Prose or Poem? Or Both?
Some of you may see the word poem and just cringe as you recall a classroom exercise to explain a poem away. And yet, who hasn’t referred to something (something that is often difficult to describe) as poetic? Think of how someone might be “poetry in motion” or the phrase “that is pure poetry”. Can you think of other examples?
What exists in the gray area between poetry and prose? Poetic prose?
Prose Poems
I first learned about the idea of a prose poem during graduate school. I first read examples by the Charles’ (plural): Baudelaire and Simic. Often surreal, these little poems often look like paragraphs but definitely aren’t exactly prose alone. Even though these pieces do not have line breaks, they focus on other patterns such as repetition or the power of the individual sentence. Do you want to try one? What abstract notion could you explore? If you don’t have one that immediately comes to mind, might I suggest doing something with the concept of time? (I love a good science connection in poetry or prose!)
You may notice some overlap between these different hybrid forms I’m including here. A bit meta perhaps? Hybrid of hybrid of hybrid?
Erasure
Another great example of a hybrid form is the erasure poem. Here you take source material and “erase” the majority of the source to create a new piece. I particularly like when an author takes a group of texts and creates something new with the erasure form. How about taking a news website and digitally erasing (or old school printing) several days or weeks of articles on a specific topic? Do you see trends? Does poetry come out? Often erasure poems also create a visually appealing piece.
I think erasure can also be an interesting way to see your own work in a new way, whether that is prose or poetry.
Burning Haibun
During my journey to revisit the haibun, the term burning haibun came across my path. This form is merging SO many different elements of poetry and prose as well as giving you a very visual final product. As with the erasure poem, you could take an existing piece and try to create the “haiku” or “erasure” portion of the burning haibun from a work you already have; however, if you want to try something a little bit different: how about getting meta? Try writing a burning haibun about your writing process or about how you think the term burning haibun came to exist? What about the form makes you think of burning? See below if you want to go back to the page where haibun was explored a bit more.
Micro Prose
This final selection is arguably the most non-poetry related area of hybrid writing, but I would counter that writing more compact flash fiction or micro essays, requires you to be even more conscious of your word choices, which is very much a hallmark of most poetic writings.
One way I like to play with microprose is to attempt a six-word memoir exercise. Now, you don’t have to actually write a six-word memoir, but you could take different aspects of your writing and add that constraint of six words to see how it shifts your perspective on the piece. For example, what if you took a clunky sentence and tried to shape it into six words? What if you tried to create a six-word elevator speech that your main fiction character is using to market their latest infomercial gadget?
This practice of putting a challenge on your writing such as word count, poetic form, or avoidance of adverbs can truly make you see (that good old “re-visioning”) what works in a new way. Try one!
What kind of challenge interests you next?
7 - Not sure how to get started with your piece? Maybe you want to try a good old-fashioned free-write?
8 - Many of the hybrid forms mentioned here combine elements of prose and poetry, often with a visual connection. Do you want to do some more brainstorming via a visual form like the cluster map?
16 - Did you like the idea of erasure poems and/or the burning haibun and you haven’t considered haiku and haiga yet? Maybe you should!
25 - Looking for other potential ways to “constrain” your work to the next level?