You know, we are all going to do what we're going to do regardless of what anyone says. But the crafting of words into things of interest is worth the time to learn as much about the crafting as possible. I've been reading some lectures of Paul Muldoon's published in 2006. My memory is going to mess this up, but an interesting discourse unfolds about the poem's discernibility from prose being pretty much reduced to enjambment. The metrical sound in a sentence mimics the remnants of pentameter and tetrameter, which most of us automatically cascade along the streaming of words during an unfolding play with words. So if enjambment is about all that differentiates prose and poetry then the last line of a poem can never be verse.

So, what is new about our writing? Probably doesn't matter, since we are all going to do what we're going to do regardless of what anyone says.

Interesting thoughts Larry.  Right now, I am reading A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 by James Shapiro.  In it he discusses some of these same thoughts.  He makes the point that that moment in time marked a turning point for playwrites in the use of prose as opposed to poetry.

He also discusses how the political events of the times as well as appeal to the masses influenced Shalespeare's writing style.  Background information about historical events, i.e. Essex and the Irish rebellion, taxation, and the formation of the East India company (ushering in the age of capitalism) gives Shakespeare's plays more depth and explains some of the mystery of the Bard's writing.

All this is to say, that I think your thoughts are both contempory and ageless.

i agree. In the Philippines, we "just do it". In the literary scene, we also just do what we want to do. Write, write, write. What else is new? could be a writer's banana republic. he he he

Interesting, Larry.

"My memory is going to mess this up, but an interesting discourse unfolds about the poem's discernibility from prose being pretty much reduced to enjambment. The metrical sound in a sentence mimics the remnants of pentameter and tetrameter, which most of us automatically cascade along the streaming of words during an unfolding play with words."  --- When I come to this area, I think of how many times I have heard comments on my prose writing as "poetic."  Generally this is not offered as praise for the work but as a flaw I must try to work past, smooth out, lose the layering and texture and "depth" and write more cleanly, pursue the action in clearly understandable and succinct sentences.  Could it be that if I make line breaks and appropriate enjambments on the prose lines of my novel I will then have an epic poem?  I don't think so. 

There is a quote somewhere by someone famous that defines a poem as a communication/expression that can't have been written in any other way than it is and still transfer the same emotion/information/connection between writer and reader/listener.  I find this to be true when I come across poetry that settles inside me as if an epiphany, a new understanding of some area -- abstract or concrete -- I thought I already knew.