Perhaps I flatter myself, but I suspect I am one of the usual suspects, so let me turn Jonathan's rhetorical question and comment on its head.
What's the point of an "experimental" poetics which has given us nothing new since Pound and Stein? Without knowing the particular texts, who could tell which of these passages is Pound, and which Anne Carson, born when Pound was 65?
Rations were hard to get, she stood in line for apples and matches.
While in their cold apartment he went on translating
Babylonian texts.
Petersburg was no longer the capitol (Moscow was).
Behind
the signboards--damp darkness.
Hands broke off statues.
People pillaged even cemeteries.
Kids 8 to 15 in the schools, then higher training
mottoes writ all over walls
'Use their ways and their music
Keep form of their charts and banners
Prepare soldiers in peace time
All is lost in the night clubs
that was gained under good rule.'
On the other hand, which of these is Tennyson and which Swinburne, only 18 years younger?
That blush of fifty years ago, my dear,
Blooms in the Past, but close to me to-day
As this red rose, which on our terrace here
Glows in the blue of fifty miles away.
Asleep or waking is it? For her neck,
Kissed over close, wears yet a purple speck
Wherein the pained blood falters and goes out;
Soft, and stung softly--fairer for a fleck.
Here's a little secret—I had to look for nearly an hour to find passages from Tennyson and Swinburne which were close enough in style to make it interesting; for Pound and Carson, the books fell open to the passages I chose.
Now that's pretty silly, but I don't think less silly than the original. I'm working on a more serious answer, which I thought I'd have time for while I was in North Carolina this weekend. I think it's time to recognize I don't work while I'm with my family. It's not their fault—there's just too much to catch up on, and dancing with my wife is one of the best things in my life.
10:03:22 PM 
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