Bruce Lawder: Prose Poems, (Very) Short Fiction, or Both?

Poetic stories have been around ever since there were stories. The Epic of Gilgamesh, scholars say, was written sometime between 2150 and 1400 B.C. Homer wrote The Iliad and The Odyssey sometime in the 9th or 8^th century B.C. Closer to our own time, John Milton wrote his epic poems in the 1600s, and in the 19^th century we had epic poets like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But our attention spans have grown shorter, as have our poems and our novels (a few contemporary Europeans notwithstanding). 

It's not necessarily a bad thing. Writing short, or writing short well, requires laser-like focus, concise words, and abandoning adverbs. In Dwarf Stories, his most recent poetry collection, Bruce Lawder does exactly that.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Some Tuesday Readings

 

Journeys: What We Hold in Common – L.L. Barkat at Tweetspeak Poetry.

 

“The Antenna,” poem by Mia Anderson – D.S. Martin at Kingdom Poets.

 

Alistair Begg with Biblical Wisdom for Voting – Truth for Life.

 

“The Vanity of Human Wishes,” poem by Samuel Johnson – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Or Did You Think Crushed Hopes Couldn’t Reawaken? – poem by Hedy Habra at Every Day Poems.