Thanks for an interesting post, Christopher. I'm still thinking this through but I believe there are large flaws in Hulme's line of argument.
Here’s the big one. What happened to "live and let live"? Just because a new approach comes along, it doesn't mean you have to eradicate its precursor.
I do quite a lot of recitals to general audiences and all of my poetry is metrical. One of the most frequent comments I get from the general public is, "It's good to hear real poetry for a change."
I'm not in any way against free verse but, given the public's appetite for metrical poetry and the nebulousness of the arguments for saying it should be largely abandoned, I remain puzzled at how such a great displacement occurred.
The evolution of poetry seems to have leaned more towards acceptance than rejection. People who argue that free verse is not "poetry" don't get much credence. A while back, I sat through a very long performance of sound poetry. (Here's
a sample of the poet's work.) It was very skillful but it left me cold. However, I didn't go out and start an abandon-sound-poetry crusade. Much of the poetry community is quite comfortable with sound poetry. But metrical poetry? Not so much.
Note that the question that bothers me is not: Which is generally better, free verse or metrical poetry? That question has stirred a lot of debate and I’m not really interested in it. The question I am interested in is: Why did free verse largely displace, as opposed to coexist with, metrical poetry?
Here is where I’m at so far in assessing Hulme’s reasoning:
He says that because metrical poetry is permanent (i.e. written), it is unlike performance arts, such as dancing and acting, which are not. I may be behind the times, but I think of metrical poetry, at least in part, as a performance art. And the novel hasn’t yet died out.
He says that because metrical poetry is permanent, there comes a point when everything it has to say has been said. That’s a bit like saying there can be no good new literature because the alphabet has been over-used.
He says that once a method has been around too long it becomes imitative and gets used to express sentimentality. That accusation is certainly still around. (It rhymes? Send it to Hallmark.) To me that’s an unfounded generalization about the content of metrical poetry. And plenty of bleeding-heart angst survives in the free verse world.
He says new forms are deliberately introduced by people who detest the old ones. I might give him that. But it’s an explanation for the demise of the old ones only if it’s contagious and widespread. It seems to have been so. And maybe there’s the seed of an explanation there. Reading between the lines a bit, it seems that Hulme is speaking for poets, not their public readership. I don’t see evidence of similar detestation on the part of the readers. I don't know the numbers, but I’ll bet that, individually, some old-school metrical poets at least give modern free verse ones a run for their money in terms of book sales. Did poets do what they wanted to do, without much regard for what their readers sought? This looks possible. Certainly, Hulme’s essay isn’t heavy on the reader’s point of view. Which brings up another question. Does the reader (or listener) matter? If poets want audiences, other than incestuous ones (I’ll listen to yours if you listen to mine and even then I might not really listen to yours), I think it does. How many poetry readings today are attended mainly by poets?
He then proposes that poetry should fit its content, not vice versa. That’s again too broad-brush. In good metrical poetry, form enhances content. There’s a place for both, just as in music the jazz-player may improvise and the classical violinist may play with rigorous adherence to the music.
He next suggests that formal poetry aimed at perfection which, once achieved, left no room for further attempts. Again, this seems flawed to me. Hillary climbed Everest for the first time, but it didn’t mean humanity should abandon climbing from then on.
He next argues that poetry is concerned with introspection and impressions, not stories, epic subjects, or absolute beauty. I’m starting to get riled by the fact that this guy was considered influential. By what right does he stipulate boundaries of poetic content?
He says that metrical poetry induces a hypnotic state in which people become more open to emotions of grief and ecstasy. What higher compliment could he pay it? He continues to say free verse works through a succession of impressions delivered raw from the page, and that, in that process, rhyme and meter are distractions. Fine, but that only amounts to saying you should adapt your method to your intent and content. It is no basis for limiting that intent and content. Poems should no longer tell stories?
Towards the middle of the essay, he backtracks a bit, suggesting that there is a place for the old chanting poetry, but that to put the new content of impressions and introspection into form is like putting a child in armour. Here he seems to suggest the two can coexist.
He then goes on to address whether, when you have removed meter and rhyme, you are left with prose rather than poetry. He argues that prose and poetry are distinct methods of communication. Poetry is a direct language which deals with images. Prose is a conventional language which uses dead images that have become figures of speech. Tell that to Cormac McCarthy. Or are his novels poetry? Anyway, although I think this part is flawed too, it’s essentially irrelevant to my question.
He says that new images are created by poets but lose their initial vividness and become conventional through use. He says metre and rhyme can disguise this and sums up his position with: “That is my objection to metre, that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration, and whose mind is not stored with new images.” And free verse is immune to this? Anyway, if they enjoy it, why stop them? One reason is to stop the bad stuff drowning out the good. I think some members of the general public have the impression that exactly this has happened in the free verse world.
This has just added to my puzzlement. I’m surprised that such blinkered reasoning could have contributed to such a large displacement of metrical poetry.
The good thing is that I haven't detected any fundamental barriers to a resurgence.
John