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by Meischen (Editor), Scott Wiggerman (Editor)
At some point in our part of the world, horses slipped away from the Spanish invaders and adapted to the harsh terrain. No one to rein them in-to train them, feed them, groom them-they evolved into creatures of the wild. Mustangs-part horse, part something else entirely.
What happens when a poem escapes from the stricture of the line? When syntax spools across the page, margin to margin, sentence spilling into sentence? Is there a spark of some kind that transforms a paragraph into a prose poem? Does the prose poem actually exist-as tangibly as the mustang? Or is it a mythical beast, literature's unicorn?
We take the mustang point of view. We're not sure exactly how to define the prose poem, how to pen the creature in. But like Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it. And it's been there all along, camouflaged among pages of prose, as in Joyce's elegiac closing to "The Dead," quoted on the facing page. Read Joyce's paragraph on its own terms. Forget who wrote it. Forget the story it closes. You're reading a prose poem.
For this collection, then, our one requirement was the paragraph. We invited prose poems, flash fictions and nonfictions, haibun, tanka prose, cheribun. We wanted to read the poetry in prose. And we're delighted with the richly varied pieces we chose.
You'll find clear, straightforward narratives and richly imaged landscapes, reflections on personal loss counterpointed by whimsy, by impish humor.
Turn the pages. Follow the seasons. Browse at random. Enjoy....
