A Muse Bouche

Interview: Sally Ashton, On Listening to Mars

The Mackinaw: Tell us something about your writing journey and how prose poetry became a part of it.

Sally Ashton: I began what could be described as a serious pursuit of poetry after my youngest of three children entered elementary school. Both time and attention are fraught with little ones underfoot, so I hadn’t done much writing during that period. After subsequently finishing a long-abandoned BA in English/Creative Writing minor as a “returning student,” I jumped next into the MFA program at Bennington Writing Seminars. There I had the privilege of working with David Lehman, editor of Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present which, coincidentally, he was putting together during the time I was his student. So that’s where and when I was exposed to prose poetry more broadly. At Bennington, I was introduced to a variety of ideas and approaches by my other faculty, student colleagues, as well as the wide variety of amazing guest lecturers brought to campus. Alice Notley was one of these writers, and while I don’t recall the title of her lecture, I’ve never forgotten her startling-to-me assertion that formal line break is essentially a patriarchal structure. I don’t know if I can defend that, but it definitely gave me incentive to play more freely with line and specifically with the prose poem form. 

For you, what is the definition of a prose poem? See my answer, and MORE, at “The Mackinaw“!