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Jamie, I have to stress again, that although I quote both Crozier and Shepard in the thesis, and write about some linguistically innovative poets in the latter part of it, it is not devoted to such poetries. It is an examination of the influence of Wordsworth’s poetic ideas on the development of mainstream descriptive poetry up until the year 2000. Maybe mainstream poetry is no longer like this (I don’t know. I’ve avoided reading it since 2000). For all I know, it might have been influenced by the sort of poetry I advocate—or indeed by Dylan. Can anyone tell me if this is the case or not? That is a sincere question. If so, then my criticism of mainstream poetry should only be regarded as applying to mainstream poetry before the year 2000. Yes, I appreciate that my views on poetry will never be accepted by you. They are, perhaps, though, not as “extreme” as you seem to think. A little ambiguity and abstraction never did a poem any harm, in my view. And I don’t think that the poetic elements you mention (tone, irony, ambiguity, rhythm, internal conflict, play, etc) need necessarily have no place in poetry that isn’t descriptive. How did you come to that conclusion? It can’t have been derived from what I have advocated—from others possibly, but not from me. It could be that you have been projecting what you find intolerable in experimental poetry onto my ideas about poetry. I don’t know. On Sat, 22 Oct 2016, 18:18, Jamie McKendrick wrote: Jeff, I quite accept my description is meagre - but you'll understand too that this is a discussion group not a peer-reviewed article. And I don't think your argument is at all 'outlandish' - on the contrary this semi-philosophical usage of the term (and to your credit you do explore some sources of the empiricist tradition) applied to various kinds of poetry precedes your thesis by many decades - I've often cited Crozier and later Sheppard in this respect, and also complained that it's become a kind of often unthinking orthodoxy in various circles. My own view is that it's an inadequate and unhelpful way of viewing poetry and that it largely ignores elements such as tone, irony, ambiguity, rhythm, internal conflict, play, along with a great many often essential elements we enjoy in poetry, but I don't think we're going to agree about any of this. Jamie