Poetry vs. Prose

David Whyte on On Being

Prose is about something.

Well, I always say that poetry is language against which you have no defenses. Otherwise, it’s not poetry. It’s prose, which is about something.

https://onbeing.org/programs/david-whyte-the-conversational-nature-of-reality/#transcript

Elizabeth Alexander on On Being

https://onbeing.org/programs/elizabeth-alexander-words-that-shimmer/#transcript

DR. ALEXANDER:So let’s turn to that.

[reading: “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe”]

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I'”),
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

So I think that the truth of that poem is not about true things or things that happened, but rather in the question: are we not of interest to each other?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43308/kitchenette-building

kitchenette building

BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms
Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?
We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

Gwendolyn Brooks, "kitchenette building" from Selected Poems, published by Harper & Row. Copyright © 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Reprinted by consent of Brooks Permissions.

Source: Selected Poems (Harper & Row, 1963)