“Poetry in America reflects struggle …. It is class war–and more–conducted through the normal social mechanisms of verse. The primary ideological message of poetry lies not in its explicit content, political though that may be, but in the attitude toward reception it demands of the reader. It is this “attitude toward information” which is carried forward by the recipient. It is this attitude which forms the basis for a response to other information, not necessarily literary, in the text. And, beyond the poem, in the world.”
–Ron Silliman, The New Sentence, Roof Press, 1977/87
