i've been drinking trader joe's new hefeweizen, so sue me if i go too fast

regarding prose poems, from the nyt's review of ashbery's umpteenth, latest book.

For variety he also includes several prose poems, including the long title piece. At least since ''Three Poems,'' which were in fact three long prose pieces -- a flood of sprawling, unparagraphed sentences -- Ashbery has been overly fond of this dandified, hybrid form so beloved by Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Gertrude Stein, among others he has acknowledged as influences. But the prose poem doesn't bring out the best in him (or in anybody else for that matter, except for poets like Charles Simic and Michael Benedikt, who treat the whole notion with a certain amount of irony). The long sentences, loose and rambling, let all the music leak out, and they often feel arbitrary, made up on the spot:


Smack in the limousine, the friendly fog next door placed a hand on my shoulders, cementing matters. The professor looked wary. 'Flowers have helped pave roads,' he mooted. The ocean filling in for us. Too many vacant noon empires, without them you can't rule a hemisphere or be sated other than by watching. Our TV brains sit around us all brave and friendly, like docile pets.


This isn't poetry; it's -- well, prose, and not particularly interesting prose at that.