Only a handful of poet-bloggers normally work in meter, and considerably more than a few have made it clear that they think meter not just irrelevant to contemporary practice, but a positive hindrance to making good poems.
They're wrong, and I've worked so hard at attempting to show them the error of their ways that I'm not surprised to be called an archformalist. That's wrong, too; still, it amazed even me to find myself defending free verse in the comments to Michael Blowhard's review of my little chap (had to get that link in again!).
And I shouldn't have been amazed. It's easy in poetry blogland to forget what I've written so many times that it's become just blah-blah-blah even to me: there are many, many educated, passionate, intelligent readers out there who feel insulted—not challenged but insulted—by contemporary poetry and poets, and there are too many poets who prove those readers right by caring about no audience but academics and other poets. Such an attitude on the part of poets was impossible when they actually had to drive at least some book and magazine sales in order to be published. As it happens, the great majority of verse written without that constraint has been free verse, so it's no surprise that many people mistakenly assume free verse is necessarily associated with that attitude.
I'm afraid the Web will make the situation even worse: it's too easy to find other people who share and reinforce one's attitudes, interests, and prejudices, and too easy to ignore everybody else. It's too easy to not be bothered to try to publish at all. Yikes.
Update 10/27/2005: Added the word "mistakenly" to the last sentence of the penulitmate paragraph above.
8:27:21 PM 
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