My reading window last month brought more poems than ever before. So 159 poets sent work. I can't read and respond to more than 1000 poems a month and stay sane, so I was at my limit.
But the challenge remains interesting, not least in the way trends change noticeably from one window to the next. So here are some trends I observed during the window. I've mentioned many of them before, but not all.
(I am aware I have a number of bees in my bonnet. It's inescapable. You get over-sensitized to things.)
If any of the points above are obscure, it was unintentional. Sometimes you just can't see how difficult you're being.
Dear Jinny -- no they do have lines. All text does. And sometimes even the end words are deliberate, not chance, though not for most poets.
There are different ways of doing this, and the block of prose doesn't necessarily run to the end of the page: the poet needs to decide what they need the block to look like or whether this is important.
So you can have a prose poem in a narrow block, a wide block, a block that fits whatever page it appears on -- many options are possible.
But most people send poems out on A4 paper. Often people lay out prose poems using the default settings for this page, because they haven't fully considered prose options. If you use the normal margins for A4 of about an inch each side, you will end up with a very long line, and that means it's hard to read. Magazines (and newspapers) are often printed in columns because shorter lines are easier to read.
Books are designed for optimum reading ease, and usually the number of characters in the line will be between 65 and 75 (that includes spaces). But an A4 line between ordinary margins may have up to 90 characters, depending on the font. That means it will hard going for the reader, who may not realise the cause of the slight sense of strain.
Sorry for this OCD response. My point is simply is that though line breaks are not an issue in prose poems (usually), the formatting of the block is. It may not even be fully justified... (in the formatting sense).
Back to verse now.