"those attacks on meter started a trend that ... destroyed the importance of poetry as an art form" - in other words, kept poetry in step with other art forms. Let's face it, who looks up to living artists as seers? Where are the 21st Mozarts and Beethovens? And if we're to believe
Booker et al, Novels have had it. And yet, all those people with MP3 players must be listening to something. How does one measure importance?
"It became more important, perhaps, for each writer to be ‘free and unique’" - I hadn't realised until recently quite how closely attached Romanticism and Modernism are. The modernist trends and aspirations you mention were there 200 years ago. As Booker puts it - "The ego had intruded. And with it came all the the cloudy sentimentality, the disintegration of form, the sensational striving for effect which we associate with the age of Romanticism". So maybe we should blame Brahms et al rather than the modernists. Maybe the modernists had the same dreams but lacked the optimism/belief. Maybe the modernists had more powerful, technological weapons which meant that the initial, necessary clear-out got out of hand.