Poetry is Prose is Poetry is Prose

Marguerite Pigeon

 

If poetry is the music of words, then why shouldn’t prose also sing? I think it should, and in its best renditions, does. My own writing heroes, like Anton Chekhov, don’t just tell us stories —no matter how original or powerful. Rather, they “play” their pages like an instrument, building tension and emotion through musical arrangements of words. We may come to them for a tale, but we leave having heard a symphony.

In my own writing, particularly in short fiction, I regularly re-read paragraphs aloud strictly for sound: Is the tone right? Does it drone? Are there nice off-notes and contrasts? Are words repeated for effect? Have I been careful to juxtapose short and long sentences? Short and long pauses between lines and paragraphs? All these questions, which might, at first, seem secondary to character and story, actually stand out in my mind as crucial—not to mention accounting for a good deal of the fun in writing! Without music (broadly defined), prose starts to feel like just so many situations.

When you write poetry, you have an advantage in this regard. You’re accustomed to asking questions about sound. You think in terms of lines, and each feels vital. You care about individual words and even syllables. You notice how words interact with others around them—for better or worse. It’s like you’re forced to walk around with a literary hearing aid that amplifies quiet music that would otherwise go unheard.

Of course, this means that at first, crossing over to prose, the poet is exhausted. So many words to listen to, measure and savour! So many lines! In my own case, it took me a long time to realize that I could use different scales when writing fiction—that paragraphs could be one long, sustained note, that my voice could emerge over several pages instead of a few stanzas. When I realized I could use the precision of poetry-writing to elevate my prose, which already has the advantage of living characters, then I knew: I could never do just one or the other. Poetry is prose is poetry is prose, I say, and we’re better off for it.