Compression: Theodore Worozbyt
“When I write prose poems, I think of them as developing from a center outward, and that center is often not a premise or even the beginning of a narrative, it is simply a discrete thought, often simply an arresting image, which then comes into collision with another, and the thing starts stitching itself together, or it doesn’t. Unlike the verse line, with its strictly regulated length, the sentence in a prose poem is a virtually limitless space, and therefore the role of compression in composition is crucial. Every word, every mark of punctuation, every syntactical choice must contribute to the sharp jab that is, for me at least, the mark of a good prose poem.” — Theodore Worozbyt
