You attack my poetry—
It lacks meter,
You say,
And neglects
Rhyme, symbol and art.
You call my ideas
Insubstantial
And my methods
Childish.
I answer you:
I write in the meter
Of the heart,
Not dactyls and spondees.
The rhyme is the flow,
And the poem itself
Is a symbol
Written to be understood
By the divine-human heart.
My ideas,
Now insubstantial,
Will soon be clear,
And isn’t it often
The method of a child
Which says the most
While saying the least?
(Honolulu, January 2002)
Adam Maruyama
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-writing-a-poem-to-the-critic/
