While I'm new to the board and perhaps should be shy to jump in but . . . .
Free verse was not invented by elitist poets and critics and teachers disdainful of the “common man.” Does anyone think that's why Whitman broke out of received forms? He wanted to be heard by the common man, to burst out of the European straitjacket. I can't believe the Ob-Gyn WC Williams wanted to speak to a select few. Love him or hate him, Ginsberg could certainly reach a big audience. (In my youth I lived in a place where he held readings and remember thinking he should teach a course on how to make a living as a poet without having to teach.)
Is it possible they were simply reacting to the world around them? New city sounds, speeds—trains, cars; new rhythm in the factories and on the street; new rhythms in people's daily lives once they left the farms and took factory jobs? The world changed and how people interpreted the world changed. I think that makes more sense than to think it was cooked up by some bad poets, elite critics, and snobby professors.
Isn't the New Formalism a product of its time? All over the world people are attempting to return to “tradition,” apparently hoping this will redo the bonds that once held groups together. It's much deeper than politics. I don't know why it's happening. My theory is that it's a reaction to decades, even centuries, of increasingly rapid change, particularly in science and technology—humans aren't designed to go from steam power to nuclear power in a few years without having to take a breather—or freaking out. It seems obvious to me that New Formalism is part of this, and is as much a part of the zeitgeist as free verse was—and is. Who knows how long it will last, or if it will. Personally, I don't see much possibility of an iambic world returning to stay.
Meanwhile, I'll continue enjoying WB Yeats and Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens and WC Williams, and take them on their own terms.
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