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I think it's important how this debate is framed. Do you really want to set up a binary between free verse poets and formal metrical poets? It seems to me that Zukofsky, Williams, Frost, Eliot, & many many other 20th-cent poets proved that the character of "measure" is something that transcends or overturns that binary. Studying metrics & traditional forms, or exploring alternative concepts of measure & design, is only the beginning of wisdom. Taking this supposed binary & then framing it as an agon between "free-versers" & "new formalists" for the prize of popularity or dominance - this seems like a recipe for deafness. I liked Anastasios' linking of Frost & Olson (& Williams). Frost's ideas about form as a dramatic speech act, with a teleology - a "denouement" - is a good example of how the question of form - musical, dramatic - doesn't make "forms" irrelevant, but gives them a deeper substance. (I think Frost in his offhand comments tends to downplay the structural-musical importance of stanza & strophe in his work: by, again, framing form as a kind of athletics - tennis with the net - he sort of trivializes his own formal necessities. He DEPENDS on strophic repetition to accomplish his form.) Auden agreed with you, Alison: he thought free verse was harder to write. But he thought metrics was worth studying for its own sake. I think the whole thing is very close to what you see in music. There are those with incredible natural talent for rhythm & sound. But the language of music can also be learned, profitably. It works both ways, it's not either/or. Henry