A Poverty of Objects : The Prose Poem and the Politics of Genre

## For my mother and father and for Mary Special thanks are due to the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) for an initial one-year grant that enabled me to conduct research on the prose poem and in literary theory at the University of Constance in West Germany, and to Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robertjauss, and the DAAD for making possible an additional year of support during which I was able to write initial drafts of the greater part of the book. I am especially grateful to Irving Wohlfarth for his contributions to this project and for his invaluable support over the years. I thank others as well who have read part or all of the manuscript at various stages and contributed to its development: in particular, Introduction: The Prose Poem As A Dialogical Genre -- Pt. 1. Two Precursors: Universalpoesie As Fragment: Friedrich Schlegel And The Prose Poem -- Novalis's Hymnen An Die Nacht And The Prose Poem Avant La Lettre -- Pt. 2. The Prose Poem In Its Heroic Age: Baudelaire's Poor: The Petits Poèmes En Prose And The Social Reinscription Of The Lyric -- Narrative, History, Verse Undone: The Prose Poetry Of Rimbaud -- Pt. 3. The Prose Poem In The Age Of Cubism: History As Farce: (re)situating Max Jacob's Cornet à Dés -- The Violence Of Things: The Politics Of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons -- Pt. 4. The Other Side Of Things: Self-reflexive Fables: Ernst Bloch's Spuren -- Fragments Of A World Restored: Francis Ponge's Rhetoric By Objects -- Pt. 5. Beyond French Borders: Two Contemporaries: Politics And Solitude: The Prose Poetry Of Robert Bly -- Time Doesn't Pass: Helga Novak And Possibilities Of The Prose Poem -- Conclusion: Uses Of The Prose Poem. Jonathan Monroe. Includes Index. Bibliography: P. 339-341.

The prose poem, Jonathan Monroe asserts, is the genre that does not want to be itself. In his view, the dominant literary historical role of the prose poem has been to test the limits of generic constraints. Monroe here undertakes a comparative and historical investigation of the problematic relationship between prose and poetry and of the development of the prose poem over the past two centuries.