Prose Poem : Poetic Form and the Boundaries of Genre
Delville, Michel
University Press of Florida
Jonathan Monroe defines the literary and historical significance of the prose poem as “above all that of a critical, self-critical, Utopian genre, a genre that tests the limits of genre” (16). The prose poem, he adds, “aspires to be poetic/literary language’s own coming to self-consciousness, the place where poet and reader alike become critically aware of the writer’s language” (3536). By putting the accent on the genre’s status as a self-consciously deviant form, Monroe raises the issue of the possibility of a mise en abyme of genericness by an individual literary work. The question, according to Jacques Derrida, becomes whether a writer is actually practicing a genre, so to speak, “from within” or “from without”:
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What are we doing when, to practice a “genre,” we quote a genre, represent it, stage it, expose its generic law, analyze it practically? Are we still practicing the genre? Does the work still belong to the genre it re-cites? But inversely, how could we make a genre work without referring to it [quasi-] quotationally, indicating at some point, “See, this is a work of such-and-such a genre”? Such an indication does not belong to the genre and makes the statement of belonging an ironical exercise. It interrupts the belonging of which it is a necessary condition. (Reader 259)
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