Life of the Party

The prose poem is currently having its heyday in the U.S. and Gordon Carrega's new collection will be a most welcome guest at the ongoing celebration, perhaps, indeed, going on to become the life of the party. Carrega's writing is what Charles Baudelaire, great illustrious grandfather of this literary genre, had in mind when in the introduction to Paris Spleen, his book of prose poems, he called for a poetic prose "... supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul, the undulations of reverie, the jibes of

conscience."