Prose poetry - oxymoron?

[liver86]

Is it just me, or is the piece by Walter Pater just a well written description of perhaps the most famous painting in history? (Just why it is the most famous painting baffles me but this is not the topic so I'll just let it be.) There is (close to) nothing poetic about this, at least through my ears and eyes. I picked out the sentences (notice I

Comments

[roger_kuin]

YOu make a very good point. And indeed Pater did not write it as a prose poem, though I think he would have admitted to poetic prose. It depends in part on how you define "poetry" and "poem"; and one thing the idea of prose poetry is useful for is making us think about that a little harder than we might otherwise have done.