Let us start by stating as a fact that there is a problem with contemporary free verse.
With that in hand, we should be able to demonstrate that "The Prairie as a Valid Provider" by Jane Mead is inferior to modern metric verse - Rhina Espaillat's sonnet "Almost" should do as an example - or older free verse, for example Sandburg's "To a Contemporary Bunkshooter".
This should be a reasonable test. All three authors are American. All have received some degree of recognition for their poetry.
My suspicion is that nobody would want to undertake a demonstration of this sort. The statement that there is a problem with contemporary free verse is not an empirical argument. Both the case for and the case against will be advanced using anecdotal evidence: Berrigan versus Corso? Ashbery versus cummings?
The issue of a "problem with contemporary free verse" is that it's a general answer to what is, at best, a non-generalizable problem.
Perhaps we should just get on with our reading. If we feel an overpowering need to weigh in on the issue, I suggest we do it by increasing the flow of royalties to authors whose work avoids these "contemporary free verse problems." Whatever it is that they are.
JB
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