The tradition of the prose poem is thought to have begun in the mid-19th century with the works of Charles Baudelaire and other French poets, but a literary form composed of brief, lyrical prose pieces can be found in the Bible, The Greek Anthology, and other ancient texts. Like those works, Mr. Shumate's poems possess most of the attributes of verse, such as imagery, rhythm, and music, but do not use line breaks or a regular metrical structure.