Best American Poetry Blog

First Prose Poem [by Richard Garcia]

July 19, 2009

I think the first prose poem
I read was “At the Bottom of the Sea,” by Luis Cernuda (left), a Spanish poet of the
generation of Lorca. It made quite
an impression. It makes me wonder,
is there such a thing as a template poem?
A poem that impresses itself upon our being, so that our own writing
unconsciously harkens back to it.
A poem whose images, or bits of narrative, re-emerge in our own work
from time to time, like the hand of a statue buried in a sand dune? Here is the Cernuda poem. It appeared,
translated by Ray Melendez, about 1961 in a journal called Ishmael.

At the Bottom of the Sea

Luis Cernuda

At the bottom of the sea were a pearl and an old
trumpet. The subtle capes of water
smiled tenderly when passing them; they were called The Two Friends.

There was a drowned child near a coral tree. His pale arms and the luminous branches
embraced tightly; they were called The Two Lovers.

There was a piece of wheel which came from afar and a
stuffed bird who astonished the fish like an elegant stranger; they were called
The Nomads.

There was a mermaid’s tail with poisonous reflections
and an adolescent’s thigh, far from each other; they were called The Enemies.

There was a star, a man’s garter, a worn-out book and
a minute violin; there were other unique marvels, and when the water passed by,
touching them slightly, it seemed as if the water wanted to invite them to a
radiant parade.

But nothing could be compared to the hand of
plaster. It was so beautiful that
I decided to steal it. Since then
it fills my nights and my days; it strokes me and loves me. I call it The Truth of Love.

•••

The first book of prose poems
I read was not a book of prose poems; the editor called them modern
parables. Imperial Messages: One
Hundred Modern Parables, edited by
Howard Schwartz (1976) was a small Avon paperback, and if you pick it up from
the web now it may cost you less than the postage. The title story is by Kafka, and there are pieces in it by
well-known fabulists such as Borges, Márquez, and Isak Dinesen; Merwin, Gogal,
Hans Christian Andersen, Bob Dylan, Calvino, and Edson are more names that
would be familiar. It has a story
by Rabbi Nachman, whose improvised tales were written down by his
students. Also there's a story by
the Berber artist, Mohammed Mrabet, whose stories and novels were spoken into
tape, and transcribed and translated by Paul Bowles. My favorite is by a
Canadian writer, David Slabotsky, “The Death of Rabbi Yoseph.” His story is taken from his chapbook
which you can still get on the internet, The World of Genesis. Imperial
Messages also has work by Kobo Abé, Artaud, Serrano, Cortázar: if you want to
see the initial mode of the prose poem, look at the parable.