To answer some part of your question, Janice. There may be the teeniest swing back towards formal poetry here in the US but it is almost unnoticeable given the truckloads of free verse which has been dumped upon the journal world here. To me, it seems that there is a real aversion to formal poetry. I attribute that to laziness, not preference of art. I also believe it is a business decision on the editors part, even the university journals tilt heavily to free verse. In the recent past I was just as guilty in my preference for free verse, not due to laziness but to ignorance. The post-modern public generally doesn't have a clue what it takes to write a good formal poem, much less to comprehend it. We are called "rhymers" by our free verse brethren in such a derogatory way. I think the best free verse writers (Billy Collins not withstanding) do incorporate rhythm and meter in their work. Rhyme is more subtle, folded into the guts of their work so that their readers aren't consciously aware of it or their readers don't mind it if they are running internal mind tricks on them. I don't submit free verse to journals so I am not up to speed on the paying markets for it.
I see much more formal poetry in the UK. Some of it is just as dreadful as some of my work, but there are a good many talented formalist writers there. I don't think free verse has the same hold there as in the US, but I could be wrong about that. What I do see are the local poetry societies making concerted efforts to engender formal competitions which pay at least a little bit more than anything going on in America. I suspect education has something to do with that as well. It is natural to assume this given the UK and Europe have been the cradle of formalists from the beginning. Americans seem to be intimidated by their across the Pond brethren. There is a little snobbery involved and not a little resentment of it. I don't care who writes the good stuff, I just want to read it. Buy it when I can. More later.
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