You say I don’t write my poems in the conventional way
Of poets that have gone before me.
That my first work of twelve poems, Leaves of Grass, was in a jumble.
That there was nothing poetic about them
Except each line began with a capital letter.
You saw that there was no rhyming or meter.
My lines varied with wildly uneven length.
I wanted to free my lines from strict verses that had become archaic.
I experimented with the art of writing from the normal way that I saw around me.
I used my line breaks based on the way it would be printed.
You still say it is not poetry at all.
My poems having no pattern in their sights.
But, did you take the time to read them?
Did you ponder what was there at all?
Do you see the energy and individualism that I write my poems?
I wrote about the working classes.
The major events that shaped our time.
I talked about things you dared to talk about in public.
You critics of my time won’t understand the way I write my works of poems.
I hope our future will read and understand what I wrote.
April 28th Prompt: Write a poem in the form of a letter from a famous poet, explaining something everyone has gotten wrong about a poem or some aspect of his or her work.
