I get the feeling that JL, in his post of today over at the Hotel, via Gerrit Lansing quote, exaggerates the contemporary sway of traditionalist poetics. Why? Whitman & "innovation" won that battle a long time ago. Is it like the pebble in his shoe or the nagging return of the repressed? I mean the possibility that "traditionalist" techniques might represent opportunities denied. Denied by partisanship & polemics. The lingering residue of defensiveness from style battles long over. Red & blue state poetics.