Prose poems are not just poems without line breaks,she explains, but are a hybrid with the novel;
they carry a specific narrative impulse. I wanted to blog specifically on Saje's comment (page 41) on "dialogism" or "heteroglossia." Heteroglossia literally means "different tongues," and dialogism reflects the concept of two different speakers.
While lyric poetry tends to focus on unity, monologue, a single speaker-- elegance and smoothess of thought, the prose poem, like a novel, allows multiple language systems to clash. Different dialects, thoughts, language systems. Nobody is in charge of the language. It is politically subversive. The reader interprets it without the heavy hand of the author. RIGHT! I agree!
Last year, when I read some Polish poetry, I fell in love with its dialogism. Often both speakers were speaking at completely different levels, past each other, even when they were apparently speaking the same language. This is the heritage of oppression; the refusal to listen. The Polish were banned from speaking their own language by first the Nazis, then the Russians. Polish was banned in schools, children punished for speaking Polish. The Polish resisted teaching their language to children, despite the very real risk of being sent to jail or sentenced to hard labor.
The Polish experience strongly parallels the Deaf experience of being derived of ASL right here in America.
Many Deaf adults still remember being slapped for gesturing, anything that could be similar to sign, being forced to speak and listen in a language they couldn't and never could understand fully. Gesture itself is essential to learning language, math, and many other subjects, so this hurt Deaf children's education and fluency in language for life.
But because of Poland's long heritage of language oppression and educated use of other languages (French, Russian, etc.) Polish carries wounds and has been forever changed by its experience. The Polish
can't just "restore" their language. They can't cut out Russian phrases or all foreign influence from Polish (including French); they can't cut out all language that expresses scientific and technological advances, and still have a language that expresses WHO they are, with all its internal conflict.
So-- dialogism. Heteroglossia. Just letting concepts and language levels clash with each other. No "purification." No attempt to represent a unified Polish identity. The Polish are a full society with people of different educational and life experiences, personalities, and souls. There is "who we should be," just heteroglossia. That's what made me realize Deaf Literature should be about all of our hands, even the ugly ones. When we dig, often what we think are the deepest ideas in our cultures are really not; they're just labels, attitudes of anger, pecking order, self-image, or the cliche' of the day. Our deepest ideas are ourselves.
Authenticity is always the most politically subversive of all thought patterns, since it is where humor, anger, and free will comes from. When honest thought or expression is suppressed for the sake of "politics," or to "be more representative" of a group's self-image, then art itself is oppressed. Translation, as Saje mentions, is important to the evolution of a prose poem. Translation kills form, rhymes, wordplay, the culturally-specific concept. Instead of naming them, you must show the concepts in action, which means going to scenes, dialogism, heteroglossia, seeking the deeper truths. This is easiest in prose poetry.
Urszula Koziol wrote this "Psalm" to identity. It is brief, but deep to read.
liberated from me you shan’t free yourself of me
while you’re in me I’ll keep repeating you
(Translation copyright 1999, Barbara Plebanek and Tony Howard)
There is nothing of Poland in this poem, but everything about it is Polish. Also Deaf, also Irish, also anybody struggling with oppression and pain-- colonization, invasion, genocide, loss of language identity. This also recognizes that the oppressed also changes the oppressor's own language.
Sign this and you will realize "repeating" can also be read as being "against" the person. Read this with an English-mind and you will see that "I will keep repeating "you"" is also form of accusation against the self. Two different languages, two different way to express it, but the emotion is the same. Internal oppression.
But understanding this conflict isn't the way to escape it. To think of it is to be stuck in it.
"it is enough to notice it for it to take possession."
Instead, Koziol finds our third way-- not rebellion, not submission, but equality-- honoring the heritage in full.
"complementary exchange:
a tree within us and us within the tree
entrusted to endure
multiplied leaf by leaves "
This is beautiful translated to ASL. Hands upon hands, multiplying forever in a fractal design. We don't have to choose-- we can thus be ourselves, complex, whole, authentic.
Authenticity is dangerous, though, and politically subversive. Artists have always been exiled, oppressed, jailed, and tortured for daring to be authentic, to speak out of step with the prevailing political system of the day. They have been hated by other artists for breaking their ideas of art, for borrowing ideas from "nonappropriate sources." When I read these kind of writers, I feel humble and honored that I can understand that aspect of their art.