Poetic Manifesto (2)
Michael Ceraolo
In pre-printing press days rhyme and meter
were used mainly as aids in memorization;
yet half a millenium after the word can be printed
there are those who still insist,
and their number seem to be growing daily,
that without rhyme and meter it isn’t poetry,a sinister synecdoche that conflates
one tool in the tool box into the tool box itself,
and goes way beyond that,
saying
that screwdrivers and pliers and wrenches
aren’t tools, no matter how well used,
because none of them is a hammer
