Herbert White

"When I hit her on the head, it was good,

and then I did it to her a couple of times,--
but it was funny,--afterwards,
it was as if somebody else did it ...

Everything flat, without sharpness, richness or line.

Still, I liked to drive past the woods where she lay,
tell the old lady and the kids I had to take a piss,
hop out and do it to her ..

Frank Bidart at the Academy of American Poets

Frank Bidart reads in RealAudio

From  "What's American About American Form?"

Free verse versus formal verse [is] a barren distinction. The modernists did not understand their project as constituting a rebellion against formal verse, or form itself. It was a far more complicated and fundamental issue.