Come into the pub garden, help yourself to the bar b q and salad, and a thirst quenching cold drink ,listen or join the discussion.
Today we discuss this Charles Baudelaire offering
The Port
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A Port is a delightful place of rest for a soul weary of life's battles. The vastness of the sky, the mobile architecture of the clouds, the changing coloration of the sea, the twinkling of the lights, are a prism marvellously fit to amuse the eyes without ever tiring them. The slender shapes of the ships with their complicated rigging, to which the surge lends harmonious oscillations, serve to sustain within the soul the taste for rhythm and beauty. Also, and above all, for the man who of mysterious and aristocratic pleasure in contemplating, while lying on the belvedere or resting his elbows on the jetty-head, all these movements of men who are leaving and men who are returning, of those who still have the strength to will, the desire to travel or to enrich themselves.
--Charles Baudelaire--
This work is shown in PS definitions as prose poetry ...
alongside are PS definitions (which I reproduce for everyone's convenience)
Prose is writing distinguished from poetry by its greater variety of rhythm and its closer resemblance to the patterns of everyday speech. The word prose comes from the Latin prosa, meaning straightforward. This describes the type of writing that prose embodies, unadorned with obvious stylistic devices. Prose writing is usually adopted for the description of facts or the discussion of ideas. Thus, it may be used for newspapers, magazines, novels, encyclopedias, screenplays, films, philosophy, letters, essays, history, biography and many other forms of media.
Prose poetry is usually considered a form of poetry written in prose that breaks some of the normal rules associated with prose discourse, for heightened imagery or emotional effect, among other purposes. Arguments continue about whether prose poetry is actually a form of poetry or a form of prose (or a separate genre altogether). Like poetry (intense, sculpted) but without line breaks.
Do you think 'The Port' is 'prose' or ' Prose Poetry'?
and is there anything you would add to PS definition? (or delete for that matter)
Have you written any 'Prose Poetry'? why not share its title and date with us
UPDATE A
Here is a link Cyndi suggests to show a more modern example of prose poetry
http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/en/poetry/excerpt/the-truth-about-starlight
UPDATE B
For me ,to distinguish and or define what is prose and what is prose poetry in literature , as PS definitions above , show can often be a matter of taste.My solution is to define all 'poetry' as ...
STRUCTURED PROSE is a form of language which applies ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than a rhythmic structure. Meter etc is replaced by pauses implied by the syntax, thus,and thereby the limiting factor of one human breath is naturally incorporated in the cadence.
Here are a couple of my 'prose poetry' or 'structured prose ' or what you will..
THREE SCORE AND TEN
AGE comes upon. us gradually,realisation
hits us all of a sudden.Hearing no longer
acute,coments and questions will need a
repeat for our world is no longer distinct.
One day we need assistance with what
others voice and say.Deficient,an aid. to
complement the grey.
AGE comes upon us so gradually realisation
hits us all of a sudden.Floaters appear in our
eye,magnification is needed for things both
near and far,the door is ajar.
AGE comes upon us so gradually realisation
hits us all of sudden.Fingers have nodules
and bumps,no longer grip and to prevent a
fall,we walk with a stick.
Wisdom and experience of life is ignored,
not wanted at all.Absent the mind,sometimes
'senior moments' we recall for the realisation
of age,so gradual creeps up on us all.
WHAT IS THE POINT
What is the point?A comment so
often made,a question in some
bored moment.A reflection to pass
away some dull moments ‘til something
other provides a momentary distraction
to fill the mind with a temporal
train of thought.Soon the question
is then forgotten.Life is too short
is it not?Yes it is,pick up the ‘obits’
read the news,watch the straplines
on the twenty-four hour news.Yes
life is often very short for some!
The question then becomes so
acute and relevant.What is the
point?The point,dear friend is to
find the answer to living.What
is that you ask?To turn back to
your maker and live out His unique
design.He created you.That is the point!
UPDATE C
This is Mark Anthony's eulogy oration displayed INA structured prose form
Frienme
, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones:
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault;
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honorable men,--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
the same presented as a piece of prose in my comment to this blog.