Adam Roberts titled his second piece on the state of American poetry, published in The Atlantic, “What Makes a Poem Worth Reading?” But the title (perhaps not even chosen by Roberts, but by a copy editor at the magazine) is misleading. The piece is, in fact, about an ongoing battle within poetry. Ron Silliman refers to it as a struggle between quietists and the post-avant garde. Roberts formulates the same division as “mainstream” versus “experimental” – but in both cases, they are essentially talking about the poets about emerged out of the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry tradition and, well, pretty much everyone else.

Roberts seems to come down, if only slightly, on the side of  the experimentalists. Though he also seems to be calling for a new experimentalism – one that is more accessible to the average reader (though he also tries – and fails – to grapple with what it means for a poem to be accessible; in his defense, I am quite sure I could not have done any better).

He ends by saying he will talk in future installments about two movements – flarf and slow poetry – which he seems to feel have potential for bridging the “accessibility” gap in experimental poetry.