Poetic form
What is a Prose Poem?
Definition
A prose poem is poetry written in paragraphs — no line breaks, but all of poetry's compression, imagery, and music.
A prose poem looks like a paragraph and behaves like a poem. Charles Baudelaire named the ambition in Paris Spleen (1869): 'the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm and without rhyme.' Strip away the line break — poetry's most visible tool — and everything else has to work harder: image, compression, repetition, the rhythm of sentences swelling and snapping.
The form's paradox is its power source. A box of justified text promises information, then delivers strangeness; readers lean in expecting an anecdote and get an incantation. The unit of music is the sentence rather than the line, which is why prose poems are tuned the way line-broken poems are broken — a three-word sentence lands like a couplet slamming shut.
Structure of a prose poem
- Written in sentences and paragraphs — no line breaks
- Keeps poetry's tools: compression, imagery, repetition, sound
- Usually short: one paragraph to one page
- The sentence, not the line, is the unit of rhythm
How to write a prose poem
- Write one paragraph about a single image or moment, as charged as you can make it.
- Cut transitions; prose poems leap the way poems do, not the way essays do.
- Tune sentence lengths like line breaks — vary long and short for pace and punch.
- If it reads like a story summary, add strangeness; if it reads like a diary, add music.
1 prose poem example
Classic and original prose poem poems, free to read in full.
Common questions
What is a prose poem?
A poem written as a paragraph instead of in lines — it keeps poetry's compression and imagery while borrowing prose's shape.
How is a prose poem different from flash fiction?
Flash fiction wants story — character and change. A prose poem wants intensity — image and music. The border is blurry, and good writers smuggle across it.