The prose poem as we know it is French in origin: it was established by Aloysius Bertrand with Gaspard de la Nuit in 1842, and subsequently picked up by Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mallarmé, who saw it as ...

One of the essential characteristics of poetry is the line break. It is the most prominent feature distinguishing verse from prose. Even though much narrative prose employs metaphors and is written ...

American prose poetry—a tradition extending from Robert Bly to Lyn Hejinian—has finally come into its own. Although prose poems defy easy classification—they are, as the name indicates, neither ...

“The prose poem has achieved an unprecedented level of popularity among American poets,” writes David Lehman, a poet and the series editor of the Best American Poetry series, published by Scribner. He ...

Though nearly 50 poetic entries filled our mailbox, only a fraction of these metaphors and similes arrived in prose form. Happily, among the submissions we discovered some standout works. This year’s ...