Beginning to explore poetic prose

Ok, time to turn this toward writing.

Yesterday I wanted to find out what makes for 'poetic' writing, but for a while all I could turn up were articles about writing poetry. Not really what I had in mind. I want to understand what makes some stories or parts of stories feel more poetic. I looked into the differences between prose and poetry, but predictably most of what I found was simply definitions of the two or very simple surface differences, such as that prose is in sentences and paragraphs while poetry is written in lines that have rhythmical or almost musical elements like meter and repetition and sometimes rhyme.

All this made me realize I need to strengthen my Google fu. I must not be asking the right questions. And one important thing I've learned is that often the problem is that you haven't properly defined your question. In the defining and refining process itself you'll sometimes find the answer.

So I tried some different search terms—things like 'what is poetic literature?' and 'what is lyrical prose?'

That one netted me something good. I still had to sift through a lot of standard shallow internet crap, but some ways in I discovered a very enlightening Quora response by a writer named Ellen Vrana. Following are a few quotes from her lengthy article that set me on my way:

“Lyrical has come to be understood as 'beautiful exposition or narration.'

That is not entirely what lyrical means; it does not mean words that personify inanimate objects or beautifully describe snow for the sake of it. It does not mean flowery, descriptive, or poetic verse just as is.

It is misused so often that if you have any sense, you'll do well to avoid any book that self-promotes as 'lyrical.' (Much to the chagrin of some keen fantasy authors who use the word "lyrical' for the very purpose of selling more of their formulaic crap.)

“Lyrical means that the prose (or an entire novel) has an aspect of music in its rhythm, sound, and/or structure.”​

Now this I like! In particular the last part—a musical aspect in its structure. This is getting close to what I'm looking for, though I still don't quite know how to articulate it or what to do with it.

It reminds me of the familiar adage that says prose is like walking and poetry is like dance. Yes, this is definitely good stuff. Now I guess I gotta learn how to dance. In writing I mean. How do you do in writing what those poetic filmmakers do in their movies? I think I'm gonna have to spend some time—maybe a great deal of it—looking into poetic form. Not the mechanics of the words and lines and meter etc, but the more esoteric stuff underlying that. And I'm well aware that's the kind of stuff I'd more likely find in books from a hundred years ago than on the internet, unless somebody who really knows their stuff has posted about it. But back to the Quora article—this is really some good stuff:

“Lyrical prose that has a rhythm is perhaps the hardest to identify, because it requires one to read aloud, to notice the pause, stress, and pitch (especially pitch) of the words.”​

Oh wow. Well I already do this! At least when things are going well, when I get my flow on, I tend to lay out sentences with a certain rhythmic flow to them, and at some point somebody told me that she was reading it aloud and noticed it sounds really nice. And it occurred to me that's something I do work on, even if it's always been pretty intuitive and I hadn't really done it deliberately. So often when I'm writing I imagine how it would sound if it were read aloud—not by me, but by some Shakespearian actor—one of those English guys with a Sir in front of his name, like Patrick Stewart (is he a Sir? Not sure, but he ought to be) or Ian Mckellen, or maybe to go more old school Richard Harris or James Earl Jones. This is an imaginal exercise—by imagining somebody like that reading your work out loud it helps you access parts of your mind you normally wouldn't if only imagining yourself reading it, or not imagining anybody reading it.

I don't always do this, and some parts of my writing aren't right for it. I might need to imagine different types of people reading some of it, though probably best to stick with one type for a story throughout, unless parts of the story are in different voices. But this is just conjecture, untested at this point. Back to the article:

“Lyrical structure or plot is when the entire novel reverberates around a central theme or image and returns to it like a refrain. Each subsequent movement/chapter adds more information and more complexity but the melody is always present.”​

Now we're getting somewhere! This sounds like the Poetic Image, which the viewer or reader assembles after absorbing the work and can then begin to understand the theme or themes (see 2 entries back). I think this is an important aspect of poetic form. And now it occurs to me—poems are meant to be absorbed slowly, gradually, and contemplated for some time. It's an experience that should be profound or—not necessarily pleasant, but at least fascinating. It affects you like music. And I don't mean catchy pop tunes where the words are the most important part, I mean the deeply stirring instrumental stuff that makes you feel like you're dreaming. Or it can have words, but they shouldn't be ordinary prose words arranged in prose form, but more like Yes lyrics—dreamlike, poetic, trance-inducing—that aggregate themselves into the poetic image because the logical linguistic left hemisphere doesn't process them the way it does normal speech or prose, they drift into the dreaming artistic right hemisphere. Now it feels like I'm starting to build up a Poetic Image of what Poetic Form might be. And that's probably the right way to do it. Hah! Pun not intended, but there it is. Get it—the right way, the right hemisphere?

...And one final quote from the article:

“'The form lends itself to psychological narrative, imitating the lay of the wandering or dreaming mind (especially the mind troubled by one or more traumatic experiences); and most are dream-like quality.' - John Gardner”​

That clinches it! I MUST get that John Gardner book! His Grendel is amazing!

Well, I feel like I've made some good headway toward understanding how to approach what I think of as Poetic Prose—every time I searched for those terms last night all I could find was info about Prose Poetry, which is NOT what I'm looking for! At least not in the simple surface way it was being described on all the pages I looked at. They seemed to concentrate only on the mechanics of rhyme and meter and such, nothing to do with poetic form.