prose [Lat. prosa oratio=straightforward, or direct, speech], meaningful and grammatical written or spoken language that does not utilize the metrical structure, word transposition, or rhyme characteristic of poetry or verse; it is, however, raised above the level of lifeless composition or commonplace conversation by the use of balance, rhythm, repetition, and antithesis. In literature, prose is the usual mode of expression in such forms as the novel, short story, essay, letter (epistle), history, biography, sermon, and oration. The earliest European prose extant is that of Herodotus (5th cent. B.C.).

Work in prose that has some of the technical or literary qualities of poetry (such as regular rhythm, definitely patterned structure, or emotional or imaginative heightening) but that is set on a page as prose. The form took its name from Charles Baudelaire's Little Poems in Prose (1869). Other writers of prose poems include, in the 19th century, Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Friedrich Hölderlin, Novalis, and Rainer Maria Rilke, and in the 20th, Amy Lowell (in her “polyphonic prose”) and such contemporary poets as John Ashbery.

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