Silliman's Blog quoting WCW:

"And thus poetic form comprises the words and its structural uses -- that character which the structure superadds to the words their literal meanings. But the form thus achieved becomes by that itself a 'word,' the most significant of all, that dominates every other word in the poem."

We are not very far from Mallarmé's assertion that the poem itself is a mot.

And I wonder: can modernist forms themselves be "stuffed" with content in the way decried by Williams? Isn't that what happened with the Ashberians of the right? With those who imitated Williams' style without adding anything new? Cid Corman would be "weak" by this logic. I like some of his poetry but it is imitative to the extreme.

Williams' dismissal of the Objectivists needs to be unpacked and explained. It would seem they are closest to him yet he views their success as extremely limited.

To what extent do the more interesting developments in recent poetry come, not from the objectivist/projectivist/language lineage, with its technical obsessions, but from those who see this technical obsessiveness as a trap? Spicer, Frank O'Hara, Antin, in their different ways. A concern with structure in this sense cannot guarantee that poetry remain "progressive." Lining up formal qualities of the text with political values is extremely problematic, even if I agree to call Marilyn Hacker "conservative" in her style. It is like a poetic version of Whorf/Sapir hypothesis. I believe a case could be made, but I haven't been able to elaborate it yet, despite my sympathy for this line of thought.

Surely structure is just one factor among others. One of the most effective contemprary poetic structures is the list: one thing after the other. Does Paterson gain its effectiveness through the rigor of its architecture? I think not. I love whole chunks of it, but I couldn't justify its construction.