Prose Poem Post Second Attempt

"Be Drunk"
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Louis Simpson

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16054

I don't really think drunkenness is a good idea anymore, however I suppose that is besides the point. More on topic, I am not sure that I have really mastered the theory of what a prose poem is. I know that this is one and from what I can find a prose poem is different from a regular poem in that it has punctuation and is written in sentences. It retains the stanza structure though. I feel like we read this in class. I'm really not sure. Hopefully, not.

Cory Lyman Cories

Here is a prose poem by William Carlos Williams the Puerto Rican Jewish doctor who dwelled for most of his life in Rutherford, NJ:

"This Is Just to Say"

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold


*This is poetry in the sense that William Carlos Williams takes a large consideration in the careful choice of words and the lack of paragraphs. Despite the enjambment, the poem reads more like sentences than lines of poetry. Even the title is a part of the sentence.