SOURCE: An interview in Iowa Review, Vol. 21, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 126-45.

In the following interview, Hass discusses prose poetry and explains his views on the poet in relation to politics.

Unfortunately, not all of the questions that arose during this session held in November 1989 were preserved on tape, and so we leave some of them to your imagination.

[Gregg]: Why a prose poem, and what is a prose poem? [Hass]: I haven't arrived for myself at any very satisfactory formulation of what a prose poem is. Certainly it has something to do with condensation. If it's narrative in form and gets to a certain length, it's probably a story; if it's very short and in a book by a fiction writer, it's a sudden fiction; if it's in a book by a poet, it's a prose poem; and if it gets to a certain length, it's an essay...