Quincy and Mark, you're both much more attuned to academia than I am
Lance, I am afraid that there is little in academia today with which I am in tune. And judging from Quincy’s recent statements, I think he feels (or is beginning to feel) something similar.
What has happened, as you will know, is that the arts faculties of the western world have been caught in a time-warp, keeping them locked within the “spirit of ‘68”, seething against the capitalist system (which supports them very nicely at the moment, thank you). And being committed to the revolutionary social-engineering program of that era, they march on. It has become a self-replicating culture now, and has all the blind tenacity of a religious movement. It IS a religious movement in fact.
Central to the revolutionary perspective of this secular religion is the Lockean/Marxist/Rousseauist principle of the
tabula rasa, the “blank slate” view that the human being is the one animal upon the earth somehow magically absolved from all “essential” or in-born traits. All that we are is seen to be a product of social conditioning alone. Thus the “noble savage” principle from Rousseau, that human beings are ONLY evil as a result of social evil – correct the injustices of society and you will have perfect people. And this dove-tails with Marx’s principle that social conditions alone produce consciousness.
This fantasy is, of course, marvellously attractive to the dislocated intellectual mind, giving it an opportunity to get one up on Mother Nature (the arch enemy), which is seen as just another idea to be manipulated for social ends. And ONLY dissociated intellectuals are capable of believing such a bizarre fantasy. Here, for instance, is a list of a few hundred <A HREF="http://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm" TARGET=_blank>
“human universals”</A> , common to all known cultures on the planet. Without an intrinsic “essential” origin in human biology, such correlations can only be considered as amazing and inexplicable coincidences.
Here is my point. Being opposed to “essentialism” (a necessary opposition, since re-writing social scripts requires a blank slate), then ALL TYPES OF REPEATING PATTERNS will look like the products of some “essentialist” program. Metrical forms will appear as a sort of literary “instinct” – and the use of such patterns will be seen as an implicit statement of support for other “essential” recurring patterns. Instinct, inheritance, tradition – all of these are vilified as ideas to be overcome.
As I have argued on these threads before, this psychology is a modern expression of Gnostic dualism – only today, in this secular form, Nature is not merely traduced and rejected, but outright denied any “essential” reality at all. Nature is just another “essentially empty” social construct. This is a religion of the masculine “spiritual” mind, aspiring to total victory over mother nature.
Mr. Sadoff has lived a literary life reading, critiquing and associating with men and women who, by virtue of their a priori rejection of the central place of meter in English poetry, cut themselves off with one blow from the well-springs of American and British literature.
Also, another factor enters the equation. The past. All of our metrical inheritance comes from “the past”, a realm of systematic sexism, racism and colonialism. This also taints metrical poetry with an aura of corruption. The past is the realm of error, and must not be celebrated in any way. History is a cess-pit of social horrors, only to be used to demonstrate error, and any product of the past (like tradition) must be corrupt.
This is the psychology and philosophy behind Sadoff’s rejection of form. And it must be particularly galling for those who are on this side of politics AND who write in proscribed formal patterns. How they can square this regressive tendency in their art with the derision of their tradition-hating, progressive colleagues is a mystery to me.