What is Prose?, A definition Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

What is Prose anyway?

PROSE can be defined as: The ordinary way we speak and write in sentences and paragraphs. (Examples: newspapers, magazines, letters, novels, short stories, speeches, conversations, everything except POETRY.)

Prose is the unrhymed, nonmetrical, everyday language we speak and write at any or all levels. We usually mean written language when we use the word prose, however, and we contrast prose with poetry or verse. Sometimes (but rarely) we contrast it with fiction, as well.

Inadvertent rhyme in prose, as in "Please clean the screen", can often mar a passage’s effectiveness, just as deliberate use of it is a favorite attention-getting device in advertising.
Like excessive alliteration, deliberate rhyme in prose, especially rime riche (pronounced REEM REESH), which uses two or more words pronounced and sometimes spelled alike but with different meanings (as in He’s a fishy sort, with no more soul than a sole), is of dubious merit except for jocular use.

Good prose usually avoids repetitive regular metrical patterns, just as it avoids or minimizes inadvertent rhyme, but that doesn’t mean it lacks rhythm. Avoid insistently obvious patterns, particularly overlong stretches of text, because rocking-horse regularity can be either soporific or inadvertently funny. Seek instead the variety and effectiveness of a rhythm that reinforces meaning, provides variety, and is easy and pleasant to read, silently or aloud. Parallelism, as in I came, I saw, I conquered, judicious placement of adverbs, as in Attempt the work willingly, accept its discomforts patiently, and respond to the result cheerfully, variety in lengths and kinds of sentences, as in We planned the attack with care, we committed our resources with restraint, and we controlled our zeal with patience; nonetheless, we failed, and juxtapositions of grammatical and rhetorical stress, as in with liberty and justice for all, are all examples of ways you can vary and control the rhythm of your prose.

Source: http://www.bartleby.com

[Guest_Jox_*]

Hi Perry,

Behind my comment was a slightly more serious point.

With respect, I disagree with your definition of poetry.

Why not say prose is what we choose not to call poetry?

Neither definition actually says anything does it?

Now, my definition of poetry is no more helpful - poetry is what the writer says it is. However, if something that I don't think is remotely poetic is posted as poetry I then ask the writer, "I accept this is poetry, as you say it is - but why do you say it's poetry?"

In a way, of course, it doesn't matter at all. But humans like classifications and sometimes it can be inconvenient if people ignore them. Also, if people post things I don't think are poetry I want to know what I'm not understanding; what new opportunities there are. etc.

One objection I took to your definition was that it suggests poetry must be in a written language. Must it? Cannot many things be (if not poetry per se) at least poetic?

If poetry is what prose isn‘t and vikky-verky then we still have no division betwixt the two. We might as well scrap the words “poetry“ and “prose“ and just use “writing“ - which might be a very good idea.

I don‘t think anything has absolutes (poetry is...) but I can‘t accept defining one in terms of the absence of t‘other - and vikky-verky again - sheds any light at all.

Thanks for the discussion.... very interesting.

J.