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PROBLEM_OF_THE_LINE

                                             October 19, 2010
                                             August  22, 2013



   "In 1968, the problem of form is the problem of
   the line.  It, I decide, is the question that
   nobody, not even Olson, knows how to                 BROKEN_LINES
   answer. ... What, in free verse, does it mean?
   Olson's answer, more rigorous and less mushily
   metaphysical than Williams', is nonetheless
   filled with gaps and contradictions.  Yet even an
   O'Hara and a Ginsberg seem to acknowledge it.
   Without ever having read a word of Derrida, I
   distrust the essentialism of speech Olson's
   projective verse appears to propose (later I will
   realize that I've turned Olson's poetry into a
   straw man, his position in my head far more
   extreme than any he ever took in life, and only
   after that, a good while after that, will I come       INTO_THE_STRAW
   to recognize how useful this process had been)."

                         -- Ron Silliman
                            p. 22 "Under Albany"





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