The Prose Poem, Flash Fiction, Lyrical Essays and Other Microgenres

It has been argued that some readers may be attracted to the prose poem format, whether of the speculative or narrative variety, because they have no patience or time for longer forms. Despite the growing popularity of such generic neologisms as “sudden”, “flash” or “Twitter” fiction, the proximity of the prose poem to neighboring short narrative prose genres has been the focus of little critical attention. This chapter investigates the interplay between lyrico-poetic and narrative modes displayed in the “fabulist” prose poem, a sub-genre often associated with the neo-Surrealist poetics of the likes of Julio Cortázar, Miroslav Holub, Russell Edson, Charles Simic, and Lydia Davis. It will begin with a theoretical examination of the relationship between the narrative prose poem and short narrative genres (such as the fable and the parable). It proceeds to consider to what extent the metapoetic foregrounding of discourse and writing-as-process which characterizes many prose poems of the fabulist variety is linked with an understanding of poetic language as a deviant use of the language of rational logic and of a number of specific conventions underlying discursive or narrative genres.