MUSE ABUSE

     In poetry the form collaborates
     In partnership with your own native wit
     By opening unpremeditated gates
     To what surprisingly is meet and fit.

     Because of rhyme and meter’s strict demands,
     Your mind’s compelled to figure out new ways
     Whereby your narrow consciousness expands—
     Fresh meter comes, and bright ideas blaze.

     That now so many poets have cast off
     What they have found too onerous to use,
     Exulting in their freedom, and now scoff
     At formalists, just disrespects the Muse,

          Who says that music is the lyric’s heart,
          And those who leave it desecrate the art.

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