This morning I’m offering a combined attack on prompts offered by Ragtag Daily (“Comprise”) and by the Poets United (Pantry #3) by posting a 100-worder originally published in January of last year by the good folks at The Drabble. You can read the original Drabble Here.
Prose…Poetry…It’s all just comprised of words, right?
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Poet’s Biggest Fear
Hanging out with the fictionauts and the prosers, he fears, may have damaged his poetry.
These days, instead of concentrating on linebreaks and imagery, he worries about commas and semicolons; thinks in dependant clauses; ponders parallel constructions and parenthetical prepositional phrases.
When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing.
Instead, he declaims his work from start to finish, paragraph by dreary paragraph, from beginning to end to ensure that it makes sense; conforms to the norms of grammar’s logic.
Sometimes it puts him to sleep.
He’s afraid of writing a nightmare.
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Pantry of Poetry & Prose #3
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RDP Sunday ~ COMPRISE
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Scrambled, Not Fried 
Ha! Great ending. Dreams and poems are in the same family. I think of prose as my day job and poetry as the rest of my life!
Oh.. but I as you know that prose can be poetry, but often prose isn’t poetry, you just have to stay with poetic prose as you did
Oh write the nightmare!
🙂
I am deeply touched by the sentiments in this one, Ron. Poetry is as Poetry does … it can not conform to rules and norms of Grammar’s logic.. ❤️
I was smiling from the first sentence! Grinning at the last! Loved it!
“When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing… sometimes it puts him to sleep” Instead of a song it’s a lullaby. With a nightmare kind of twist. He himself has become one of the “prosers.”
Prose and poetry has become the same thing nowadays. I fall to it myself. But when we write a prose piece and it is called poetry, that is the true nightmare.
Instead of either/or, why not both?
When my writing starts to put me to sleep, I know it’s time to stop for the day!
I understand this perspective. In the past I have been criticised for my poetic prose writing – I asked the critic if they’ve read Dylan Thomas’s prose and they shut up. I find the shift from prose to poetry so refreshing, I especially love the line ‘When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing’.
Yup! Felt this one–I think we all do!
We soon find out if we have as comments are few!
Tell it like it is!!!
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