As soon as you get away from actual poetic forms, rhyme, meter, etc., there is no line between prose and poetry. From my way of thinking, many poets are simply lazy prose writers.
“ I don’t think the avant-garde applies in this country, anyhow. I think it’s a whole different kind of thing that goes on here. Because the continental avant-garde was, first of all, elitist. It depended on the existence of a literary class, which we don’t have here, not in the same sense as you have there. It implies a militant approach, it implies leaders and followers. What we have here is much more diffuse throughout the country at large. “
Ronald Sukenick