Poetry vs prose; a tale of disparity

Poetry VS prose: a tale of disparity
The two branches of creative writing, that is, poetry and prose are similar but different in many ways. However the aim of this article is not to compare them structurally but to justify the varying perspectives and sentiments writers bow at their feet to effect specific disparities based on indulgence. Poetry and prose can be likened to a continuous and a discrete entity, with poetry being the discreet and prose being the continuous. Poetry is continuous because it was architected to be made of unique building blocks known as lines. Thus lines are basically the building blocks of poems. There is also an advance unit called verses, then we have stanzas too. Verses and stanzas could be the same or different depending on the specific structure explored. Like I said I am not going to delve into structure really as this article is meant for the creative writing elites who also know these structural differences. This fluid, unique and defined structural existence makes poetry exactly the opposite of prose. In prose, there is little virtue in structure, you only need specific tools to employ a 100% indulgence from your readers. This hence means, you are not obliged to follow all the lay down rules in prose. However if you abandon many more you will find yourself writing something close to a mock essay, as all wonderful proses is a creative mix of all the recommended prose rules that spread across, mechanics, grammar, vocabulary, structure and style.
The above analysis leave prose far easier than poetry, however in reality people find poetry easier than prose. This article will justify why such conflicts exist in reality as oppose to the expectations from theory. This is simply because poetry is simple, simple enough to tell you that all you need is to speak your mind in fancy lines and wonderful imageries. You will discover that in poetry all you ever need is a creative line-presentation of your ideas with the use of vibrant vocabularies and commendable use of English, you can be very brief and precise in such task. Short poems like haikus are perfect examples of such. However in prose your first aim is to convince people, if your prose would not interest people within the first paragraph you will discover they might not read the rest. Then it is pertinent of prose writers to ensure that their ideas are not just presented anyhow they like but in those specific ways that the indulgence of the readers are guaranteed.
This hence leaves people with low self-confidence a bit wary of prose. This is because they are hardly ever guaranteed that their crude prose could ever garnish expected audiences. I as a young writer, among the community of writers I started my development with, I have discovered this sentiments. 80% of these creative writers would regard themselves as poets and the few rest like me would just answer a creative writer, or just a writer to simplify title. I had wondered adequately why such disparity existed between this two wings of creative writers as I found 80%-20% a questionable wide gap of 60%. Then I realised a basic truth, laziness and off depth prolificacy play a major role in this huge disparity. I know I’ve made no tangible sense in this claim so I would buttress it further, even with personal experiences.
Laziness is that fact that you know that good proses are hardly below 1000 words. Because if you remove introduction and conclusion over 100 words are already spent. And if it were to be creative writing such prose would be called flashes which are often looked with an eye of being incomplete. As you can hardly make any tangible definition of all of prose’s elements like, characters, settings, dialogues, sceneries and plots within such limited word-count. It is hence quite common to see a writer spend much more time on one creative writing prose than he would on poetry. If a lazy writer discover that time he would spend on writing a 2,500 words long story could be spent on writing 10 (50-line poems). He would rather go for the poems than the story as he would be regarded of having 10 works than the just one work that the prose would accord him. Also there is a 100% expectation to adhere to grammatical rules in prose. Editing such long proses is even another problem as a good prose is expected to be grammatically sound at least. When I started exploring writing 8 years ago. I found myself writing mostly poetry too, and it was mainly because of laziness, I found it easier to type a poem with hardly over 100 word-count on my phone. However to write prose on my phone was far more difficult, it was not until I bought my laptop that I started writing true prose. The few proses I wrote then were often mere flashes which when I go through them in recent time I always feel like they were rushed. There exist no depth whatsoever about them. However the bests of my older poems still stand ever green and I often share them in throw back show offs once in a while. 
Even when it comes to longer creative writing projects - especially for people who wish to get published – it is easier to execute poetry project than prose project. All the writer need to do is create a theme and then write poems relating to that theme. As much as 30-50 poems is enough for publishing. That justifies the fact that poetry is discreet. You rarely see poems that exceed 300 lines. Reasons poets often don’t write lengthy poems quite often are the fact that such poems can get quite boring along the way, except they are the epic poems that tell a tale, an autobiography or an history. Aside from those forms of poetry, poems are often quite short and discontinuous.
However prose projects are often more lengthy, an average novel is over 40,000 words. Aside anthologies, prose projects are often continuous and often take months or even years to complete depending on the length and complexity of the content as specific proses need detailed researches.
As an apologist of prose, I am hereby pleading on upcoming creative writers out there to please shun laziness and off-depth prolificacy and hence join me on this bandwagon of creative prose. It is this creative prose that will help redevelop our faltering creative writing industry in this country. This however goes beyond the writers, publishers and cooperate brands can help motivate the prose writers by creating short story writing competitions and competitions for writing essays/reviews like the type I am writing now. You’d discover that many upcoming writers would be inspired to step beyond their walls of poetry if they know this. I have heard of many poetry competitions and prizes in Nigeria, however as regard prose, a desert is on ground. Apart from the one that Etisalat did the other time and the Lacasera apple story competition, I’ve hardly found any top notch creative writing competitions in Nigeria. Recently I saw of ANA prizes, and I am impressed by theirs, however, only authors are viable and those yet-to-publish writers out there, are left languishing in salivation at a lost opportunity. I hope I have been able to present this piece not as a bias criticism but as a reference to advocate for the propagation of creative prose by upcoming writers. Thank you very much for reading.
Abd-afeez
#museguide #writers'pride #prosemovement