It's the 10th anniversary of my marriage with Deana, so I only have time for a quick reply to Henry, who is a hero of moderation except in his complex and often beautiful poetry.
I don't believe that accentual-syllabic poems are inherently better than free verse poems. For instance, among the Americans, only Robert Frost comes close to rivaling the achievement of Walt Whitman. I was talking about the fact that nearly all the greatest poetry in English, even in the free verse-dominated last century, has been written in accentual-syllabic meters, and offering my explanation for that fact: that that tradition has the richest toolset in our language. Part of that toolset, respect for ordinary speech, is shared by mainstream free verse, and that helps explain why free verse is the only real rival, in English, to accentual syllabic meters. Any poetry is doomed to coterie status when it does not respect our human use of language to share with each other our feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Language is not just arbitrary signs or sounds.
4:30:01 PM 
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