We can define that division in many ways. We can dine off the morsels of food for thought this division cooks up. But what we are left with are left-over generalities that beg truth to deny the artist a mixed (salad) palette from which expression springs. Besides the many temporary solutions to transfix poetry from its traditional setting to today's verse, i.e., sound, sense, and image through content, form and context. Where a definable border exists between poetry and prose, content, style and context offer a more immediate and amenable recipe­­not an answer­­ for I believe none exists other than opinion, experience and impressions.

While prose writers concentrate mainly on sense, some crossover authors have experimented with prose that utilized sound and image: Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Elliot, Rilke, Borges, Solzhenitsyn, Williams, et.al.

An association with a concept that provides the artist with certain tools, or characteristics, that are more or less used in poetry which are not used for any less effect in prose, can give us a glimpse into what makes, and how poetry, in some ways, stands apart from prose.

One such characteristic tool is "impressionism" in poetry: a literary style characterized by the use of details and mental associations to evoke subjective and sensory impressions rather than the re-creation of objective reality. Where content and context meld into one to suit the artist's expression, certain rules follow in that path, or line, of communication, and prose and poetry divide somewhere down that road. The obligatory sentence, first of all, is where the palette begins to form:

Here (article) (adjective) noun (adverb) verb join together and communicate reality. Stripped bare of all modifiers and signals to nouns (definite and indefinite articles), stripped of any substantive prepositions, relationship to a verb, an adjective, or any other substantive word, we are inevitably left with the subject/predicate, noun/verb pair. Everything else is speculation, experience, immediate effect, opinion, observation, re-enactment, color, flavor, enhancement, etc. This is all part of language which is part of everyday poetry essence. Here, prose is also less concerned with syntax, and more weight is given to the sentence as the kernel of thought that grows to develop the writer's strategy - there is hardly any compression of language as occurs within poetry to say the most with the least. The poet's impressions are born from the surrounding context with which he/she imbues the subject/predicate relationship. These impressions can range from weak to strong, but are key to providing the reader with a sense of reality that has been 'processed' by the mind through the heart. I believe, vice-versa, they can produce reflexive poetry that is less impressionistic, more confessional and reflective. It is the poet's heart that feels, and paints the final phrase, or words, onto the canvas the poet uses in verse, whether free or molded into whatever form the mind invents for communication of feeling. This simple but ample analogy goes far to offer us solutions. The poet in a sense then leaves 'blood stains,' 'green stains,' 'etcetera stains,' on the reader's mind. A plot is not important, subjects change maybe every line or so, there is less concern for plane setting, more concern for image in setting. Details, like short brush strokes, reflect light on the subject, not the light of the subject. Shades of language, glimpses into the poet's psyche, impressions the cosmos has painted on the poet's interior world, less concerned for the exterior facade of landscape, shape verse and content into creation, a psychic re-enactment of life. In much the same ways as the painter uses shades of light to communicate feeling, the poet plays with shades of language to convey impressions. Using language and its harmony, balance or imbalance of sound and rhythm, sense of meaning through figurative devices, and other tools of the craft to evoke suggestions of mood, place, and natural phenomena, the poet creates an impressionistic view of the world that divides prose and poetry wherein the practice of expressing or developing one's subjective response to an experience or work of art or to actual experience, sets prose and poetry apart.

Jacket worn and shabby like a pack of wolves/
Face like a marble chip/
Sitting in a ring of his letters in the grove that sighs of mocking and mistakes/
Yes, the heart is blown like paper through inhospitable passages./

The first image the reader is given is 'jacket' = 'shabby'. Why 'shabby'? How 'shabby'? = a 'pack of wolves.' We know a jacket cannot be a 'pack of wolves,' but, we get the impression (image) that the subject's jacket, or outer skin to the world, has gone through some kind of change, one that suggests a 'pack of wolves', an exterior ready to devour, hungrily, with no compassion, etc. This can be interpreted in many ways, but, its universal meaning is clear. We can see in our minds what 'a pack of wolves' denotes. Are these 'wolves' parasites of society--maybe critics?. We can also connote its meaning on a deeper level. A level where the rest of the stanza, hopefully, will support, elucidate, enhance, react to, etc., in order for the implied to have meaning. Next, we see his face 'like a marble chip', this simile suggests many things: cold, white, hard, maybe stained, maybe pure; the connotations of 'marble' are interpretive and lead to many impressions, but basically of the same ilk in the reader­­this 'universality of impressions through key words (more object oriented) is a part of what makes poetry impressionistic­­it is born from an endless search for the 'right word' or 'phrase' that has 'universal' appeal, or meaning - in any language - any translation - and hopefully, can stand the test of time (this is what makes the finest of poetry ring true). "Sitting in a ring of letters," puts the subject inside a circle of 'writing' of some sort - we have the allusions of life in 'letters'. One can surmise many things here, but the last part of the line makes it clear. An indirect reference is made of someone, something judging him inside this ring: "in the grove that sighs of mocking and mistakes," the poet has given the letters a life of their own, one which judges him. They, the 'letters' are on the outside circle--can these be 'critics'? -- this is my impression of the scene. And the last line, "Yes, the heart is blown like paper through inhospitable passages." The poet affirms the allusion of 'letters' having a life all their own, and that his 'heart,' like paper that blows in the wind, but cannot live there, is not welcomed there, 'through inhospitable passages.'

While figurative language can be explicit through the use of metaphors, similes, allusions, personifications, hyperbole, etc. The poet can also imply metaphors and/or other figures of speech as in the following example which is another good example of impressionism in poetry:

Driving down the concrete artery/
Away from the smoky heart,/
Through the darkening, blighted body,/
Pausing at varicose veins,/
The white man pressed the locks/
on all the sedan's doors,/
Sped toward the white corpuscles/
in the white arms/
hugging the black city."/

There are two implied metaphors in this poem. They speak of two bodies. What are these two bodies? -- You can surmise the poet's impressions. How do you take the word 'hugging'? Is this a loving embrace or a stranglehold? Again, your impressions based on how the poet has used implied metaphors will reveal the poet's 'impressionism,' or inner feelings about the subject, if it is present. And, lastly, what is the poet's theme? He gives certain clues through the use of adjectives and adverbs: down, white, darkening, black, blighted... to imply his meaning... I think you can infer what his message is.

He says the waves in the ship's wake/
are like stones rolling away./
I don't see it that way./
But I see the mountains turning,/
turning away its face as the ship takes us away./

Here we have a man and a woman's feelings about leaving forever. How does the speaker feel? What impressions does the speaker give us about these conflicting views? Two figures of speech are used in this poem most effectively to convey to us the impressions, or feelings, that the poet had about leaving: simile and metaphor. Of the two, one is stronger (clue: the speaker has a biased point of view). In fact, if one were to switch these two figures around, the poem would lose its power to convey the impression of conflicting view.

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones/
Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones/
In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,/
And start their silent swinging, one by one./
Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,/
and there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,/
His belly close to ground. I see the bald,/
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade./

In this poem, the poet describes, in detail, the particulars of farm life, but her impressions of that life are given to the reader through use of image, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile, and personification. What kind of image is "silent swinging"? Read the poem aloud. Notice especially the effect of the words 'sound of steel on stones' and 'field rat, startled, squealing bleeds.' Notice the interesting sounds that are present in the very words that contain these images. This all contributes to the poet's strong impressions of farm life. Besides appealing to our auditory and visual imagination, what do the images contribute? What impressions do you get from this poem as a whole? Exactly what in "Reapers" makes you feel the way you do?

The use of extended figurative language in prose is to sacrifice plot, clarity, meaning, and an author's sensibilities of style. While in poetry, figurative language is almost a given, as readers are accustomed to lyricism of yesterday's poetry­­the modern poet has inherited a long history of tradition, whether conscious or not of this tradition, the poet is writing to an audience that expects certain contextual clues. This does not mean that today's poets must live up to that tradition­­no. Rather, I believe the modern poet has a responsibility to further the art and craft of poetry by experimentation with form and content, and, sound and sense. To give readers more than what they expect from poetry is a task that requires past mortar for future bricks. Because form, content, sound, and sense are so closely knit together, it takes a conscious effort, and knowledge of what came before, to progress the art into the future.

A piece of green pepper fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?