contemporary poetry

dana gioia: "the debasement of poetic language; the prolixity of the lyric; the bankruptcy of the confessional mode; the inability to establish a meaningful aesthetic for new poetic narrative and the denial of a musical texture in the contemporary poem." from, "notes on the new formalism"

lisa sewell: "innovative, materialist poetic practices have been absorbed by both the lyric mainstream and the multicultural poetries of identity politics: writers on either side of the ostensible divide employ interruption, parataxis, narrative discontinuity, and alinearity to produce fragmentation and disjunction." from, american poets in the 21rst century.

cole swensen: "considering the traits associated with 'conventional' work, such as coherence, linearity, formal clarity, narrative, firm closure, symbolic resonance, and stable voice, and those generally assumed of 'experimental' work, such as non-linearity, juxtaposition, rupture, fragmentation, immanence, multiple perspective, open form, and resistance to closure, hybrid poets access a wealth of tools, each one of which can change dramatically depending on how it is combined with others and the particular role it plays in the composition." from, american hybrid