from the ether
Kathryn Dunlevie © 2023
on short forms & the prose poem
I LOVE short forms. I write short forms. I read short forms. I teach short forms. While standing at 5’ 6” I don’t necessarily have a short form, you can still call me a short-form sort of writer. At least sometimes.
Prose poems are one type of short form. Other shorts fall in the broad sub-genre categories of flash fiction or brief nonfiction. Brevity—500 words or less in our case—is the most common attribute of the various short forms, necessitating the art of omission. These brief pieces have much in common, and often the genre walls seem so thin, even fluid, that one might have the impression that there’s no substantive difference between them at all.
We also recognize that writing short forms enlarges the possible places to submit such work, possibly increasing
chances of publication. I’ve successfully done so myself, leaving it to a journal’s editorial team to determine if a narrative-driven prose poem or a surrealistic flash or a list-style lyric essay will suit. The art of blurring boundaries—sfumato in a painting—is one of the freedoms contemporary writing affords. Genre boundaries can be breached.
That said, as a journal currently focusing specifically on the prose poem, DMQ Review turns down many well-written submissions based on our sensibility of what a prose poem is and what we perceive to be its essential differences from flash fiction and nonfiction. Scroll down to my column here from our first all-prose poem issue where I make a general introduction to a definition and list suggested reading. Please look here for a Part 2, more-poetic take on our vision of the prose poem. And, with four all-prose poem issues now available, reading what we publish is an instructive way to flesh-out what we look for.
In teaching short forms, I emphasize memoir as fealty to fact or memory—what actually happened—vs fealty to what’s happening, could happen, should happen in the poem. Flash fiction’s loyalty is to story, a plot and a character in it. As editors, we ask whether a submission allows some entry/exit from the real or from narrative through poetry’s power of imagery/symbol/metaphor, poetry’s capacity for slippage and “extra meaning,” for surprise, maybe even for wonder. What is the intention of your piece?
Think of traditional line break as one way for a poem to disrupt and open linear thought to gaps and surprising intimations, to create felt thought vs rational logic. A prose poem must create similar disruption but within a prose line. This puts extra pressure on language, syntax, and the creative endeavor itself.
Such attempts at delineation may very well “dwell in sfumato,” as the late poet Mary Lou Taylor said of herself. But that’s where you’ll find us at the DMQ Review, reading your submissions, finding our way, looking for poems that offer such possibility and surprise.
We think you’ll agree we found our way to some excellent work for the Summer 2023 Issue thanks to our talented contributors. We give a special shout-out to featured artist Kathryn Dunlevie whose fantastical images blur the visual line between the real and the imagined in a most visceral and exciting manner.
Finally, I’m thrilled that our website’s Squarespace platform now includes the left-right justification option allowing us to present these prose poems in the satisfyingly boxy shape indicative of prose poetry. Hooray!
from the Ether,
Sally Ashton
Editor-in-Chief