The Best of the Prose Poem

Book excerpt: Since its inception in 1992, 'The Prose Poem' has published work which even the writers themselves cannot define without restoring the metaphor. Russell Edson likens prose poems to 'cast iron aeroplanes that can actually fly', while Charles Simic states that writing them is like trying to catch a fly in a dark room. The fly probably isn't even there...You keep tripping over and bumping into things in hot pursuit. Nonetheless, Johnson knows a prose poem when he reads one. Better still, he recognises a good one and has included many of them here.