The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem Moves Beyond the Familiar

The Guardian's Kate Kellaway reviews The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem (Penguin, 2018), edited by Jeremy Noel-Tod. "Not a single piece here is unworthy of notice and the excitement is that, alongside indispensable familiars – Turgenev, Oscar Wilde, Seamus Heaney, Geoffrey Hill, Czeslaw Milosz – there are many unusual suspects," writes Kellaway. More:

Many prose poems are anecdotal – acquiring seriousness by standing alone. Amjad Nasser’s The Phases of the Moon in London (2004) describes a dismaying gap between neighbours and is about English bigotry masquerading as politeness, although it begins as a chat about the weather, “the rusty key that opens conversation here in London”.

And speaking of rust, there is a particularly marvellous meditation by Shuntarō Tanikawa on a rusty pair of Scissors (1975). Objects thrive as subjects in prose poems. Stéphane Mallarmé’s The Pipe (1897) smoulders compellingly – more brutal than Proust’s madeleine, the tobacco scent recalling a London winter and a pitiful, scantily dressed and, ultimately, forsaken lover. Gertrude Stein’s Roastbeef from Tender Buttons (1914) – basted in words – asks to be read aloud at Sunday lunch. And Neglected Knives (1998), by Kristin ÓmarsdÓttir, is a winning piece about knives kept by single women in their kitchens (apply to the poem for more information).

By the end, my copy of the book was bristling with bookmarks... 

Read on here.