I have something of a prelection for prose poetry, that is to say prose written with a certain poetical lint, serving to describe a scene or and idea, rather than tell a story in a more traditional manner. Those who have read my fiction will perhaps be unsurprised by this, specifically my short fiction which often adopts this style of story telling though the focus of a narrator.

Done well, and one flatters one self that one occasionally one succeeds, a reader should be drawn into a tale that is not entirely a tale. A tale that lacks dialogue beyond the internal dialogue of the narrator, is awash with description and depiction without the most common forms of narrative.

Done badly… Well you lose the readers interest long before the story is complete and they will wander off disinterested.

Also, almost every ‘rule’ expounded in modern creative writing courses rails against prose poetry of this form. This is not how you should write modern narrative fiction… Needless to say I don’t… But then I like to hang around with dead authors a lot, and prose poetry was far more common back in the day. Several Lovecraft ‘tales’ fall under this banner, Nyarlathotep been my favorite example.

Several Poe stories have elements of prose poetry to them too. Silence been a prominent example among the early tales. This should hardly be a surprise that Poe wrote short stories that were also prose poems. he was after all as much a poet as a story teller. But with the exception of Silence few other tales really fall into the category. That is until this next tale, The Island of the Fay, which is undoubtedly prose poetry in both structure and content. I should there for love it… Take this exert for example…

I observed a singularly-marked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented, and Asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect—bright, slender and graceful—of eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet every thing had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings

I should love this, and yet…

The trouble is ‘The Island of the Fay’, though beautifully written , haunting and indeed poetic… it lacks any actual story. Or to be more exact the story serves only to give the prose a direction, which is vague at best. There is a dream like quality to bits of it but it lacks any purpose. The main thrust is the loss of the spiritual, magical, world due to our expanding knowledge of science and mathematics.

The more we understand the world, the more of its mystery and wonder is lost to us… Which is a sentiment I don’t entirely disagree with. Yet it is lost within the narrative which wanders off track as the narrator becomes more fanciful, despite that been very much what should happen. THe narrator witnesses the last of the fay among the trees and shrubs of a isolated bit of wilderness. An island still enchanted with the older world we have move on from. The imagery and description of all this is a delight, yet somehow not what it should be.

Poes writing in this story is beautiful, and I honestly hope others feel a connection with it, yet for some reason I did not. I read this tale more times than usual when doing these pieces, wanting to love it, wanting to feel moved by it. It is prose poetry, of that have no doubt, it is wonderfully written also, have no doubt of that. But for a reason I can not define it fails to tug at my heart the way prose poetry normally does.

I can not tell you why it leaves me flat but perhaps it is because I feel it was almost something more. Every element is there to be something special, the prose, the poetic nature, the subject matter, everything… Yet some how it isn’t, for me at least. It is an almost story, almost wonderful, but falling far short of this.

The story itself has little real substance, it is there to frame the telling. But that is not uncommon in such a piece, and should be forgivable. And yet… as I say, it missed my heart.

THREE BEAUTIFUL RAVENS THAT SOME HOW FAIL TO MURDER MY SOUL

Should you read it : Despite what I have said, yes, and I hope it fills your heart with melancholy joy that I wished it would have filled mine with.

Should you not read it: There is no reason to avoid it

Bluffers fact: The Island of the Fay is also the name of the 120th release ( 29th studio album , there is a ridiculous amount of live albums) by somewhat eccentric German band Tangerine Dream. It was the first of the bands ‘Sonic Poems’ albums.