Robert Bly has suggested that the prose poem surfaces in situations when the culture of a period is moving dangerously close to abstraction. It is almost as if the prose poem surfaces at a specific time in a specific culture as a way of maintaining the possibility of poetry in an age about to abandon it. Bly's notions would be interesting in the abstract; they are all the more interesting in that his own most recent poems are in prose.

Since Bly tends to see himself as paradigm of the poet in our day, it is perhaps not surprising that he should attempt to define the age through defining himself. He may well be right that we are going through a period of reform. Surely he himself, following the great mental and emotional strain of Sleepers Joining Hands, is going through a period of renewal. What is immediately...