"Instructions on How to Wind a Watch"

I both avoid and admire prose poetry. Perhaps it's my love of liberal spacing or lack of proper punctuation that prevents me from forming my poem into blocks of words. On the other hand, I often scribble my poems down at first without thought as to breaks or rhythm; breaking up the poem seems more of an afterthought.

However prose poetry is much more than how the poem appears on the page. What separates a prose poem from a work of short fiction is of course what separates poetry from the world. In my simple-minded definition, prose poetry lacks the logic of a proper narrative while at the same time telling a narrative itself. Does that make sense? Poetry is still a playful word experimentation/exploration/examination/etc. even when it doesn't even look like "a poem" as we know it. While the prose poem mimics the aesthetic of a piece of prose, it essentially reiterates the significance of poetry by transcending the normative (aka a poem should be made of shorter lines and such) and bringing the value of a poem back to content and concept in place of form.

Which is interesting because my brother, who studies design, is working to strengthen his "conceptual" abilities while his natural talent for "form" seems less important. Hm, art is so interdisciplinary! I think with my own writing this might be a lesson to learn. Lately it seems that I'm focused on just cranking a poem out that the ideas come out half-baked. And while the words can be pleasing and I can devise a nice cadence, what does that matter if I don't actually know what the heck I'm trying to say?!

But back to prose poems! For example:

Julio Cortázar's "Instructions on How to Wind a Watch":

Death stands there in the background, but don't be afraid. Hold the watch down with one hand, take the stem in two fingers, and rotate it smoothly. Now another installment of time opens, trees spread their leaves, boats run races, like a fan time continues filling with itself, and from that burgeon the air, the breezes of earth, the shadow of a woman, the sweet smell of bread.

What did you expect, what more do you want? Quickly. strap it to your wrist, let it tick away in freedom, imitate it greedily. Fear will rust all the rubies, everything that could happen to it and was forgotten is about to corrode the watch's veins, cankering the cold blood and its tiny rubies. And death is there in the background, we must run to arrive beforehand and understand it's already unimportant.

(In case you want to read the original Spanish version, you can see it aquí. I found this poem in Another Republic.)

This poem, like all prose poetry (well, at least the good stuff) strandles a delicate balance between narrative and the poetic. Prose poems have no need for the exposition, conflict, climax, resolution in narratives. But they still give a story, if only a glimpse and not the whole sha-bang (scholarly talk, na?). Here the poetic makes itself very clear against the logical How To spirit of watch-winding. Cortázar explores the idea of time with the physicality of the watch in that one can essentially "change time" by a simple turn of a nob, and also the larger concept of time as something that cannot be outrun nor can it be measured by the perfect ticks of a watch hand.

One of Cortázar's great lines is "imitate it greedily" because it is so appropriate; it hits on the instinctual human fear of limited time and of death, and also the obsession with controlling time, and understanding time. The watch is characterized as something free, though in actuality it is bound by the restraints of its physical limitations: it needs to be wound, it is strapped to somebody's wrist, and so on. Does Cortázar actually mean to say that the watch is free? Perhaps this is where our American ideas of freedom conflict with this Argentinian poet. Free to us is without constraints, autonomy, the ability to act of one's own desires. But perhaps Cortázar simply insinuates that the watch is free from fear (see how prose poetry is still very much poetry? This stuff would never fly in fiction!). Which I know is a silly thought, but that's just what Cortázar gives us. Of course an inaimate object has no fear of death, it doesn't know emotion or doubt or thought. But that's precisely why Cortázar compares the human condition to the watch and points out our longing for life without fear.

On that note, Fear and Death (capitalized!) are not often subjects I chose to tackle in my poetry for fear of being melodramatic and trite. But Cortázar breeches them with great sensitivity and finesse. Death is a being that stands unmoving, haunting the corners of existence as a reminder that time is limited. Of course, Cortázar hints at these ideas by simply placing death in the poem. It is stationary, not any sort of comprehensible form, and thus all the more powerful. Death seems to linger on the edge of the scenes without ubruptly disturbing anything but essentially symbolizing some sort of doom. But Cortázar elicits his reader to conquer death by conquering fear. The fear will rot away the watch just as it rots away the soul. In the end to champion death is to overcome fear and render death insignificant and unimportant.

Alright, that's all I have in me for now. Thanks for reading!