Norman,
Sexual deviance and reticence are different subjects, so I'm going to address the latter. I agree with you that reticence is in short supply; only I would rather use "reserve" or some other word that doesn't imply "fear," as reticence sometimes does. Reserve suggests to me that there is a force the poet has access to which he/she has yet to unleash. It also suggests thought. The poet considered his diction carefully. Elliot is like that. One senses he weighed a number of vocabulary items before he committed himself.
I see the decline of reserve connected closely to the rise of free verse. Reserve fit the metric poet like a glove. The constraint of feeling his way along the accentual topography went a long way towards keeping his more exuberant or downright formless feelings in check.
Lance
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