From anthology’s bio-notes on contributors: (1) “Aloysius Bertrand (1807–1841) has sometimes been called ‘The Father of the Modern Prose Poem,’ though he never used the term to describe his own work”; (2) “Barry Silesky is the author of One Thing That Can Save Us, prose poems (called short-short fiction by Coffee House Press).”
Of the 144 contributors to Best of The P.P., total # who are, like M. Aloysius Bertrand, now dead: 14.
Total # of contributors who have also published work in literary organ called Flash Fiction: 6.
Total # of contributors who do/did edit literary journals, anthologies, and/or small presses: 21.
Titles of published books listed in bio-note for anthology contributor Nin Andrews: The Book of Orgasms and Spontaneous Breasts.
Average # of prose poems from each Best of The P.P. contributor: 1.42 (mean), 1.58 (median).
Examples of particularly well-known or eminent contributors, with # of included p.p.’s from each: Russell Edson, 7; David Ignatow, 4; Charles Simic, 4; James Tate, 4; Robert Bly, 2; Maxine Chernoff, 2; Larry Levis, 2; Henri Michaux, 2; Stuart Dybek, 1; Bill Knott, 1; Gabriela Mistral, 1; Pablo Neruda, 1.
Total # of above p.p.’s that seem like they’re anywhere even remotely close to their eminent contributors’ best work: 3.
Total # of times Peter Johnson quotes or refers to Russell Edson in his Introduction: 13.
Another typical sentence from Peter Johnson’s Intro: “To me, literary theory, like philosophy, provides few answers; instead, and most importantly, it creates an endless internal and external dialogue which forces us to constantly reevaluate our standards.”
Highest conceivable grade that anthology’s Introduction would receive in an average university Lit./Composition class: B-.
Total # of anthology’s 204 prose poems that are good/alive/powerful/interesting enough to persist in reader’s mind more than 60 seconds after completion: 31.
Of these 31, # that are so great you end up not even caring what genre they’re supposed to be part of: 9.
Of these 9, # that are by one Jon Davis, a poet whom this reviewer’d never heard of before but whose pieces in this anthology are so off-the-charts terrific that the reviewer has actually gone out and bought the one Jon Davis book mentioned in his bio-note and may very well decide to try to advertise it in this magazine, at reviewer’s own expense if necessary — that’s how good this guy is: 5.
Of the remaining 4 great pieces here, # that are by the late David Ignatow and concern his impending death and are so totally beautiful and merciless that you can’t forget them even if you want to: 2.
Other contributors, previously unknown to reviewer, who have good/alive/powerful/interesting pieces in anthology: Gary Fincke (“The History of Passion Will Tumble This Week”), Jennifer L. Holley (“The Rubbing”), Jay Meek (“Leaving the Roadside Motel”), Fred Muratori (“From Nothing in the Dark”), J. David Stevens (“The Sign”), Helen Tzagoloff (“Mail-Order Bride”).
Some of the common features of the 31 pieces in anthology: (1) Even without line breaks or standard prosodic constraints, the p.p.’s seem tightly controlled; they possess both a metrical and a narrative logic. (2) Their sentences tend to be short, almost terse. (3) Many of the p.p.’s are subtly iambic; what meter and alliteration there is is unheavy and tends to make the piece read faster rather than slower. (4a) The pieces’ realistic imagery is concrete, its descriptions compact and associations tautly drawn. (4b) The pieces’ surreal imagery/associations never seem gratuitously weird; i.e., they end up making psychological or emotional sense given what the p.p.’s about. (5) Any puns, entendres, metapoetic allusions, or other forms of jeu d’esprit come off as relevant/serious and never seem like their main purpose is to make the writer appear clever. (6) The pieces’ tone tends to be intimate rather than formal (meaning, in other words, that the p.p.’s exploit one of the big advantages of much good prose, which is the reader’s impression of a human being actually sitting right there talking to him). (7) They all have actual narratives and/or Dramatic Situations. (8) If there’s an argument, the argument is tight, comprehensible, and if not persuasive then at least interesting. (9) The good 31 are all, without exception, moving.
Examples of opening lines of constituent p.p.’s that have some or all of the above qualities: “Only a picture window stands between us and the full force of gusts that lift the branches of the red pine” (Thomas R. Smith’s “Windy Day at Kabekona”); “It’s of no consequence to the grass that it withers, secure in its identity” (David Ignatow’s “Proud of Myself”); “This is not an elegy because the world is full of elegies and I am tired of consoling and being consoled” (Jon Davis’s “The Bait”).
Total # of anthology contributors who are employed as Poet in Residence at a children’s hospitaclass="underline" 1.
# who are described in bio-note as “the enfant terrible of Greek Surrealism”: 1.
# who have the last names Johnson or Smith: 6.
Total % of anthology prose poems that are primarily about death/loss/life’s transience: 57.1.
% about sex: 16.6.
% about love: 0.2.
% about cooking: 0.2.
Square root of book’s ISBN: 43,520.065.
Of Best of The P.P.’s 173 unmemorable or otherwise ungreat prose poems, total % that deploy as topoi or include as important characteristics (1) bitter or unhappy childhood memories: 21.3; (2) an object, scene, or tableau that is described, analogized, troped, associated, and ruminated over until the establishment of its status as a metaphor seems to be the p.p.’s only real aim: 50.6; (3) references to or discussions of Poetry itself: 12.1; (4) ultrararefied allusions to, e.g., Théophile Gautier, Paul Quéré, Sibelius’s “Swan of Tuonela,” etc.: 13.8; (5) heavy-handed use of anaphora, ploce, repetend, and/or alliteration: 20.7; (6) assorted jeux d’esprit whose main purpose seems to be to make the poet appear clever: 15.5; (7a) surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose obvious point is the psycho-affective disorder of the modern world: 21.8; (7b) surreal/fabulist conceits and descriptions whose point or even relation to anything else in the p.p. is indiscernible: 48.3; (8a) surreal or free-associative transitions between sentences or ¶s: 51.7… (8b) which transitions themselves have no discernible point or resonance and make the whole p.p. seem at once pretentious and arbitrary: 46.6; and (9) just plain bad, clunky writing, no matter what genre or era it is: 51.7.
Examples of above feature (9) from randomly selected anthology p.p.’s: “I don’t know how you feel about it, but for years and years, from the point of view of a person practicing my own, would-be benignly optimistic profession — that of a struggling manufacturer of colorful and sometimes even relatively amusing toys — I’ve felt that this constant placing of myself into bad moods by the conventional world, practically amounts to theft!” (Michael Benedikt’s “The Toymaker Gloomy but Then Again Sometimes Happy”); “She intended to be epic with repercussions this time, so through mostly legal methods she hastened his entrapment” (Brian Swann’s “The Director”); “No good, the slow resisting of rage, the kindly cupping of each hand in prayer while facing the shot-up outskirts of the town, as though to hold water out to a thirsty sniper, and see the rifle laid down, and water taken as a final covenant” (Robert Hill Long’s “Small Clinic at Kilometer 7”).
Total # of zeroes in anthology’s Library of Congress Control Number: 5.
Total # of postcolonic words left before RT’s 1,000-word limit is exceeded: 267, minus this phrase’s own 52 words.