Hey everybody,
I found an article titled "Aesthetic and emotional effects of meter and rhyme in poetry" that was published in 2013 by the medical journal "Frontiers in Psychology," whose authors did conclude that metrical verse with rhyme is easier for the general public to understand and appreciate, in comparison to free verse.
On the left-hand side of this webpage: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3560350/ there is an option to view that study as a PDF file.
To paraphrase their conclusion, looking for meaning in a free verse poem is like a person trying to find their car keys in a messy kitchen or living room—they could be somewhere between a pair of sofa cushions, or on the kitchen table but underneath a newspaper, or under the t.v. stand, etc., whereas looking for meaning in metrical verse with rhyme is like a person trying to find their car keys on a set of well-organized key hooks that are smartly placed by the front door.
Is the lack of user-friendliness that in inherent in free verse the main reason as to why the general public has become estranged from contemporary poetry, which is mostly free verse? Can a resurgence of metrical verse with rhyme set the stage for the general public to fall in love with poetry, once again?
From Ravenwing.