Free verse expresses what communication cannot, through alien classical ruins

Evidence

Best able to meet the demands of this predicament would be a philosophical language that would strive for intelligibility without confusing it with clarity. As an expression of the thing itself, language is not fully reducible to communication with others. Nor, however … is it simply independent of communication. Otherwise it would elude all critique, even in its relationship to the matter at hand, and would reduce that relationship to an arbitrary presumption. Language as expression of the thing itself and language as communication are interwoven. The ability to name the matter at hand is developed under the compulsion to communicate it, and that element of coercion is preserved in it; conversely, it could not communicate anything that it did not have as its own intention, undistracted by other considerations. This dialectic plays itself out within the medium of language itself; it is not merely a fall from grace on the part of an inhumane social zeal that watches to make sure that no one thinks anything that cannot be communicated. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1014 (#expands, via linked claim)

While the movement is notable for the conventional prose it is producing, we can take the lead from Byrd’s reference to “the poem in a box” to also appraise prosaic poetry destined to be consumed on smartphone screens. Prose is quick reading, rapid uptake; prose is the illusion of the unfigured; prose is the run-on continuity of quotidian temporality—while poetry is extraordinary rhythm, arresting images, opaque swerves. Prose poems conduce to immediatism because the pieces strive for integration rather than break, for flow rather than disruption, for continuous consumption rather than punctuated production, for metonymy rather than metaphor. Jerome McGann long ago observed that, in general, “the object of the poetical text is to thicken the medium a much as possible” but the current vogue for prose poems suggests something else entirely: a thinning of the medium, a reduction of mediation toward tingling unformed speech-like continuous current. This thinning undermines genre. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 173 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Philosophical language must interweave expression and communication, neither reducible to the other — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1014; Expression alienates thought, requiring the Other’s freedom to give it meaning; Postmodernist texts resist thematic meaning and are flawed when interpretation succeeds — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 243 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Expression alienates thought, requiring the Other’s freedom to give it meaning #expands (0.78)
• Philosophical language must interweave expression and communication, neither reducible to the other #expands (0.75) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1014
• Prose poems thin the medium toward unmediated flow, undoing genre #exemplifies (0.75) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 173
• Postmodernist texts resist thematic meaning and are flawed when interpretation succeeds #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 243