Poet's Prose: The Crisis in American Verse

TLDR

Poet's Prose is the first scholarly work devoted exclusively to American prose poetry and is recognized as a pioneering study in contemporary American poetry. The study seeks to determine why recent American poets write prose and what it signifies. The book analyzes three seminal prose poems—Williams’ *Kora in Hell*, Creeley’s *Presences*, and Ashbery’s *Three Poems*—while also examining contemporary trends such as David Antin’s talk poems and Language poets’ prose, providing interpretive guidance and philosophical analysis. The analysis shows that American prose poetry is philosophically serious and increasingly central to contemporary theoretical poetry.

Abstract

Poet's Prose is the first scholarly work devoted exclusively to American prose poetry and has been recognised as a pioneering study in contemporary American poetry. Many recent American poets have been writing prose; Fredman has set out to determine why and what it means. Three central works of American poets' prose are discussed in detail: William Carlos Williams' Kora in Hell, Robert Creeley's Presences, and John Ashbery's Three Poems. In these chapters, Fredman both demonstrates how to read these difficult works and examines their philosophical seriousness. In a final chapter and a new epilogue, he discusses the newest trends in contemporary poetry, the 'talk poems' of David Antin and the prose of the Language poets, in which poet's prose forms an important aspect of the 'theoretical poetry' now being written.