Poet to critic

What you say about my poem is correct, and your attempt to rewrite the poem I've written is a better attempt than I made in the first place; you've made a better poem from my poem than I made of it.

The problem: I now know much more about what a poem isn't than what a poem is, having read so many of them and having written so few myself–four or five is all. And I continue to read more poems than I write, hoping that in my reading I'll find something for my writing; but I don't, or what I find I've found before, and so my reading turns itself on my writing.

When I sent you my poem I should have told you that I feel closer to poetry when I'm writing prose than when I'm writing a poem; had I told you this you might have read my poem differently. Not to say that what you wrote about my poem was mistaken, not at all, or that the changes you suggested wouldn't make my poem better; your changes strengthen my poem immeasurably were it a poem at all, which I'm now sure it wasn't.