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Andrew Jackson writes: <<This is a fair point, but there are different contexts at work. The formalists, in observing these particular modernist developments, could argue that poetry was in severe danger of becoming the sole property of academics.>> They could & they do. But the assumption that poetry is dead is not supported by the facts--the stuff is oozing out all over the place. And someone is writing all those centered lines & sending them to me at the Wallace Stevens Journal. And those folks, even if they have never read the journal (which they mostly haven't) want to be published in my rather academic magazine. This particular form of attack on Modernism & free verse is another form of anti-intellectualism. Ditto the arguments bearing on "clarity" & obscurity--good poetry is as difficult as it has to be. In the rest of you post you rehearse the arguments made by Dana Gioia, chief theorist of the New Formalists, a few years ago in his essay "Can Poetry Matter?"--I figure he'll be sending you a membership card in the next few days. I'm all for getting away from "schools"--it was only a few days ago I posted a triolet to this list. jd ________________________ Joseph Duemer School of Liberal Arts-5750 Clarkson University Potsdam NY 13699 [log in to unmask] ________________________ "Always come down from the barren heights of cleverness into the green valleys of folly." ::Wittgenstein %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%