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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

https://thotpurge.wordpress.com/2025/01/07/2029-postscript/ A very recent effort...maybe the line between pretty prose and prose poem is in the use of poetic devices and cadence...but this fits in somewhere...!

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

The definitions are blurry, anyways. We classify them how we want, i guess. You invoke a vivid yet sad reality in your poem.

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Stefano Carini's avatar

“The sea was lost in a game of shadows, entering, and fading the night just at the beginning of the morning. Undecided, between the eternal anonymity of the night, next only to the cosmic mysteries of faraway stars and the watercolors of the day. And it was there, in that subtle blue line where the sea meets the ocean that all began. That primordial soup of colours, ever-changing roles in the elusive time of the morning. When the sky slowly hands over the key of darkness to the sea and wears the dress of daily light. But all of that had no

name. Only colours spread widely over a canvas, whether in a painter’s study or in the realm of memories. Whether in a dream or at the beginning of a new life, where nameless colours are dense with magic wonder and our eyes filled with light. And hours are music, no meaning for the time with its pale blue eyes like the winter we get to know in adult life. That was time to listen to the silence of the morning.

Seize the morning

from its roots

and let it grow

silently,

in the secret

shining grace of dawn.

Let your heart wonder

of the moment,

while existence

speaks in wordless

streams of joy

here and now:

Our souls walking

a heavenly river .

Iseabail was holding the piece of paper in her hands. It was Ian's daily little poem. He used to write one a day for her.

They were sitting by the sea close to a high white cliff to see the sunrise. Stars were giving away to the daylight, with the majesty of the Milky Way’s lights slowly fading into the sky.

Her black long hairs in stark contrast with her deep blue eyes looking at the faint murmur of orange and pink swimming through the silence of the sunrise, just broken by seagulls crying in unknown depths of the cliffs around them.

Those eyes were so deep, as if the power of the sea had been enshrined inside of them by a cosmic power. Or perhaps it was the blue cobalt of the sky above the highest icy clouds. That invisible boundary between us and them, enclosed in the sapphire of her soul.

Ian looked quite different from her and similar at the same time. Tall and thin with a pale complexion and short blond hair that could not reason with any form of hairdresser's care and did seem to take their own direction every day depending on the mood around them. Emerald green eyes, lost in faraway patterns and colours of nature. He was after an invisible line around him, hiding and revealing. Giving and taking at the same time. His hands agile and ready to write, draw and paint like. Tended into an eternal prayer to the world for receiving in colours and images the answer to a question not yet asked.

This was the golden hour of the morning, when dreams you've had at night timidly whisper through the chords of memory before dissolving in the sunrise and getting back to the whitish routine of the clouds wandering the day sky.”

—from “The Snow is Also Soaked”, by me. Thank you Namratha, you made me think that maybe this tentative novel was all written as a prose poem.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/stefano-carini/the-snow-is-also-soaked/ebook/product-579ndwg.html

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

This definitely leans towards prose poem. The language flows with such a rhythm, especially loved the vivid descriptions at the beginning

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Manisha Sahoo's avatar
Sonia Dogra's avatar

This was a difficult call for me. I tried getting in some tools like repetition and varying line lengths, but on the whole the focus remained on surrealism. However, here it is.

https://soniadogra.com/2025/02/26/exploring-prose-poetry-and-surrealism/

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

enjoyed reading it, Sonia

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Sonia Dogra's avatar

I love the images your prose poem creates. And Avni personifies absurdism so well. I like how you end it, definitely not as bizarre as one would expect it to be. I've never tried prose poetry. Once I submitted a flash piece that they accepted in the prose poem category. I was flummoxed. Maybe I'll understand it better now.

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

Hope this post helps a bit. But, I guess prose poetry is as defined and as undefined as can be. It is a trial each time. Sometimes it works.

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Nina S. Nazir's avatar

Thank you for the inspiring prompt, Namratha! I love the poems you've shared and also the previous poetic adventure prompts, which I'll try and write to another time. Meanwhile, I managed one for this week...🙂

https://sunrarainz.wordpress.com/2025/02/25/ill-meet-you-in-the-next-one-dont-be-late/

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

Thank you, Nina. Thanks for writing along with us. Would love to read your poems on the other prompts as well.

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Manisha Sahoo's avatar

This will get my grey cells working overtime, even though images are already beginning to form. Loved the way your poem created Avni and sheathed her and her loneliness.

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

Thanks Manisha. I went with the flow in this one and it was surprising where it led.

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Renni Grier's avatar

i am very new to prose poetry and not sure where to start. would you suggest studying a poem i like and writing something similar? sort of like a master study?

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

Yes. I think that would be a great way to start. I am fairly new to prose poetry too, and studying pieces and writing has yielded some interesting results

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Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatar

I think absurdism is a great fit for prose poetry..a little more room to elaborate than a poem..so one can tell a whole story. The character you have painted evokes curiosity...what will she do next???

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Namratha Varadharajan's avatar

Yes. I did have fun working with it.

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