Here's my second square, professorial, neo-formalist rant:

There's a presumption I've never understood: the idea that iambic verse is thumping and monotonous. Actually, it can be extraordinarily supple and flexible, almost infinitely variable. It only gets stiff when it is used as a sign of the poet's moral rectitude, as in J.V. Cunningham. Where did Pound get that line about "not in the sequence of the metronome"? The metronome is a device for measuring tempo, not rhythm, and the tempo of the iambic pentameter is marvellously malleable. It does stiffen up a bit with Dryden and Pope, of course, but is quite free both before and after: from Chaucer to Milton, and from Wordsworth to Browning. The Spanish "endecasílabo" is similar in its flexibility: imported from Italian poetry in the 16th century, it brought a new sort of musicality into Spanish.

The problem with some current "formalists" is they write as though Pound were correct in his metronome remark. The verse might scan, but it lacks a convincing rhythmic feel. It often sounds cramped and cranky rather than expansively Shakespearian. You don't get that forced, counting-the-syllables-on-the-fingers feel from Shakespeare that you get from the neo-formalists of today.