Monday's Poetry: "Kansas"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

A friend loaned me a copy of Nice Fish, a collection of "prose poetry" by Louis Jenkins.   I was not overly familiar with the concept of prose poetry, but quickly grew fascinated with the uncomplicated gems that Mr. Jenkins has put to paper.  Prose poems give the feeling of poetry but in a more accessible style.  The poet said this about prose poetry in the introduction to Nice Fish:

"It was the freedom of the prose poem which first attracted me, its flexibility which makes it hospitable to images from the unconscious and to conscious narrative, which allows language that is lyrical to coexist with that which is prosaic.  I loved the idea of a poem that worked without rhyme, meter, or predetermined line breaks, things which insist that the reader should be having a poetic experience.  Yet in some ways the prose poem seems to me to be a very formal poem."

All I can say is that I was very moved by many pieces in this collection. Here is a sampler, one rich with relevance to rustic rural scenes that I have trod:

Kansas
by Louis Jenkins 

As she smells that clean sheets the farmer's wife thinks of the 1930's.  Wind shifts the clothes on the line, blows her dress tight against he heavy legs. 

The farmer in his dirty overalls searches through years of broken machinery behind the barn, searches through tall sunflowers, through the nests of rabbits and mice with a wrench in his hand, looking for exactly the right part or one that might do. 

Seven skinny cows lie in the mud where the tank overflows.  Through the long afternoon the windmill continues to pump long draughts of cool water.