Prose Poem


Like an earnestly posed question that receives a "technical" rather than a "cosmic" answer. Dissatisfaction sets in, and stays awhile, until much later when you actually come to prefer this kind of technical solution, and even begin to wonder what other kind of answer you could have expected. Yet this newly found complacency gives rise to a nagging sense of loss, as though the inability to imagine a more satisfying alternative were itself an index of irreversible psychic damage.

I remember when I first learned the word "sojourn," in a book by Carson McCullers. It is not a word I have much occasion to use, though I have always liked it quite a bit.

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The most obvious defect of this so called "prose poem" is that it is entirely derivative of John Ashbery's Three Poems. What I like about it is that it shows I know how to express myself in this "Ashberyian" language with some proficiency. If I were a less able mimic I might be a more original writer.