Poet Hadara Bar-Nadav Discusses the Prose Poem and Writing Poems without Linebreaks

A fascinating interview from Jet Fuel Review with poet Hadara Bar-Nadav on how writing prose poems helped her navigate grief in her latest poetry collection: Lullaby (with Exit sign).

Here's a sample of Bar-Nadav's thoughts on sound in prose poems and poetry composing in general. I wholeheartedly agree with this idea of sound as key to a deeper, more "visceral" method of finding one's way while writing (and even revising) a poem:

"I especially enjoy pushing sound in prose poetry.  When I read the work of someone like Karen Volkman or Simone Muench, I see how the prose poem can create opportunities for very visceral treatment of alliteration, assonance, and consonance, and rhyme and off-rhyme. I’m also a great believer in allowing the poem to go where it may, and, as you noted, sound was a major compositional device in the writing of these poems.  At the same time, sound also enabled me to revise these poems, which I said aloud dozens of time as I revised.  All this to say, sound can be both a compositional device and a tool for revision. "