Toward the Question of Prose Poem The paper takes into account the birth of prose poem as a creative

literary genre in the days of postmodernism with reference to Charles Simic. Whether prose poem is just a hybrid child of fiction and poetry as is taken by its name or it is an abrogation of the hegemony of canonic ways of writing poetry in rhymes and meter, and above all, is the genre of prose poem as respectable/authentic as its senior siblings in literature? With a postmodern aesthetic, Charles Simic in his Pulitzer Prize winning book of prose poems The World Doesnt End does not insist on maintaining the form of poems. Simics revolting attitude along with other pioneers of prose poem sets the basis for New Romanticism (a term sometimes used in place of postmodernism) by dismantling the established regime of ways of creating literature. The paper also looks at the postmodern aesthetics of visual arts that served as a backdrop for introducing new ways/genres of writing.

Junaid Hafeez, a BZU graduate in English Literature and Language, participated in one year NESA Ugrad Program sponsored by the US and studied American Literature and Theater at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, USA. He is now a part-time lecturer at the Department of English, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan.