, or rhyme scheme, or something of the sort that set it clearly apart from prose. But when Br. Tom mentioned the idea of how poetry takes a different attention, and a different viewpoint, it made sense. A light bulb kind of went off in my mind. That is what was used in Faulkner's novel. Yes I would define it as prose because there is no rhyme to it nor meter. It is not layed out in a specific line format. It looks like any other novel. But at the same time, and more often than not, the reading took a differnet attention. I cannot define this attention, and I would not say that it is the same for every poem or every type of poetry, but it sets poetry apart from prose. I had to read it with emotions always on my sleeve, with my mind ready to figure out figurative language, with abstract thoughts and ideas at the forefront. It was not written as a direct narrative in that Darl doesn't do this and then Cash does this and then Jewel does this, but it's more. It's poetry. And prose. 1204161574

One of the things that Br. Tom said about the difference between prose and poetry is that prose pushes us forward, and poetry forces us to stop and examine. I thought that __As I lay Dying__ was a pretty easy read, which at first made me want to lean towards the prose side, but the more I look at individual passages it seems to me that they demand more attention than I would think at first, and that there is a lot that you can get out of it by looking really closely at things. So I think that poetic prose, or whatever you want to call it is the perfect description for his writing. 1204241074