Rhyme
Ron Silliman, in a standard blog post about anthologies (a favorite subject of his), dismisses rhyme. He writes:
 the progressive side of American poetics is far less marginalized than it was in 1960 when the Allen anthology debuted. While there are still clunkers of the Olde World among some of the institutions – as when, for example, the majority of the poets nominated for one of the major awards this year are versifiers who rhyme, just as tho the 19th & 20th & 21st centuries never happened – the progressive tradition in American poetry has for the most part been incorporated into most of the major platforms poetry has.
So I want to say, Dear Ron, are you nuts? Can you really say it is old fashioned to write in rhyme in 2013? Ron, do you think the world ended sometime in your 20’s? Let me tell you why I write in rhyme: because I like to. Free Verse bores me as a form. I don’t feel challenged by it. It has nothing to say. IT IS OLD FASHIONED, THE POETRY OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES. Ron, things continue to change. Art is about the search for something new. It is not about repeating the experiments of your forebears in perpetuity. I still enjoy reading free verse and will write free verse as the mood strikes. But I don’t think it’s radical, progressive or new, because I wasn’t born in 1883.
PS: the last sentence is a real stunner. Has the revolution become institutionalized? Can you really have an institutional avant-garde? Isn’t the avant-garde by definition that which resists, is opposed to the academy, explicitly? Finally, I want to register my complaint against the use of the word ‘progressive’ which implies a moral and political value to aesthetic choices which is indefensible. When you talk about progressive politics I understand what is meant. But progressive art? Who gets to judge?
