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Nobody asked me, but as a scholar of sonnets I have more to say about the historical use of "fettered" and "unfettered" than pretty much anyone else on the planet.
Every sonnet writer since Petrarch (who invented the form when the Medici family was in power) has used the form's constraints to sing while pushing boundaries.
The point of the sonnet form is that the voice is constrained, fettered, yoked, imprisoned, bound. Every good sonnet writer has reflected on this.
For African American sonnet writers, chains and fetters have had material meaning, of course, and the best sonnet writers, from Claude McKay to Terrance Hayes, draw on the resonance of real and figurative fetters.
For me, unfettered conversation seems uninteresting, uninspired, undisciplined, unconstrained -- a mess. I'd rather go read (or write) a sonnet.
ABBAABBACDECDE or ABBAABBACCDDEE or ABABCDCDEFEFGG iambic pentameter, volta, problem & resolution -- whatever you have to say, say it fettered!
