Prose Vs. Poetry

The other day in my Creative Writing class we were talking about poetry.  There were two questions asked at the beginning of class: "What makes a poem a poem?" and "What can a poem do that the other genres can't?"  We began to list the items that constitute a poem; lines, stanzas, rhyme, and more.

At the beginning of the discussion, we went over the meaning of the words prose and verse.  Prose in easy terms is 'to go forward' or to the edge of the page.  Verse (another word for poetry) is 'a turning'.  This shows one of the differences between poetry and prose.  Prose goes as far as the edge of the page, then starts at the beginning again.  Poetry constantly has line breaks.  Most of the line breaks and white space are strategic to the author of the work.  Most of the class agreed that you can easily distinguish a poem from a short story by the format on the piece.

Other points we talked about was the fact that poems are very different from the way we talk in real life.  To quote a classmate "No one just says in normal conversation 'Two roads diverged in a yellow road'."  And that's very true.  But it's funny at the same time.  Poetry is an oral genre.  It existed before writing and before prose too.  So it's not how we talk now but how we once did talk.

Saying something is 'poetic' is normally seen as a positive connotation.  However, if someone was to read your work and called it 'prosy' or 'prosaic' you would think they didn't like.  Because those words have a negative connotation.  How much have you wanted to hear that you sounded 'poetic' while you were writing...but you were writing prose.  Wouldn't it be a better praise to hear that your prose sounded 'prosaic'?

At another point in the class my professor, Liz Ahl, asked again what could poetry do that other genres or prose couldn't.  I raised my hand and described how I thought that poems can tell a story quicker and easier than prose (in most cases, not all).  She asked me to elaborate.  I said that if I was to write the poem I had in front of me as a prose piece, it would have the same meaning.  She countered with the question "So, if I was to take your poem and rewrite it as prose, use all the same words in the same order, but make it prose, it wouldn't have the same meaning?"  She didn't ask this to sound rude or mean, she was just trying to get my thought process on my answer to her original question.  I nodded and said that I did feel that way, then she said: "What an insane idea."  To which I replied:

"Well, I am insane."

So to me, poetry/verse, is a way to tell a story quicker and with fewer words.  It helps speed up the message of the story, whereas prose, is different.  There isn't to say that there isn't a prose piece that quickly and pointedly gets to the message in a few short sentences, they're just a very, very small minority.

One other connection I made in my mind during class had to do with color guard.  I thought to myself, Prose is like the ROTC color guard.  Very stoic and going in a certain order, marching forward at all times.  Verse, however, that's the artful color guard.  Moving and flowing where the music/poem takes them and not really following too much of an order.  I was able to easily connect the two, in my opinion, because in my high school we had both types of color guard (I was in the artful one).

This is my take on the Prose Vs. Poetry question.  Personally, I like prose better.  I like the ability to spend three paragraphs describing a tree (not that I've ever done that...yet).  I am not a hater of poetry, it's just not my favorite.  I like writing it if I come across a nice string of words in my head that would sound nice in a poem format.

What do you think about this?

À bientôt!

Photo creds: inkwell, poetry/prose, fountain pen,