Prose? Poetry? Who knows?

Prose? Poetry? Who knows? My collaborator Stephanie Farrow and I have discussed this topic endlessly. Where is the line between poetry and prose? Is a story poem just prose with line breaks? Does a poem have to be obscure to qualify as art?

I’ve explored these questions and many others with participants at conferences for the Missouri Writers Guild
and Story Circle Network (in Texas). One of my favorite excercises in this workshop is to take poems and prose from recognized authors and ask the workshop participants to “translate” the prose into poetry and the poetry into prose.

Try it to see what you discover about these two ways of writng and the border where they meet and cross.