Bob, my thanks too for your quotation from the Wilbur essay. I'll be looking for the book also.
Andrew, a hypothesis occurs to me about your question, which I'll boil down to "Why would readers value rhyme in older poetry and not in modern and contemporary poetry?"
Perhaps we can blame it on the tendencies of English lit syllabi, which stress only what's Historically Important, what comes to constitute a Movement. For the last century, until New Formalism, rhyme hasn't been part of "a movement." It's been "what was left behind". A survey-course familiarity with modern poetry--which is all most students of literature have--could leave one with the idea that it was something to pass beyond, a thing we weren't supposed to enjoy any more.
This is guesswork on my part, because my student days ignored the modern era almost completely, so it would be good to hear more from people currently learning or teaching.
Addendum: for some sterling examples of awful rhyming, and awful meter too, check out
this essay on Poetry Daily.