I think hating people who are either/or is a little excessive. Hope didn't like free verse and put his views in writing, as was only natural for a scholar and poet. Maybe he overstated things - and perhaps he misquoted to make his point, which is clearly less forgivable. And I know he said somewhere (I can't find it at the moment) that the title of his essay ("Free Verse: a Post-Mortem") had proved a little premature. But given the range of his true accomplishments I'd say we don't need to be too bothered by this blind spot of his. Tolstoy, after all, couldn't understand Shakespeare. Eliot dismissed Byron. And so it goes...
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