{"id":137991019,"date":"2026-04-26T15:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/?p=137991019"},"modified":"2026-04-27T10:16:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:16:43","slug":"you-are-here-day-25-of-national-poetry-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jahangiri.us\/2020\/you-are-here-day-25-of-national-poetry-month\/","title":{"rendered":"You Are Here: Day 25 of National Poetry Month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 25: National Poetry Month<\/h2>\n

Ars Poetica<\/h2>\n

I am a time-traveler. I reach into the void of tomorrow and pluck a prompt: “to write your own\u00a0ars poetica<\/em>, giving the reader some insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do”\u2014but by the time it’s posted, it is a relic of the past and overripe. I tuck myself into the velvet folds of time. Coffee-scented present lures me\u2014shoving me into the harsh light of “now.” Reality is a bruising, concrete block of time, a fixed and aching point. The coffee grows cold and bitter. Ink is a river traversed with my pen, its winding tributaries flowing, branching, turning, rushing rapids, slowing – in conversation with a gathering of stones.<\/p>\n

Poetry Forms Challenge: Prose Poetry<\/h2>\n

What is a “prose poem”? I dive down rabbit holes and come up for air in great gulps. “Nobody knows.” No matter how many burrows and warrens I crawl through, I keep arriving at the same conclusion\u2014a prose poem is…a painting in words. It isn’t a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It is more what publishers once called a “slice of life vignette,” usually preceded by the word “no.” It is a fragment, a moment, a mood, an emotion. It is visual and visceral, but it doesn’t do all the work for<\/em> the reader.<\/p>\n

And isn’t that what all<\/em> good writing ought to be, or at least to include? Isn’t that what the writer does? Paint images in a reader’s mind to show<\/em> the reader what’s in the writer’s mind? Surely not with long, narrative passages describing each dust mote as it sinks and rises through the thermals of a slanted sunbeam to settle on a baby’s toes. Not short and choppy, like the heavy thwack-slice of a guillotine as the pale head with its slender neck and wide-open eyes hits the hay for the last time. It doesn’t tell a story, it unfolds one. It is not a destination; it is the red pin in a map that proclaims to the reader: “You are here.”<\/p>\n

I once asked James Matthew Wilson<\/a>, “What’s the difference between a prose poem and flash fiction?” He suggested that if you wanted to write prose poetry, you ought to call it flash fiction if you want it to sell and be read. That’s a good point. I see so many submissions guidelines and contest requirements that say, “NO PROSE POEMS” and yet, flash fiction is still popular. Write what you will; just be sneaky if you write prose poetry and call it something else.<\/p>\n

People love to ask writers, “What do you write?” As someone who has written technical manuals, non-fiction articles, short fiction (any and every genre), children’s books, flash fiction, erotica, blogs, poetry\u2014it might be simpler to ask, “What don’t<\/em> you write?” Because I finally figured out an answer to that one: I don’t write about finance. I would rather wax poetic about the sound of paint drying.<\/p>\n

Other National Poetry Month Posts<\/h2>\n