On the radio the other day I heard Gary Snyder quoting poet Robert Duncan. “A poem” he said, “must have music and magic. Otherwise it’s just prose.” Just prose? Just prose? Prose is The Diary of Anne Frank and Goodnight Moon, Charlotte’s Web Jacob Have I Loved, The Runaway Bunny, and The Hunger Games. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret, is prose, and Walk Two Moons, The Snowy Day, and The Graveyard Book. That’s prose—and there’s music and magic in there, too. In the prose. Just prose? Feh.
Just Prose? Feh.
- by Karen Cushman
