[William A. Baurle]

Originally Posted by Ian Hoffman

Lol. Any good contemporary formal poetry MUST dialogue with free-verse: and visa-versa, I'd say.

Ian

I agree. Two of the best American poets wrote in formal verse and free verse: James Wright and Theodore Roethke. There are many others. Geoffrey Hill, Stevens, Pound, Eliot, on and on it goes.

That being said, the formalists have a point that so much contemporary poetry is churned out - or so it appears - without much attention to craft: just spilled out onto the page like so much soup.

Hey - Poetry Soup? Now there's a nifty name for a website...