Fred,
there are several things one could take issue with in your essay,
not least your apparent rejection of prose poetry in the last
paragraph. To confine myself to one point, your emphasis on the
'variable foot' of Williams et al seems overstressed (sorry!).
I think that Charles Tomlinson is nearer the mark in his introduction
to WCW's Selected:
"It is the 'contingent motion of/each line' (Olson)
and what Robert Creeley referred to as the 'contentual
emphases' of each line that gives life to William's verse
rather than any notion of prosodic feet."
Or, as Olson more succinctly put it:
'the HEAD, by way of the EAR, to the SYLLABLE,
the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE.'
As for being unpleasant to Bill Griffiths, Maggie O'Sullivan etc.,
your own words were:
*Nobody* scans for quantity... *Nobody* bothers to break their lines
down in to the smaller units...
AB
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