Reading Groups: Russell Edson's Little Mr. Prose Poem
This is the introduction and discussion thread for the reading group on Russell Edson’s Little Mr. Prose Poem (BOA, 2022).
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A Brief Introduction
I chose Russell Edson’s (1935-2014) Little Mr. Prose Poem because it shows the possibilities of the prose poem, which he defined as: “a statement that seeks sanity whilst its author teeters on the edge of the abyss.” Edson’s prose poems use elements of Surrealism—the unnerving or illogical—with dark humor and psychological textures. They offer a respite from reality even as they provide clarity into parts of experience that have no language to describe them.
Edson also described the prose poem as: “A cast-iron airplane that can actually fly, mainly because its pilot doesn’t seem to care if it does or not.” He began publishing poetry in the 1950s and his last book, See Jack, was published in 2009. He was never marginal, but nor was he mainstream. Edson was very specific in his choice of working in-between forms and spaces.
This new edition of his work which has been out of print for sometime and this version presents his entire career from the 60s onward. I think you’ll find the poems extraordinary and unsettling.
Edson said: “Poetry springs from the dream mind, the unconscious. Poetry is never comfortable in language because the unconscious doesn’t know how to speak.” Do you agree? What is the role of the dream state or the unconscious in poetry?
Edson was fascinated by contradictions. He said his poems were about “a sleeping awake; being fully awake, and yet dreaming. Which seems as close as we get to sanity. Insanity might be described as the loss of the boundary between these two ways of thinking, where the subject no longer tells the unconscious from the conscious.” How do his poems do this or not?
How can poems use language’s higher function if they are overwhelmed by the unspeakable?
What do you think about writing beyond genre?
Edson was ambivalent to the business of writing. Do you think artists should be cooperative in order to survive the competitive world of literary activities such as publishing, or be completely uncooperative?
Thank you for these questions, they, like Edson's poems, leave me lost with a sense I'm in the right direction so don't panic. I do like the notion that the unconscious, I'll use "sings," instead of "springs" as I don't believe theres's only a single starting point, "from the dream mind, the unconscious." And that "poetry is never comfortable in language because the unconscious doesn’t know how to speak." (speak as in the way we do at the grocers). I like that we are using tools that are not working the way we thought but are the best we have to do the job and so we end up doing another job, or the job somehow gets done when it does, which it rarely does.