Prose poetry  Prose poetry is poetry written in prose form instead of verse form, while preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery, parataxis, and emotional effects. Prose poetry is written as prose, without the line breaks associated with poetry. However, it makes use of poetic devices such as fragmentation, compression, repetition, rhyme, metaphor, and figures of speech. In 17th-century Japan, Matsuo Bashō originated "haibun", a form of prose poetry combining haiku with prose. It is best exemplified by his book "Oku no Hosomichi", in which he used a literary genre of prose-and-poetry composition of multidimensional writing. In the West, prose poetry originated in early-19th-century France and Germany as a reaction against the traditional verse line. The German Romantics Jean Paul, Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Heinrich Heine may be seen as precursors of the prose poem. Earlier, 18th-century European forerunners of prose poetry had included James Macpherson's "translation" of "Ossian" and Évariste de Parny's "Chansons madécasses". At the time of the prose poem's establishment as a form, French poetry was dominated by the , a strict and demanding form that poets starting with Maurice de Guérin (whose "Le Centaure" and "La Bacchante" remain arguably the most powerful prose poems ever written) and Aloysius Bertrand (in Gaspard de la Nuit) chose, in almost complete isolation, to cease using. Later Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé followed their example in works like "Paris Spleen" and "Les Illuminations". The prose poem continued to be written in France into the 20th century by such writers as Max Jacob, Henri Michaux, Gertrude Stein, and Francis Ponge. Throughout the nineteenth century, Germany and Austria produced a large body of prose poetry, without calling it that. In Poland, Juliusz Słowacki wrote a prose poem, "Anhelli", in 1837. Bolesław Prus (1847–1912), influenced by the French prose poets, wrote a number of poetic micro-stories, including "Mold of the Earth" (1884), "" (1884) and "Shades" (1885). His somewhat longer story, "" (1888), likewise shows many features of prose poetry.