Louis Markos, Englischprofessor, deutet den Abschied vom metrischen Versmass als Folge der Verabschiedung von der kosmischen Ordnung:
Though many critics of modern poetry accuse free-verse poets of a lack of discipline, an excess of self-indulgence, and even a streak of laziness, I believe that the post–World War I abandonment of traditional meter masks a deeper shift in the arts. (649-50)
By making use of set aesthetic forms—whether in poetry, the visual arts, or music—the creative geniuses of Europe and America attempted to reflect that cosmic order and balance. (652-53)
For a century now, armies of poets and critics have sought to cast off traditional metrical schemes and stanza forms as they would a straightjacket. They thought that by doing so they would liberate the imagination and allow creativity to thrive. Alas, like most of the utopian promises of the modern world, free verse has more often crushed meaning than enhanced it, turning poets inward and trapping them in a suffocating prison of egocentric, if not narcissistic, self-expression. (759-62)
Markos sieht das Ideal in “inkarnationaler Poesie”:
Poetry, when it is most worthy of itself, is incarnational, fusing form and content, sound and sense into a two-into-one union. The aesthetically beautiful forms of traditional poetry are good, even as the body God created for us is good. Yes, we, our world, and our arts are fallen, but the hand of the Maker persists, and we pay homage to that Maker when we fashion a beautiful body to house (incarnate) the artistic ideas that he inspires in us. The modern Western world has, in many ways, lost its perception of and belief in a world of order, beauty, and purpose, and that loss is partly reflected, I believe, in the abandonment of traditional meter. (661-62)
Louis A. Markos. Literature: A Student’s Guide. Crossway: Wheaton, 2012. (Kindle-Version)
