Last Friday Ron Silliman answered a reader's question about line breaks. It's an interesting answer in that it shows how hard and how seriously he is willing to think about the poetry he likes, and how negligently he approaches the poetry he doesn't like. As I wrote to him in a comment there,
when you write about [the New Formalists] that "most literally don't intend for the linebreak to be heard at all," it becomes clear that you are equally tone-deaf to their concerns. Many of them are very interested in patterned end-rhyme, and you can't do that without calling attention to your line breaks. In fact, most metrecists (old or new) with whom I've had contact are biased against enjambment: they consider it a small failure for a pentameter line to be enjambed without some intended effect.
Now I don't blame him, really. I haven't thought much about how free verse poems work for a long time. That's why I don't much write about them.
Elsewhere, Henry Gould and Josh Corey have been talking to each other about another subject near to Ron Silliman's heart, the relationship between poetry and politics, particularly in the avant garde (if such a thing exists). You can find pieces of that conversation here, here, and here.
Josh (almost affectionately) calls Henry a purist, but not much, I think, could be farther from the truth. Henry's blog is full of insightful contradiction: like Whitman, he contains multitudes. Sadly, HG Poetics is not listed on the Electronic Poetry Center blog list.
8:17:06 PM 
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