AWP: prose poem vs. flash fiction

Me: still sick. It's a sinus thing. Yuck.

The AWP panel that claimed to discuss the differences between prose poems and flash fiction fell flat. Robert Olen Butler gave his personal definition, but no one else did. This may yet become a defining theory as he judges the Southeast Review's World's Best Short Short Fiction contest every year.

Butler's theory was that prose poems, like all poetry are about epiphanies, bright shining moments. And that flash fiction, like all fiction are narratives about yearning. The difference between long and short fiction is that the yearning becomes more condensed. That the moment when the character realizes the yearning is the end of the story in a piece of flash fiction. "Yearning" being his word for the deepest desires of the characters.

Ron Carlson said he always thought that he wrote stories not poems. But then someone approached him and asked to publish a collection of his poetry, so now Carlson supposes they're poems.

Flash Fiction: The Bed We've Made

Flash fiction, short shorts, or short-short fiction are all what they sound like: small, complete fiction stories told as briefly as possible. Length varies depending on whom you're talking to and what contest you're entering. The Southeast Review dubs it as any piece of fiction 500 words or shorter for their World's Best Short Short Story Contest (WBSSSC). Glimmer Train states for their Very Short Fiction Award that it's anything less than 3,000 words but they note that they don't think anyone can write a good story in less than 500. Not that I'm trying to start a Lit Mag cat fight.

Fight! Fight!

Ahem. Many of my short shorts start off as poems that has awkward childhoods. They knew they weren't really supposed to be poems but they were born to parents that were poems and in between poem children and had to grow up in order to find out their place in the world was among fiction, though they'll always love their foster family. (Was that last little tid bit in the Ugly Ducking story? I can't recall. Probably just my modern therapy adding on information.)