Are Poets Born Not Made?

[miyako73]

Discussion only please. No argument.

Mary Oliver said:

"Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school. This is true also of painters, sculptors, and musicians."

Does it mean that there are inherent poetic styles and beats possessed by born-poets, considering natural-born painters have their own unique affinity towards certain hues and colors, sculptors towards certain shapes and textures, and musicians towards certain instruments and vocal ranges?

[Calidore]

Art being art whatever the form, it's seems perfectly logical to me that one can have an instinctive way of using words.

I have to say, though, that I'm always skeptical of people who claim "everyone knows" what they know or believe.

[Charles Darnay]

I do not believe art is hereditary in any way. I don't think we come into the world a poet or painter or musician or not. True, some people's brains work in a way that may give them an "advantage" in certain artistic fields (particularly music...such is why you get musical protegees.) But poetry is something you develop, not something you are born with.

[Desolation]

Some people certainly have natural talents and seem to take to things easier than others. This can go for words, music, mathematics, or anything else. But, I think that natural talent is over-rated, and can only get you so far.

I like to believe that with hard work, dedication, and practice anyone can eventually do anything within the realm of possibility.

Too many people get put off when they don't believe that they have a natural affinity for something. This is especially true for math, but extends to art as well. Maybe grand figures like William Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Jimi Hendrix were born with something really special inside of them, but I don't think that anyone should be deterred because they don't have that.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Both.

[Delta40]

I believe that each person has a forte in life and some people have to work harder at it. We all learnt to write and it came easier to some than others but we managed it in the end. Our love of writing might vary however. We must also remember that it isn't necessarily those who didn't struggle with writing that love writing. So what do you do if you are driven by visions of beautiful art in your mind but you're a bumbling painter? Isn't that person a born artist too? I don't buy the statement myself. I think it has to come to practice, practice, practice for this lot of people who have the same love of the arts as the next artist but struggle for other reasons.

[cafolini]

They are not born as such. It is a matter of unequal love for whatever they like to do most. Without that love and dedication they would fail to achieve great things in any field.

[shortstoryfan]

I think anyone can be a poet. But I do think some people are more able in the beginning, and it will be very hard for people who have an average ability to work hard enough to reach them. It's like that with any artistic medium. There are exceptions--I would argue that without so much hard work and will power, Maria Callas would not have become a world famous soprano (a voice teacher once told me when I was struggling that Maria Callas didn't even have a pretty voice, she just worked very hard and was very determined, and I actually agree).

I do think there is also an intangible quality some writers have that's almost supernatural. I have seen people improve a lot in workshops, but honestly, I believe a large part of writing good poetry is having good taste, or being able to sustain a "place" or "identity" or "worldview" completely in a poem. You must really be an aesthete.

[Delta40]

And even an aesthete must cultivate their art.

[shortstoryfan]

Yeah, but some people just never GET it. Sure, you can work at it really hard and whatever, and maybe get better--but to be a really good poet, you have to have something, I think. You have to at least have taste. I wouldn't even call it taste--it's the ability to discern what is at work in the kinds of work you want to do, and being able to execute. It's a discerning eye, I guess.

[Delta40]

Do you think its possible for a poet to have that gift without ever being conscious of what their particular ability is? I mean they never intentionally break down that gift into the working parts to see how it operates?

[shortstoryfan]

Oh, it's a very subconscious process much of the time. Or at least, the poet will start with conscious themes to guide them and their writing will manifest ones they weren't even thinking about.

[JuniperWoolf]

Everyone thinks Rimbaud was some kid who drunkenly stumbled into poetry on a bender one night and re-vamped the whole scene without even trying, but the truth is that he studied poetry like a mother****er. He dedicated almost all of his young life to studying the greats who preceded him, he read and re-read their work and then he played with their format and sounds and style, and then he composed his own poems. No, I don't think people just "born with it" and don't have to work, I think talent is a natural potential skill, and you nurture it by genuinely trying to get better.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I don't know. I think like most everything, people are born with more of a disposition to art than others. If I'm not mistaken, the parts of the brain dealing with things like art have been identified, and it's been shown that some people have brains more predisposed to those subjects. The whole right-brained, left-brained thing. I've met people who grow up in households without any csignificant cultural influence, yet they want to become artists . . . some to the point where they can't not be artists. I find it hard to believe that this is all due to personal choice alone.

In summary: everyone can be a poet. Not everyone can be a good poet. It's not in everyone. Of course no one is "born" a poet. It's a skill that needs to be learned, same as walking, talking, and crapping in a toilet.

[stuntpickle]

I do not believe art is hereditary in any way. I don't think we come into the world a poet or painter or musician or not. True, some people's brains work in a way that may give them an "advantage" in certain artistic fields (particularly music...such is why you get musical protegees.) But poetry is something you develop, not something you are born with.

You know, Charles, I think you might be missing the point. I don't think that being an artist is hereditary. But I do believe that genius is a freak that nature works to undo by a return to its mediocre mean, which is why brilliant parents do not necessarily have brilliant children. As a survival mechanism, genius is a loser and has consigned one historically to a life of isolation. Think of Kierkegaard pining away in his market town or Kafka who wanted to die in obscurity with all his manuscripts burned.

Of course, anyone can achieve some level of competence with regards to technique. But most every great artist requires more than that. I once heard Dave Liebman, a saxophonist, describe it as the division between the head, the hand and the heart. The least important and most easily mastered, in my view, is the head, the theoretical and historical knowledge of the medium. The great obstacle that most aspirants run into is the hand, the technique, and most spend their entire lives trying to master it or acquire "chops". The last, most elusive, most important aspect is the heart--what is known as duende, soul or "having something to say." How one acquires this last element is a mystery. Perhaps life beats it into some people, or perhaps some are simply born with a certain rare sensitivity. Whatever the case, readers will forgive deficits in the former two if there is an abundance of the latter. To be really great, however, requires all three, and the convergence of the three is a rare thing indeed.

[MorpheusSandman]

I still think Pope had it right when he said: "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance" A while back there was an author on The Colbert Report who was promoting a book about creativity in humans, and he gave a surprising statistic that in kindergarten over 95% of kids will say they're creative, while in high school that number drops to below 50%. So I don't think people are born being more creative at all, I simply think some choose to cultivate that universal creativity that all of us possess and some don't, and somewhere along the line people forget they ever had that creativity in them at all.

As for the whole "technique VS creativity, intuition VS intellect" debate, I always thought it was a false dichotomy. When we look at the greats in all mediums, the most creative were frequently the most technically accomplished, and this is hardly limited to literature. Although I do agree that the entire point of learning technique is to be able to forget it. It's like learning all of the minute techniques of a jump shot so that in a game you can do it automatically without thinking. Art is the same way. You consciously learn technique so that it's always there when you need it. There's a lot of mediocre art made where technique was never learned and ignored, as well as where technique becomes the sole focus. It can't be to either extreme. The technique needs to be there, but in the service of intuitive creativity.

[My2cents]

Discussion only please. No argument.

Mary Oliver said:

"Everyone knows that poets are born and not made in school. This is true also of painters, sculptors, and musicians."

Does it mean that there are inherent poetic styles and beats possessed by born-poets, considering natural-born painters have their own unique affinity towards certain hues and colors, sculptors towards certain shapes and textures, and musicians towards certain instruments and vocal ranges?

It means that w/o a stamp of a unique something (a pattern unlike any other) that whatever shouts "I'm art" is an imposter.

It's easy to do as everyone else does and be content with the consensus. But that's not art, that's called being smart. IMO.

That's an interesting quote from Pope, Morpheus. It might mean one of two things: 1) A poet is chosen or 2) A poet is a scribe. In other words, there has to be an audience, which means there's an element of the mercenary. I like it

[Riesa]

born ...

[MorpheusSandman]

It might mean one of two things: 1) A poet is chosen or 2) A poet is a scribe. I always thought it meant precisely what it says: that poets master their craft by learning their craft (from art not chance), the same way that the best dancers are those that have learned to dance in the first place.

[My2cents]

I always thought it meant precisely what it says: that poets master their craft by learning their craft (from art not chance), the same way that the best dancers are those that have learned to dance in the first place.

Learning can be a deadly process. You learn and then you learn to learn and then you learn to learn to learn. Gotta break away at some point and take a chance. Being smart may keep you healthy, wealthy, and wise, but I doubt your name will have any value but to those to whom you have faithfully served in the most quotidian ways.

[MorpheusSandman]

Learning can be a deadly process.:skep: It seems to me that there's a lot of the anti-intellectual approach to art and creativity around today, even on these forums, but I ask those that promote this view: what great artists they can name that became great through nothing but natural talent and with no learning and no hard work? If you rattle off any list of the great poets--Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Chaucer, Yeats, Eliot, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Neruda, Hill, Auden--none of them were dummies that wrote their masterpieces by never learning about the art and craft of poetry. I simply don't think it is possible to ever be great, perhaps even good, without spending a significant time learning the craft that you intend to practice. As the saying goes, art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

[shortstoryfan]

Reading through the replies left me with a couple thoughts:

1. What is poetry technique? I'm not sure, and the term honestly leaves me very suspicious.

2. I don't believe in the idea of the poet of Romanticism, of pure nerve. At the same time, I don't believe all good poets are necessarily very intelligent people. It is their skill set which sets them apart. I think we overestimate what great poets intend to put into their work and what actually ends up in their work--we have to remember that many of our greatest poets weren't even alive when the idea of "close reading" came about.

3. I think for people beginning to write poetry, the first step may be getting rid of their misconceptions about poetry, or what is acceptable now in poetry. This is what leads to cliche and bad use of rhyme--misconception. As much as poetry is about originality, it is also a process of response to other artists. Sometimes, I think people are very willing to respond to the "masters" of their language and forget that responding to contemporaries is apart of the whole affair too. Take Shakespeare--what makes him such an innovator? Not only his response to what had been the norm in poetry conceit, but also his response to his peers.

[stuntpickle]

:skep: It seems to me that there's a lot of the anti-intellectual approach to art and creativity around today, even on these forums, but I ask those that promote this view: what great artists they can name that became great through nothing but natural talent and with no learning and no hard work? If you rattle off any list of the great poets--Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Chaucer, Yeats, Eliot, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Neruda, Hill, Auden--none of them were dummies that wrote their masterpieces by never learning about the art and craft of poetry. I simply don't think it is possible to ever be great, perhaps even good, without spending a significant time learning the craft that you intend to practice. As the saying goes, art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

Form is, itself, a coffin, and for anyone to be interested in it, it must contain something that was once alive.

As I recall Nabokov spent most of his time at Cambridge rowing and chasing girls rather than in the library. I don't think I've ever heard anyone suggest that a writer should not be familiar with his medium. It is an altogether different sort of thing to suppose that art is somehow intellectual or academic. Shakespeare was hardly a scholar. I think if you asked Hemingway what was most important, he would say living.

[My2cents]

Damn you stuntpickle, you stole my thunder.

[MorpheusSandman]

1. What is poetry technique?

2. I don't believe in the idea of the poet of Romanticism, of pure nerve. At the same time, I don't believe all good poets are necessarily very intelligent people...

3. I think for people beginning to write poetry, the first step may be getting rid of their misconceptions about poetry, or what is acceptable now in poetry....1. There is no poetry technique, but there are many poetic techniques, meaning that there are many certain things that can be taught, learned, and mastered. One must learn meter and form in order to write in verse, and one must learn the various uses and effects of line-breaks to write in free-verse. One should know about the different genres and types, how poetry is based on various speech-acts that reflect those of the real world. One should learn how to write in different voices, different idioms with different diction. One should learn how to employ and develop metaphors and imagery, to capitalize on the ambiguity of language. There's plenty of technique to be learned in poetry as in any art.

2. Again, if one just looks at writings of the great poets I think you'd be hard-pressed to claim any were dummies. You mention Shakespeare, but while Shakespeare might not have been a scholar, he was still clearly well-read and had an amazing ability to absorb, digest, and then represent almost everything (and everyone) experienced. There are plenty of references in his work to those that came before him, especially Ovid, Chaucer, and Marlowe, and it's also likely that he at least dabbled in the philosophy of the day (as Hamlet, eg, seems to draw on a popular "Treatise of Melancholy" that was popular amongst intellectuals at the time).

3. I certainly agree that new poets need to balance studying the distant masters as well as the more recent masters and their contemporaries. All three, I think are important for getting a grasp on where poetry came from, where it's recently been, and where it's at. I don't believe there's any bare originality to be found in any of the arts, but there are always new dishes to be made from old ingredients.


Form is, itself, a coffin, and for anyone to be interested in it, it must contain something that was once alive.

...I think if you asked Hemingway what was most important, he would say living.I wouldn't call form a coffin, but, then again, I reject any notion of form that thinks of it as separate from content, and coffin makes it seem much more of a negative thing than it is. Anyway, as has been stated numerous times, there's no content without form, and form is merely a ghost without content.

Obviously living is important or else one has little to write about. But everyone lives, and only a few know how to take that living and turn it into powerful art, and it's that transformation that requires knowledge and skill, which I claim cannot just happen by accident, chance, or ignorance.

[My2cents]

Schooling is life too so to say going to the real world is just ludicrous.

What's important is knowing that what you know is what you know. Book learning has its place, but it can't teach you to strike out on your own and apply what you learned in the book outside of academia.

Usually what happens is that the aspiring poet is so scared to apply what he knows to a sphere other than what he is accustomed to, that he gets lazy, complacent, and SAFE, and cozily settles into his nook unto perpetuity.

But that's like never going All In poker.

[Alexander III]

As Mutatis said Both. If you are born normal then as much hard work and dedication as you like but the best one can ever reach is above-mediocrity. But then those born with it, if they do not dedicate themselves and study(the right kind of study mind you, not reading as an academic reads but as a poet reads, the more time I spend in university the more I realize most academics are essentially stupid and arrogant) they will never rise above mediocrity.

To tag on Junipers tail, Rimbaud is the perfect mix. He was born with it surly, and at the age of seventeen he had read and knew more about literature than most men in their lifetimes. Also I specify it matters vey much HOW one reads, there is genius in reading as much as there is in writing. Dante had a library of few books by our standards, and many people on this site are far better read than dante. But it was never about the how much, you read, though that is certainly a factor. It was about how one reads. You can take a man and make him learn the entire literature of china, or you can take a dante and give him only Virgils aenid. And Dante due to his genius in knowing how to read in sucking the marrow out of the bone will know far more than the other man who had read ever book in chinese literature but is only able to read as he was taught in academia.

[stuntpickle]

I think you'd be hard-pressed to claim any were dummies.

Well since no one is claiming any such thing, you should probably stop pretending otherwise.


I can't claim to be primarily interested in realist novels, but I do think there's a lot to be said for Tom Wolfe's Billion-Footed Beast in which he ridicules the precious academic notions of literature as simply a game of conventions and forms. Most of our classics are classics for reasons that have little to do with form. Sentiment has always played a major role--even if that is beneath the dignity of this or that irrelevant academic. The novel, for instance, has always been an artifact of the middle-class--not of the academy. To condescendingly preach about form is to demonstrate one's own subservience to artifice, which is, contrary to popular academic thinking, undesirable. Anyone can repeat some stale generalities inherited from an undergraduate lecturer. It requires an entire life to know a people or a landscape or anything else that might be considered actually related to life, rather than simply lifelike.

No one is suggesting that form is bad or avoidable, but I am suggesting that one shouldn't make a fetish of form to the exclusion of sentiment, which has been, is and will always be more important.

I tried linking to Wolfe's essay but google wouldn't allow the redirect. Do a search for "Tom Wolfe Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast".

[miyako73]

Thanks for mentioning "duende", stunt. Lorca popularized it and it was obvious in his poetry. The best spanish and latin poems I read had this "soul"- dynamic, meaningful, even its errors and redundancies were beautiful to read. Lorca's poem, his homage to a bullfighter, is a good example. The poem feels like it's breathing, gasping, and moving.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well since no one is claiming any such thing, you should probably stop pretending otherwise.


I can't claim to be primarily interested in realist novels, but I do think there's a lot to be said for Tom Wolfe's Billion-Footed Beast in which he ridicules the precious academic notions of literature as simply a game of conventions and forms. Most of our classics are classics for reasons that have little to do with form. Sentiment has always played a major role--even if that is beneath the dignity of this or that irrelevant academic. The novel, for instance, has always been an artifact of the middle-class--not of the academy. To condescendingly preach about form is to demonstrate one's own subservience to artifice, which is, contrary to popular academic thinking, undesirable. Anyone can repeat some stale generalities inherited from an undergraduate lecturer. It requires an entire life to know a people or a landscape or anything else that might be considered actually related to life, rather than simply lifelike.

No one is suggesting that form is bad or avoidable, but I am suggesting that one shouldn't make a fetish of form to the exclusion of sentiment, which has been, is and will always be more important.

I tried linking to Wolfe's essay but google wouldn't allow the redirect. Do a search for "Tom Wolfe Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast".

They had undergraduate lecturers at your school? Your school must've sucked. :lol:

[JuniperWoolf]

:skep: It seems to me that there's a lot of the anti-intellectual approach to art and creativity around today, even on these forums, but I ask those that promote this view: what great artists they can name that became great through nothing but natural talent and with no learning and no hard work? If you rattle off any list of the great poets--Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Chaucer, Yeats, Eliot, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Neruda, Hill, Auden--none of them were dummies that wrote their masterpieces by never learning about the art and craft of poetry. I simply don't think it is possible to ever be great, perhaps even good, without spending a significant time learning the craft that you intend to practice. As the saying goes, art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

I agree with you completely. If a poet ignores his pre-decessors, that'd be like a philosopher saying "meh, I don't need to read what those other jerks had to say, I'll just start from scratch." A poet, like anyone else in any other field, needs to know who's shoulders he's standing on, you need to KNOW your craft. We see a lot of completely formless and obscure poetry on message boards because it's easy to write that stuff without having studied, you could start writing in a way which is technically correct (because there is no possible way to make a mistake, as there are no rules) without ever having read a single poem. That's a recipe for mediocrity. The great poets of today (Maya Angelou, Yehuda Amichai, Charles Bukowski, Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney) studied poetry and know how to use form and language, they don't just write random words feuled only by emotion without any thought regarding skill or technique.


Well since no one is claiming any such thing, you should probably stop No one is suggesting that form is bad or avoidable, but I am suggesting that one shouldn't make a fetish of form to the exclusion of sentiment, which has been, is and will always be more important.

"Fetish?" That's a bizarre assessment of his post, how did you get that? He's obviously a proponent of the good ol' Happy Medium:


Anyway, as has been stated numerous times, there's no content without form, and form is merely a ghost without content.

Obviously living is important or else one has little to write about. But everyone lives, and only a few know how to take that living and turn it into powerful art, and it's that transformation that requires knowledge and skill, which I claim cannot just happen by accident, chance, or ignorance.

Both form and content are vital if one wishes to make something wonderful, form requires study and content requires thought and feeling (although vocabulary requires study as well).

[stuntpickle]

They had undergraduate lecturers at your school? Your school must've sucked. :lol:

I suppose I meant to say "lecture."

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Oh, good. I was going to say, as if taking advantage of adjuncts and TAs wasn't bad enough. . .

[stuntpickle]

"Fetish?" That's a bizarre assessment of his post, how did you get that? He's obviously a proponent of the good ol' Happy Medium:

I admit my post did not relate entirely to its antecedent. My perhaps inadequate understanding of Morph's position is that of privileging form above all else and that to approach any work is to primarily approach its form.

But I think to privilege form is to mistake slave for master. Form is a hound a poet sends scurrying when he cracks his whip, on the the road to meet the flush-faced reader. To lie in the cemetery alongside Pope, the most rigid and pedantic of poets, one who thought schemata essential, seems to me as pointless as falling in love with a mannequin.

It's easy to recite some rusty chestnut ("True wit is nature to advantage dressed..."), it is quite another thing to get caught up in a poetic rapture. You can keep the pretty shapes, I prefer to be ravished. I think, like Kierkegaard, that justifying a love by enumerating qualities accomplishes nothing but proving the love false.

[stlukesguild]

I agree with you completely. If a poet ignores his pre-decessors, that'd be like a philosopher saying "meh, I don't need to read what those other jerks had to say, I'll just start from scratch." A poet, like anyone else in any other field, needs to know who's shoulders he's standing on, you need to KNOW your craft. We see a lot of completely formless and obscure poetry on message boards because it's easy to write that stuff without having studied, you could start writing in a way which is technically correct (because there is no possible way to make a mistake, as there are no rules) without ever having read a single poem. That's a recipe for mediocrity. The great poets of today (Maya Angelou, Yehuda Amichai, Charles Bukowski, Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney) studied poetry and know how to use form and language, they don't just write random words feuled only by emotion without any thought regarding skill or technique.

I almost wholly agree with your post (miracles happen:ihih:)

EXCEPT:

The great poets of today (Maya Angelou, Yehuda Amichai, Charles Bukowski, Adrienne Rich, Seamus Heaney)...

Maya Angelou...??

"Great poet"?!!!

Charles Bukowski...??

"Great poet"?:skep:

[JuniperWoolf]

Eheh, I should have said "well-known" poet. What's wrong with Bukowski, you don't like beatniks? *snap snap snap*

[stuntpickle]

Maya Angelou...??

"Great poet"?!!!

Charles Bukowski...??

"Great poet"?:skep:

Perhaps Bukowski wasn't a great technician, but he certainly was honest. And his poetry was certainly much better than his prose.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-genius-of-the-crowd/

[Pierre Menard]

I had the same reaction. Was nodding my head and agreeing with Junipers post the whole way til I saw Bukowski there. Yuck!

But good post nonetheless. Morpheus' also hit the nail on the head as well I think. All the best poets I have read had a clear and obvious understanding of the art and what came before and clearly worked their butts off fine-tuning their own work.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I know well of the continuances Bukowski can bring up, but I was unaware that Angelou was seen by enough people as a poor poet to warrant StLuke's reaction. True, I've never particularly liked her stuff, but mostly because it's about being a black woman which I can't really relate to.

[mortalterror]

I think that some people are born with the natural potential to be great poets but most of them become insurance salesmen, architects, football players, and other things. There's also a lot of other guys who work real hard but never had the talent to take their game to the next level.

[JCamilo]

I had the same reaction. Was nodding my head and agreeing with Junipers post the whole way til I saw Bukowski there. Yuck!

But good post nonetheless. Morpheus' also hit the nail on the head as well I think. All the best poets I have read had a clear and obvious understanding of the art and what came before and clearly worked their butts off fine-tuning their own work.

Well, the problem is that bad poets also have a read the precussors. Mostly because everyone who care to spend their time writting are also spending their time reading, so it is quite like saying about football players know that a ball is round.

But reading precussors is far from being intelectuals or understanding them. A good example on that list is Keats. He is not an intelectual. He even had some reserve towards some of the intelectual poets of his time, because the social class distinction between both. He is certainly not the same kind of poet as Shelley or Coleridge, those two clearly intelectual. Even his aesthetics ideas, as original as they are, were never developed in a system and Eliot address to his inate understanding of poetry.

There is also other examples, like Garcia Lorca. Calling him an intelectual is far fetched, specially if you look for Neruda or Borges kind of poets.

In Brasil and Portugal there is a tradition, named Cordel Poetry. The form is classsical and derivated from Camões. But the transmition is often oral/popular. No school to prepare the hundred of poets of this style, yet, the style and even metric is everywhere. They certainly do not present a deep understanding of the poetry or anything such as it. Or even the case of Catulo da Paixão Cearense, basically a farmer without much study, which poetry is result of links with brazilian musics and today is considered a major poet in brazilian canon.

[MorpheusSandman]

"Fetish?" That's a bizarre assessment of his post, how did you get that? He's obviously a proponent of the good ol' Happy Medium: Good overall post, Juniper, but I'm used to Stunt claiming I said things I never said by now. ;)


Most of our classics are classics for reasons that have little to do with form. Sentiment has always played a major role--even if that is beneath the dignity of this or that irrelevant academic... To condescendingly preach about form is to demonstrate one's own subservience to artifice, which is, contrary to popular academic thinking, undesirable. For sentiment to last beyond the moment it has to have something more there to keep people interested after the initial impact has worn-off. Dickens became popular because of his sentiment (amongst other things, but that was a large part of it), but he remains popular because he was a master of prose forms and technique. Even an episodic, fractured work like The Pickwick Papers seems to have overarching rhythms of tone and drama that are inescapable, and Dickens already knew how to sculpt character, so let's not pretend that it's all because of sentiment that such novels retain their popularity and readability.

To me, to say one is subservient to to artifice is no different than saying one is subservient to art. Art is artifice, it is artificial, and even the ways in which it presents its illusion of reality is artificial. The fact that it can fool people into thinking its real doesn't make its form disappear to anyone who's conscious enough to know how the illusion works. One studies form the same way a magician studies sleight-of-hand, to make the illusion of reality seem like actual reality, even when we know it's not. Ignoring form doesn't lead to anything more realistic, it just leads to sloppier magic.


Well, the problem is that bad poets also have a read the precussors.Nobody would claim otherwise, but the point still remains that to be great/good requires having read and studied one's predecessors. It's hardly a guarantee that it will make one great, but it's a step in the right direction.


But reading precussors is far from being intelectuals or understanding them. A good example on that list is Keats. He is not an intelectual.I would argue that Keats was a kind of natural intellectual that preferred not to develop any of his theories and ideas, but he still clearly thought deeply about poetry, as even many of his comments and scribblings testified to. He was not one who just sat down and poured out words randomly on a page without considering their effect. To Autumn is one of the most meticulously composed poems in terms of form that's ever been written--certainly not the product of a mind that had never given a thought to form or how poetry worked.

Really, that kind of "study" is all I meant by the term in the first place. Obviously being a great poet does not require one to be a scholar or academic. But it does require reading and studying one's predecessors, studying form and the various effects of poetry, and understand how to translate what you want to express into that formal language that poetry innately is. It's more than just "Oh, I had a bad break up, let me sit down and pour my heart on a page and break lines and rhyme at complete random."

[stuntpickle]

Well, the problem is that bad poets also have a read the precussors. Mostly because everyone who care to spend their time writting are also spending their time reading, so it is quite like saying about football players know that a ball is round.

But reading precussors is far from being intelectuals or understanding them. A good example on that list is Keats. He is not an intelectual. He even had some reserve towards some of the intelectual poets of his time, because the social class distinction between both. He is certainly not the same kind of poet as Shelley or Coleridge, those two clearly intelectual. Even his aesthetics ideas, as original as they are, were never developed in a system and Eliot address to his inate understanding of poetry.

There is also other examples, like Garcia Lorca. Calling him an intelectual is far fetched, specially if you look for Neruda or Borges kind of poets.

In Brasil and Portugal there is a tradition, named Cordel Poetry. The form is classsical and derivated from Camões. But the transmition is often oral/popular. No school to prepare the hundred of poets of this style, yet, the style and even metric is everywhere. They certainly do not present a deep understanding of the poetry or anything such as it. Or even the case of Catulo da Paixão Cearense, basically a farmer without much study, which poetry is result of links with brazilian musics and today is considered a major poet in brazilian canon.

Surprising as it may seem, I agree with you, J. I think now that poetry has been almost entirely co opted by the academy that it can be hard to realize that it wasn't always such an academic affair. Byron was something of a rock star. Blake was an engraver.

Think about more relevant media today. I suspect someone like Quentin Tarantino will be viewed at some future point as an important artist, but does anyone really think of him as an intellectual? Of course, he's seen a lot of films, but no one would accuse him of being "academic." Was Charlie Parker an intellectual? I don't think so. Like you say, every artist has some experience with the work in his medium. It would seem nearly impossible for it to be otherwise. But I'm not so sure that they are all uniformly what might be called "studied." And there are too many examples of plainly unstudied artists to suggest that serious study is requisite.

[paradoxical]

I know well of the continuances Bukowski can bring up, but I was unaware that Angelou was seen by enough people as a poor poet to warrant StLuke's reaction.

Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists; they stick to what they were taught. We all know who "the greats" are supposed to be: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. A few modern poets may be allowed as well, guys such as Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, but if it falls outside of whatever anthology they studied at university, it is usually treated with extreme suspicion. It's crap, in other words and can be safely ignored. These same people, if they had been alive in the 18th or 19th century would have had the same reaction to poets such as Alexander Pope or Tennyson.


We see a lot of completely formless and obscure poetry on message boards because it's easy to write that stuff without having studied, you could start writing in a way which is technically correct (because there is no possible way to make a mistake, as there are no rules) without ever having read a single poem. That's a recipe for mediocrity.

I don't think that's true. What I see is a lot of poetry based on established form and I hardly ever see anything that's obscure. Most of it is obvious -- usually in an attempt to be "lyrical" -- and deals with the same old, trusted themes: nature, love, and loss. Some of it is unrhymed but still uses an established meter, to the point that the words can seem awkward and forced. Now that's a recipe for mediocrity.


The great poets of today...studied poetry and know how to use form and language, they don't just write random words feuled only by emotion without any thought regarding skill or technique.

That's the thing, free verse -- or more appropriately, open verse, which is what I think a lot of people here refer to as free verse -- is not just random words on a page. There is the use of white space to give effect and meaning, as well as line lengths and line breaks. Many people actually find it harder to write free verse. There's nothing to guide you, and it can be easier for the whole thing to fall apart if you don't have an established meter or rhyme scheme to fall back on.

And if you haven't read a single poem, you won't be able to write open verse. Well, I guess you could but that would truly be random words fueled by emotion and it would be obvious to anyone. To write compelling, meaningful free verse, open verse, whatever you want to call it, you have to study other poets.

Also, Bukowski is very well known. He remains extremely popular here in the US as well as in Europe. He's practically a national hero in Germany. Ask around at any independent bookstore, they will tell you that Bukowski's books are always the ones most shoplifted. To me, it says something if people are willing to steal his books just to read him; that doesn't happen with someone like John Berryman. Say what you want about him or the quality of his work, but Bukowski gave poetry (a lot of his novels and short stories are great, as well) back to the common man/woman. I guess that alone displease some, but people read Bukowski because it makes them feel something. It's not just that he is a unique voice or led an interesting life, people understand what he is saying because they've felt the same way at times but were unable to put it in words or fully express how they felt. It's about their lives as well.

[stuntpickle]

Also, Bukowski is very well known. He remains extremely popular here in the US as well as in Europe. He's practically a national hero in Germany. Ask around at any independent bookstore, they will tell you that Bukowski's books are always the ones most shoplifted. To me, it says something if people are willing to steal his books just to read him; that doesn't happen with someone like John Berryman. Say what you want about him or the quality of his work, but Bukowski gave poetry (a lot of his novels and short stories are great, as well) back to the common man/woman. I guess that alone displease some, but people read Bukowski because it makes them feel something. It's not just that he is a unique voice or led an interesting life, people understand what he is saying because they've felt the same way at times but were unable to put it in words or fully express how they felt. It's about their lives as well.

This! Most students of literature take it for granted that Universities have the final word on who is good. The truth is that such decisions are made by readers at large. I was actually going to draw the same exact comparison with Berryman, but I thought it would be too controversial. I mean does anyone outside a University setting know who Berryman is? I'm sure tons of people know about Bukowski--not that that alone means anything. But let's face it, some of Bukowski's poetry is moving--some stories too (but I find his novels uniformly mediocre).

I think sometimes what passes for taste is simply acquired snobbery--sort of similar to how twenty-year old kids with contrived personalities drink dark beer on extremely hot days since, you know, dark beers are "better".

[MorpheusSandman]

I suspect someone like Quentin Tarantino will be viewed at some future point as an important artist, but does anyone really think of him as an intellectual?Again, there's a disconnect between what was originally being said about artists studying their art and them being an academic. Tarantino has inhaled cinema from a young age and has built his entire cinema out of mixing the past in ways that transgress typical genre bounds. He has clearly studied film, and is himself an outspoken critic. No, he's not a David Bordwell, but nobody is saying poets must be great academics. It's two different disciplines. They must study the art from the perspective of an artist, and then, perhaps, take into account the perspectives of critics and audiences.

I'd hesitate to call Tarantino a great/important artist, though--I guess he's probably the most important mainstream filmmaker of the last 20 years, but I think his success will likely depends on how long postmodernism is still thought of as being cool and hip, because outside of that I don't think his films have the substance of the popular films of, say, Hitchcock (although maybe Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds have their moments).


Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists;The canon is hardly static. In the 20th Century alone Donne went from being practically forgotten to being considered one of the greatest to ever write in the language. Likewise, certain romantics have suffered since modernism, including Byron and Coleridge, while those like Blake rose through the ranks. I think there are few that "defend the canon" without attempting to add to or subtract from it, and while we may not be settled as to what 20th Century names will take their place alongside the Shakespeares, Chaucers, and Keats, I do think there's more than one name that is in position to do them (Neruda, Stevens, Auden, Lowell, Hill, Larkin, Merrill, Ashbery etc.).


What I see is a lot of poetry based on established form and I hardly ever see anything that's obscure.:skep: What books are you reading? Because there's not a lot of formal poetry I see published in Poetry, APR, Tin House, Ploughshares, etc. Stallings is one of the few major names I know of that writes primarily in classic forms.


That's the thing, free verse -- or more appropriately, open verse, which is what I think a lot of people here refer to as free verse -- is not just random words on a page. There is the use of white space to give effect and meaning, as well as line lengths and line breaks. There's undoubtedly an art to free-verse, but it's an art that's no different than verse in terms of needing to be learned, they're only different in kind. But free-verse CAN be written by just writing off the top of one's head and then breaking the lines at random. Of course, the good poets don't do this, anymore than good poets are slavish to form without knowing how to vary that form or use it expressively.

[Delta40]

Bukowski's reply to somebody when asked how he writes and creates:

You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: 'not' to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it."

[OrphanPip]

Surprising as it may seem, I agree with you, J. I think now that poetry has been almost entirely co opted by the academy that it can be hard to realize that it wasn't always such an academic affair. Byron was something of a rock star. Blake was an engraver.


English Poetry in Modernity has almost always been a kind of elitist pursuit though, consumed primarily by either the rich (most of which had classical educations) or later by those with a certain kind of specialized education or experience with the genre.

There are exceptions, like Tennyson, who had moments of being best sellers in their lifetime. However, most of the important poets were not "widely read" in the same way as novelists like Richardson were (who was an international sensation during his lifetime). Many Modernist like Elliot had most of their poems published in magazines with circulations in the mid hundreds. The first print run of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads was considered very successful for a poetry collection because it sold 180 copies.

Poets have always had to rely on a sort of patronage, or had to have been independently wealthy because it's difficult to make money as a poet. The amount of individuals who made enough money to live off of their poetic production is fairly small. Many contemporary poets are academics for the same reason. They need a day job to survive as a poet.

[Drkshadow03]

Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists; they stick to what they were taught. We all know who "the greats" are supposed to be: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. A few modern poets may be allowed as well, guys such as Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, but if it falls outside of whatever anthology they studied at university, it is usually treated with extreme suspicion. It's crap, in other words and can be safely ignored. These same people, if they had been alive in the 18th or 19th century would have had the same reaction to poets such as Alexander Pope or Tennyson.


Oh, I don't know. Given that Mutatis was responding to St Luke I would say this probably isn't the case since St Luke has one of the most prodigious knowledge of literature on these boards. It could just be that St Luke doesn't like Maya Angelou or Charles Bukowski or think much of their talent.

[JCamilo]

I would argue that Keats was a kind of natural intellectual that preferred not to develop any of his theories and ideas, but he still clearly thought deeply about poetry, as even many of his comments and scribblings testified to. He was not one who just sat down and poured out words randomly on a page without considering their effect. To Autumn is one of the most meticulously composed poems in terms of form that's ever been written--certainly not the product of a mind that had never given a thought to form or how poetry worked.

I was using intellectual as the class of person, the scholar, academic which Keats was never (he didnt had the luxury of rebelion to be expelled like Shelley, Byron nobility or Wordsworth or Coleridge education and time for travels around Europe) but even we consider otherwise, "natural intellectual", as a savant of sorts, we have somethng strange, a suggestion that his genius was inate.

Yet, if we consider the most mythic story of composition reggarding Keats, Ode to a Nightingale - Keats sits, hears the bird, writes the poem already done - we see an emphasis on emotion flow in a romantic style, pretty much alike Wordsworth claim. He is not so bound to the nature = poetry, like Shelley's bird, but he do let his emotion conduct his poetry. To Autumm has similar inspiration. The poem was close to his final version already when he wrote. His poetry or perhaps Keats greatest power is the musical ear, he finds great lines which are sometimes lost in not so good poem. I can imagine him reading Shakespeare and giving first steps to sonnets and working until the technique seemed to be natural to him. Same with odes, he was working on it, Autumn is his last one and all others have "buts' on structure, but the pratice was leading him to perfection.

I am aware that I do not overly disagree with you, but I was also replying to Pierre conclusion. 'Obvious understanding" is far too much. Study also. If we look the romantics, Keats probally couldn't explain - hence why he never did - other poets. He could probally feel their beauty then work on reproducing then developing it. Wordsworth preface is not a great explanation, it is almost a personal introspective view of his own poetry. No wonder it was supposed to be Coleridge's, which is probally the only of them who could understand it, yet, had so much difficulty to put in pratice his knowledge. And even Coleridge seems to put inspiration over form, with the Kublai Khan dream story. The truth is there is not so many writers who are so critical to be able to analyse or understand what is art. Shakespeare probally would be unable to explain Shakespeare.



Really, that kind of "study" is all I meant by the term in the first place. Obviously being a great poet does not require one to be a scholar or academic. But it does require reading and studying one's predecessors, studying form and the various effects of poetry, and understand how to translate what you want to express into that formal language that poetry innately is. It's more than just "Oh, I had a bad break up, let me sit down and pour my heart on a page and break lines and rhyme at complete random."

I do think many of them did so and also you may be exagerating because lots of bad poetry is written this way today, but anyways the word study obviously imply something academic, a scholar. I can see one reading until reaching the familiarity with the poet, the poetry, but even so I think this is but the first (or a handful of first) step. Their pratice take them to more notion of poetry. Make them poets and not readers. But this is a kind of poet, recent, with libraries nearby. Popular poetry and more older poetry does not present such oportunity to a continued study or even reading of other poets.

[stlukesguild]

Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists; they stick to what they were taught. We all know who "the greats" are supposed to be: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. A few modern poets may be allowed as well, guys such as Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, but if it falls outside of whatever anthology they studied at university, it is usually treated with extreme suspicion. It's crap, in other words and can be safely ignored. These same people, if they had been alive in the 18th or 19th century would have had the same reaction to poets such as Alexander Pope or Tennyson.

Oh, please!:rolleyes: There is no need to defend the canon or the writers therein... certainly not from the opinions of anyone on an online literature forum. Bukowski isn't a great poet for the simple reason that he's a crappy writer... not because he is a contemporary, "cutting edge" author who challenges the tradition. Rimbaud was every bit as scatological and far more challenging 100 years ago. Hell, François Villon is more unsettling to the tradition... in spite of the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that he was writing 600 years ago.

You want to shake up the "tradition"? Try T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Christian Morgenstern, César Vallejo, or Anne Carson.

Seriously your attack upon the close-minded academy of traditionalists reminds me of the pop star, Jewell, who published a collection of "poems" some years back that were little more than a teenage girls ramblings in her journal (not far from Bukowski?). The book was naturally panned by the critics. Jewell responded, suggesting that all the critics (who read poetry for a living) were simply unable to recognize just how "new" and "innovative" her work was. One had to wonder just how many modern... let alone contemporary poets Jewell had read.

The fact that you would include Robert Frost or Wallace Steven among the few "modern" poets read by the "traditionalists" suggests that you may have a rather limited idea as to what actually constitutes "new poetry". There have been more than a few poets since Frost and Steven who are taken seriously... even if the merits of their achievements are not universally agreed upon.

Among those poets (respected in academia) writing well into the latter 20th century (and even into the 21st) you can count Pablo Neruda, Charles Wright, Gu Cheng, Yves Bonnefoy, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, John Berryman, Charles Olson, Galway Kinnell, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, W.S. Merwin, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, Odysseus Elytis, Giorgos Seferis, Richard Howard, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, A.R. Ammons, C.K. Williams, Paul Kane, James Merrill, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Geoffrey Hill, Eugénio de Andrade, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillén, Edmond Jabès, Yehuda Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish, Adunis, Nâzım Hikmet, etc... (Just a few poets from the shelves of a poetry reader who is far from being an "academic").

[JCamilo]

Surprising as it may seem, I agree with you, J. I think now that poetry has been almost entirely co opted by the academy that it can be hard to realize that it wasn't always such an academic affair. Byron was something of a rock star. Blake was an engraver.

I think in a way the "Academy" knows. We have really few good writers with academic degrees (writers of poetry and fiction), there is even some consirable abyss between those theorics and critical writers (I have seen one disconsider Borges, Virginia Woolf, etc as true criticals because they lacked academic formation and never produced a theory, despite their knowledge and insight on literature) and of course, the disdaim certain academic areas have for art degrees. But yes, the students seems to confund the thing, ignore overly the popular art and look the past and stabilished cannon as if they great intellectual leaders - a concept from XIX century for artists and poets.

Even if we consider only the "academics" as scholars, how many great writters fit in the description? The thinker object was usually religion or philosophy. Writting was not considered such great intellectual feat. Bacon over Shakespeare. The Reinassence changes a little, because of Dante, but he is rare and even supposed scholars like Chaucer, Ariosto, were narrators. They will get patronage, as Pip said, but not such status. Only Voltaire and Goethe managed to carry such status. But we know, Goethe refused to be called a philosopher, Voltaire was a philosopher in spirit but not in body and his artistic work was often apart, even style wise, from his 'serious" work.

I can see Morpheus example as the artist having familiarity with his past, his experience reading him giving him notions, but the jump to someone who can understand art is too much. It is turning all of them in T.S.Eliot. (Neither saying Morpheus did this jump).


Think about more relevant media today. I suspect someone like Quentin Tarantino will be viewed at some future point as an important artist, but does anyone really think of him as an intellectual? Of course, he's seen a lot of films, but no one would accuse him of being "academic." Was Charlie Parker an intellectual? I don't think so. Like you say, every artist has some experience with the work in his medium. It would seem nearly impossible for it to be otherwise. But I'm not so sure that they are all uniformly what might be called "studied." And there are too many examples of plainly unstudied artists to suggest that serious study is requisite.

I think Tarantino pleases the academic, because all he does is a "masturbation" of filming techniques and dialogues but yes, i agree. I do not know Parker enough, but music, may be a good example of a more natural apititude. Do B.B.King reasonalise his chords? Also, how many great critics, with enough knowledge to explain art or literature were unable to write like the subject of their knowledge. Croce wrote how many great poems?

The Duende was a good example and I suspect the question of the thread opener was more in this line. She probally consider some degree of education - be it formal, be it experience - is necessary. I suppose her question is if you can be taught to capture the Duende, to summon the Muses, to use opium (like the romantics did), etc.

[stlukesguild]

Also, how many great critics, with enough knowledge to explain art or literature were unable to write like the subject of their knowledge.

There's always Borges...:D


And perhaps Umberto Eco... but seriously, I'd take Italo Calvino over Eco any day.

Does an excess of knowledge inhibit great art? I doubt it. I always loved Renoir's quote, "First become a master of your craft; it never prevented anyone from becoming a genius" (Not that Renoir was either a master or intellectual... let alone a "genius"). Still there are more than a few truly intellectual poets: Petrarch must surely count... as well as Dante, Milton, T.S. Eliot, Goethe, etc...

[cafolini]

Italo Calvino's Numbers in the Dark and Cosmicomics are some of the best pieces of the 20th century; succint, clear, simple, meaningful.

[Pierre Menard]

Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists; they stick to what they were taught. We all know who "the greats" are supposed to be: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. A few modern poets may be allowed as well, guys such as Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, but if it falls outside of whatever anthology they studied at university, it is usually treated with extreme suspicion. It's crap, in other words and can be safely ignored. These same people, if they had been alive in the 18th or 19th century would have had the same reaction to poets such as Alexander Pope or Tennyson.




Or maybe it's because people like Bukowski just aren't very good poets. Rambling, repetitive nonsense with not enough skill to justify said rambling and repetitiveness.
I've read so many of his poems where it seems like he's basically written a paragraph, randomly cut it and shoved it on a page vertically. He did nothing new or innovative and didn't do 'the old' particularly well. It honestly feels like reading a high-school kids poetry who thinks he's badass because he's talking about ****ing. I cut your last paragraph, but you mentioned that his poetry is for the common person...does that make it good? I mean, Law and Order is a cop show for the common person, but it's nowhere near as brilliant as say...The Wire. There are films for the 'common person', doesn't mean they're as good as Citizen Kane. And so on.

I feel I've drifted a little off topic...Bukowski's juvenile nonsense does that to me...

[paradoxical]

Oh, please!:rolleyes: There is no need to defend the canon or the writers therein... certainly not from the opinions of anyone on an online literature forum. Bukowski isn't a great poet for the simple reason that he's a crappy writer... not because he is a contemporary, "cutting edge" author who challenges the tradition. Rimbaud was every bit as scatological and far more challenging 100 years ago. Hell, François Villon is more unsettling to the tradition... in spite of the fact (or perhaps because of the fact) that he was writing 600 years ago.

You want to shake up the "tradition"? Try T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Charles Olson, Christian Morgenstern, César Vallejo, or Anne Carson.


For someone who says there is "no need to defend the canon"...especially not from "anyone on an online literature forum" you seem to be doing just that. I also doubt that you ever really gave Bukowski a fair chance. Is Maya Angelou also a "crappy writer"? Indeed, there is no need to defend the canon, the establishment has already taken care of that. Respectable people with advanced degrees write off certain poets and that gives others the power to pronounce their work as worthless and undeserving of merit. I have heard the same argument before: oh, you think Bukowski/Kerouac/Ginsburg was a rebel, try reading this poet from 100 years ago. The point being, that poet is already accepted by the establishment. I have read Rimbaud and Baudelaire and am a fan of both, esp. Rimbaud; but Bukowski appeals to me more. I also found it a little amusing that you suggest T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound as an example of "shaking up the tradition". I would say that both are now considered part of the tradition although in all fairness I will admit that I am a big fan of Eliot and I realize that he really did shake up the tradition at the time, the same as Pound. Eliot still causes some discomfort to this day.


Seriously your attack upon the close-minded academy of traditionalists reminds me of the pop star, Jewell, who published a collection of "poems" some years back that were little more than a teenage girls ramblings in her journal (not far from Bukowski?). The book was naturally panned by the critics. Jewell responded, suggesting that all the critics (who read poetry for a living) were simply unable to recognize just how "new" and "innovative" her work was. One had to wonder just how many modern... let alone contemporary poets Jewell had read.

Now I think that's a bit unfair. My words were not an "attack" and I would ask that you not compare me to Jewell. I have never read her poetry, which was probably awful, but I suspect that it was better then a "teenage girls ramblings in her journal". And the fact that you say this is not far from Bukowski tells me you are either very cynical or have never read Bukowski, at least not in depth. And Jewel does have a point: many critics do fail to recognize new and innovative work. There is a lot of good stuff in the underground that would never make it into Plougshares, that's for sure.


The fact that you would include Robert Frost or Wallace Steven among the few "modern" poets read by the "traditionalists" suggests that you may have a rather limited idea as to what actually constitutes "new poetry". There have been more than a few poets since Frost and Steven who are taken seriously... even if the merits of their achievements are not universally agreed upon.

Among those poets (respected in academia) writing well into the latter 20th century (and even into the 21st) you can count Pablo Neruda, Charles Wright, Gu Cheng, Yves Bonnefoy, Eugenio Montale, Octavio Paz, Charles Simic, John Ashbery, John Berryman, Charles Olson, Galway Kinnell, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, W.S. Merwin, Homero Aridjis, Anne Carson, Odysseus Elytis, Giorgos Seferis, Richard Howard, Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, A.R. Ammons, C.K. Williams, Paul Kane, James Merrill, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Geoffrey Hill, Eugénio de Andrade, Rafael Alberti, Jorge Guillén, Edmond Jabès, Yehuda Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish, Adunis, Nâzım Hikmet, etc... (Just a few poets from the shelves of a poetry reader who is far from being an "academic").

I realized when I wrote that that many would not consider Frost to be a modern poet. I have always considered him to be a traditionalist. However, he is always included as an example of modern poetry in every anthology I have read. I may be wrong, but I believe Stevens on the other hand is universally accepted as an example of modern poetry. And yes, I started to mention other names such as Wilfred Own, E.A. Robinson, Plath, Sexton, and Philip Larken. I have read more then you think. Even dubious poets such as Stevie Smith are included in these anthologies; but we were talking about "great" poets and, as you acknowledge, these poets are not universally agreed upon. The establishment moves slowly. It may take another 50 to 100 years for contemporary poets to be included in the canon. This applies to many of the other poets you named, although Neruda and W.S. Merwin are highly respected. I will admit that most of the names you mentioned are not familiar to me, and while it is not fair to dismiss work that one has not read, I imagine that I would find most of these poets -- who are respected in academia -- dull and unappealing. I quit reading pretentious literary journals years ago. I find more exciting voices in zines or on the web. However, I can assure you that I have studied the canon and establishment writers. Before zines and the internet, there was nothing else to study and there are many old, respected voices that I still love such as Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, even Shakespeare. Please realize as well that these are only my thoughts and observations. You are obviously very well-read and educated. I respect your opinion. I certainly don't mean to attack anyone or their beliefs.

[JCamilo]

Also, how many great critics, with enough knowledge to explain art or literature were unable to write like the subject of their knowledge.

There's always Borges...:D


And perhaps Umberto Eco... but seriously, I'd take Italo Calvino over Eco any day.

Does an excess of knowledge inhibit great art? I doubt it. I always loved Renoir's quote, "First become a master of your craft; it never prevented anyone from becoming a genius" (Not that Renoir was either a master or intellectual... let alone a "genius"). Still there are more than a few truly intellectual poets: Petrarch must surely count... as well as Dante, Milton, T.S. Eliot, Goethe, etc...

This goes even better if we remember artists are first and foremost crafters, the "special destiny" of poets is too recent. But does not answer if the genius was inate or not. If the sparrow flaps his wings up and down or down and up....

And Eco is a good example. He must squirm in his bed every night know full well what made Borges and Joyce good and that he just cannot make it. It must be painful.

[stlukesguild]

There's always that old adage, "God does not engage in theology"... It suggests... or explains how certain creative geniuses are far from being academic geniuses who can analyze and explain what they (and others) are doing as artists. But there are more than a few exceptions. J.L. Borges was probably more well-read than Harold Bloom... and still can write better than Bloom (and is probably a better critics as well:devil:). The Renaissance stressed the notion of the artist/academic... it was a means of the artist gaining respect as something more than a skilled craftsman. Petrarch, Dante, Cellini, Michelangelo Buonarotti, Brunelleschi, Leonardo Da Vinci, Giorgio Vasari, Leon Battista Alberti, Raphael, etc... among others were considered the ideal artist/creators. All were accomplished and respected for their scholarly efforts as well as their creative/artistic endeavors.

[JCamilo]

I guess Borges sittuation is special. He is not academic by formation, but the academic texts are his breakfast, specially when we consider true academic formation - the study of philosophy - and writing like it (also somehow a matter of style) was part of his realism - fantasy idea.

Renaissence changes a bit, because of course they redefine the very concept of academia and what is taught there. But all those guys, admired yes, weren't the academy when they worked. All their knowledge was pretty much pratical. Dante and I think Petrarca are those who used time to explain and discuss their work under the light of medieval aesthetic philosophy. Da Vinci diary is closer to a guide, very pratical, of engineering than Dante's meditations on "Il Convivio". Him or Michelangelo even defy any classification, artists or philosopher I would say. Probally we should say they are a "Cthutulu".

I would say most artists adhere to Robert Frost: "but you want me to write it in a worst way?" simple because it is true. They work hard to find the best solution and someone want to make them talk in way they have abandoned...

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Well, it's a threat to those who defend The Canon at all cost. I find that most people who are into literature are traditionalists; they stick to what they were taught. We all know who "the greats" are supposed to be: Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. A few modern poets may be allowed as well, guys such as Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, but if it falls outside of whatever anthology they studied at university, it is usually treated with extreme suspicion. It's crap, in other words and can be safely ignored. These same people, if they had been alive in the 18th or 19th century would have had the same reaction to poets such as Alexander Pope or Tennyson.


Paradoxical, I'm not sure how criticizing Maya Angelou and Bukowski is attacking the canon, when it's not very far-fetched at all to say they're within the canon. You yourself say that Bukowski is well known, and Maya Angelous is almost always in American poetry anthologies, and I've been taught her poems in multiple university classes. Honestly, I've never met someone who reads a poem and goes.

I always tire of the anti-canon campaign. I always think, it's the canon for a reason, those books are there for a reason, and what's more likely, that those books stay in the canon because all those academics are posers and like them to just to keep up appearances . . . or is it because they're actually good? I think the old adage of "the simplest answer is usually the correct one" applies here.

I've also never met anyone, professors included (you know, those nefarious perpetuator of the brain-washing canon), who adopts some sort of attitude of, "Oh, that's not a part of the canon, so I don't like it," or, inversely, "Oh, that's in the canon, so I automatically love it." Sure, there are a few truly snobbish professors, but most I've met aren't above reading fantasy, sci-fi, or some other piece of genre fiction. And, even the snobbish ones, maybe that's just their taste, you know? Again, what's more likely, someone liking only highbrow art and nothing else to keep up appearances only, or that that's what they actually like?

This! Most students of literature take it for granted that Universities have the final word on who is good. The truth is that such decisions are made by readers at large. I was actually going to draw the same exact comparison with Berryman, but I thought it would be too controversial. I mean does anyone outside a University setting know who Berryman is? I'm sure tons of people know about Bukowski--not that that alone means anything. But let's face it, some of Bukowski's poetry is moving--some stories too (but I find his novels uniformly mediocre).

I think sometimes what passes for taste is simply acquired snobbery--sort of similar to how twenty-year old kids with contrived personalities drink dark beer on extremely hot days since, you know, dark beers are "better".

Or maybe they like dark beer. It's not outside the realm of possibility, is it? Frankly, I think anyone who drinks beer is a poser--that stuff tastes terrible.

[miyako73]

Can I chime in my 2 cents?

Okay this is what I have observed in this forum. There's a poet here who confessed to me that she has no education in the technicalities of poetry. Like me, she's scared of knowing the skeleton of poetry. She would rather savor the pulsating of its blood and the beauty of its flesh. I consider her a natural-born poet. Her poems are bursting with energy, randomness, and unaffected poetic elements that she does not need to dissect and understand. She writes about anything-from simple and mundane to complex and strange. I suspect she can write about sh!t and piss and it will still come out poetically beautiful.

In contrast, I can pick two poets here who are obviously schooled, but their poems are no different to a pastor's sermon or a professor's memorized lecture. They are affected, contrived, conscious, and prosaic. There is no randomness, no life, no spirit Lorca called "duende." I suspect they write to impress not express and their poems are written for others not for themselves.

This is a good example of a poem written by a natural-born poet. Sensitivity is the key. It is certainly a gift of birth.

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

1. Cogida and Death

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone
at five in the afternoon.

The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternoon.
And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corners
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone with a high heart!
At five in the afternoon.
When the sweat of snow was coming
at five in the afternoon,
when the bull ring was covered in iodine
at five in the afternoon.
death laid eggs in the wound
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Exactly at five o'clock in the afternoon.

A coffin on wheels is his bed
at five in the afternoon.
Bones and flutes resound in his ears
at five in the afternoon.
Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead
at five in the afternoon.
The room was iridescent with agony
at five in the afternoon.
In the distance the gangrene now comes
at five in the afternoon.
Horn of the lily through green groins
at five in the afternoon.
The wounds were burning like suns
at five in the afternoon,
and the crowd was breaking the windows
at five in the afternoon.
At five in the afternoon.
Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon!
It was five by all the clocks!
It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

2. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

Tell the moon to come
for I do not want to see the blood
of Ignacio on the sand.

I will not see it!

The moon wide open.
Horse of still clouds,
and the grey bull ring of dreams
with willows in the barreras.

I will not see it!

Let my memory kindle!
Warn the jasmines
of such minute whiteness!

I will not see it!

The cow of the ancient world
passed her sad tongue
over a snout of blood
spilled on the sand,
and the bulls of Guisando,
partly death and partly stone,
bellowed like two centuries
sated with treading the earth.
No.
I do not want to see it!
I will not see it!

Ignacio goes up the tiers
with all his death on his shoulders.
He sought for the dawn
but the dawn was no more.
He seeks for his confident profile
and the dream bewilders him.
He sought for his beautiful body
and encountered his opened blood.
I will not see it!
I do not want to hear it spurt
each time with less strength:
that spurt that illuminates
the tiers of seats, and spills
over the corduroy and the leather
of a thirsty multitude.
Who shouts that I should come near!
Do not ask me to see it!

His eyes did not close
when he saw the horns near,
but the terrible mothers
lifted their heads.
And across the ranches,
an air of secret voices rose,
shouting to celestial bulls,
herdsmen of pale mist.
There was no prince in Seville
who could compare with him,
nor sword like his sword
nor heart so true.
Like a river of lions
was his marvellous strength,
and like a marble torso
his firm drawn moderation.
The air of Andalusian Rome
gilded his head
where his smile was a spikenard
of wit and intelligence.
What a great torero in the ring!
What a good peasant in the sierra!
How gentle with the sheaves!
How hard with the spurs!
How tender with the dew!
How dazzling in the fiesta!
How tremendous with the final
banderillas of darkness!

But now he sleeps without end.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
sliding on frozen horns,
faltering soulless in the mist,
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!
No.
I will not see it!
No chalice can contain it,
no swallows can drink it,
no frost of light can cool it,
nor song nor deluge of white lilies,
no glass can cover it with silver.
No.
I will not see it!
of Ignacio on the sand.

3. The Laid Out Body

Stone is a forehead where dreams grieve
without curving waters and frozen cypresses.
Stone is a shoulder on which to bear Time
with trees formed of tears and ribbons and planets.

I have seen grey showers move towards the waves
raising their tender riddled arms,
to avoid being caught by the lying stone
which loosens their limbs without soaking the blood.

For stone gathers seed and clouds,
skeleton larks and wolves of penumbra:
but yields not sounds nor crystals nor fire,
only bull rings and bull rings and more bull rings without walls.

Now, Ignacio the well born lies on the stone.
All is finished. What is happening? Contemplate his face:
death has covered him with pale sulphur
and has placed on him the head of a dark minotaur.

All is finished. The rain penetrates his mouth.
The air, as if mad, leaves his sunken chest,
and Love, soaked through with tears of snow,
warms itself on the peak of the herd.

What are they saying? A stenching silence settles down.
We are here with a body laid out which fades away,
with a pure shape which had nightingales
and we see it being filled with depthless holes.

Who creases the shroud? What he says is not true!
Nobody sings here, nobody weeps in the corner,
nobody pricks the spurs, nor terrifies the serpent.
Here I want nothing else but the round eyes
to see this body without a chance of rest.

Here I want to see those men of hard voice.
Those that break horses and dominate rivers;
those men of sonorous skeleton who sing
with a mouth full of sun and flint.

Here I want to see them. Before the stone.
Before this body with broken reins.
I want to know from them the way out
for this captain strapped down by death.

I want them to show me a lament like a river
which will have sweet mists and deep shores,
to take the body of Ignacio where it loses itself
without hearing the double panting of the bulls.

Loses itself in the round bull ring of the moon
which feigns in its youth a sad quiet bull:
loses itself in the night without song of fishes
and in the white thicket of frozen smoke.

I don't want them to cover his face with handkerchiefs
that he may get used to the death he carries.
Go, Ignacio; feel not the hot bellowing.
Sleep, fly, rest: even the sea dies!

4. Absent Soul

The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
nor the horses, nore the ants in your house.
The child and the afternoon do not know you
because you have died for ever.

The back of the stone does not know you,
nore the black satin in which you crumble.
Your silent memory does not know you
because you have died for ever.

The autumn will come with small white snails,
misty grapes and with clustered hills,
but no one will look into your eyes
because you have died for ever.

Because you have died for ever,
like all the dead of the Earth,
like all the dead who are forgotten
in a heap of lifeless dogs.

Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.
For posterity I sing of your profile and grace.
Of the signal maturity of your understanding.
Of your appetite for death and the taste of its mouth.
Of the sadness of your once valiant gaiety.

It will be a long time, if ever, before there is born
an Andalusian so true, so rich in adventure.
I sing of his elegance with words that groan,
and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.

[Delta40]

Is It not the Thing (Dorothy Porter)

After Byron

Trying to get a gutless friend
to get it
Byron wrote
Is it not life, is it not the thing?

He was praising the bawdy
spurt
of his own poem, his own
ballsy Don Juan.

Every poet wants to write the poem
that penetrates
with the ice-cold shock
of the Devil's prick.

The poem that will f uck you awake
or kill you.

[miyako73]

Where did you get this, Delta? Resourceful you.

"The poem that will f uck you awake
or kill you."

That defines it.

[Calidore]

Maybe one way to put it is that education shows an untalented poet how to do it and a talented poet how to do it better.

[JuniperWoolf]

I didn't mean to derail the thread by mentioning Bukowski. I don't even like him, I just had to read him a fair bit because one of my 1st year profs was a fan.

[stlukesguild]

I think sometimes what passes for taste is simply acquired snobbery--sort of similar to how twenty-year old kids with contrived personalities drink dark beer on extremely hot days since, you know, dark beers are "better".

Actually... I love dark beer... although I'll be the first to admit that it may not be the best drink on very hot days. Certainly better than being a poser by drinking that skunk water Corona with a lime in it and assuming it makes you look sophisticated. On a really hot day I'd probably go with a Hefeweizen beer.

Frankly, I think anyone who drinks beer is a poser--that stuff tastes terrible.

Blasphemy!! I say!! Blasphemy!!

I cannot believe you are capable of such foul and despicable thoughts. I have no choice but to "unfriend" you on Facebook!!

:cheers2:

I didn't mean to derail the thread by mentioning Bukowski. I don't even like him, I just had to read him a fair bit because one of my 1st year profs was a fan.

Surely you have read Byron's Don Juan? Digressions are often far more interesting than the original matter at hand.

[miyako73]

St. Luke, I like the way you think. It seems you can shut up a scholar monk and force a whore to become virginal.

[JCamilo]

His favorite targets are canadians. He can make them be mexicans with 3 lines.

[ShadowsCool]

Poets are born. One can only learn to write a thesis. But to write poetry you must have an excellent imagination.

[Calidore]

I'm totally with stuntpickle and Mutatis on this: Beer smells bad and tastes worse. I've tried both mass market and beer-snob beers recommended by a couple of beer-snob friends, and bleagh.

Coffee's awful too, but at least it smells good.

Actually, beer does have one saving grace: The good commercials are great.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think sometimes what passes for taste is simply acquired snobbery--sort of similar to how twenty-year old kids with contrived personalities drink dark beer on extremely hot days since, you know, dark beers are "better".

Actually... I love dark beer... although I'll be the first to admit that it may not be the best drink on very hot days. Certainly better than being a poser by drinking that skunk water Corona with a lime in it and assuming it makes you look sophisticated. On a really hot day I'd probably go with a Hefeweizen beer.

Frankly, I think anyone who drinks beer is a poser--that stuff tastes terrible.

Blasphemy!! I say!! Blasphemy!!

I cannot believe you are capable of such foul and despicable thoughts. I have no choice but to "unfriend" you on Facebook!!

:cheers2:

:lol: Actually, I never understood beer until I heard a conversation among friends. I've always heard that beer is an "acquired taste," that no one likes it at first (seriously, I've never heard someone say they liked beer on the first sip), so I'd always think, "Than why'd you keep drinking it?" I've only recently started drinking alcohol, but I don't plan on drinking beer on the smell alone. But I digress. Anyways, among friends, like I said, this discussion was being had--why do you drink beer (one of the participants in said conversation was 16 and said she couldn't stand beer)? One of my buddies looked at her and said, "Wait until you're broke and you just want to get drunk. Vodka's expensive." That made sense to me.

(How's that for de-railing the thread? I'll blame it on pickle, though, sense he brought up beer first. Seriously, I can't see the subject line right now and I can't remember what we're supposed to be talking about . . . ah yes, are poets born or made. I still say both.)

[stlukesguild]

Wait until you're broke and you just want to get drunk. Vodka's expensive.

Belgian Trappist Ale and British Stouts aren't much cheaper. Of course a couple of Long Island Ice Teas will move things along rapidly... but I must beware of Vodka. With beer I always slip slowly and comfortably into mellow inebriation. With Vodka there is no immediate discernible effect... and so I keep on drinking until... POW!!!!

I wake up the next day laying on the floor of some motel room in Alabama with "Elvis Forever" tattooed on my a__, my credit cards all maxed out, and a video of me dressed in Speedos and a gorilla mask, singing the theme song from Love Boat playing on the TV.:sick:

[Delta40]

Guess you guys need to unwind after reading all those books! :cheers2:

[MorpheusSandman]

I was using intellectual as the class of person, the scholar, academic which Keats was neverIronically, intellectual was term coined to separate the scholar/academic from those who took theirlearning outside of the academy to engage others in less formal ways. The person who holds down a job, but reads voraciously and then discusses/debates with people online today would be closer to the classic “intellectual” than the professor that never takes their learning out of the classroom, or never publishes outside of journals on the subjects they study. So when it comes to people like Keats, who would read and study and think and then discuss his ideas on poetry with friends and acquaintances in letters, that’s much closer to the classic intellectual than whatever academic you can name. Obviously there is a continuum between an academic and intellectual (no discrete split), or even academic and critic. Eliot once used the distinction to almost mean those that were concerned about facts (academic) and those that took facts and used them in creative evaluation (critic), and the latter is closer to how I imagine the intellectual.


The truth is there is not so many writers who are so critical to be able to analyse or understand what is art. Shakespeare probally would be unable to explain Shakespeare. There was that classic poem about AC Bradley and his criticism of Shakespeare that goes:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.

There’s also the classic story about Hitchcock’s granddaughter, who took a class on Hitchcock, and when it came time to write a paper she chose Shadow of a Doubt, and she asked Hitchcock about the film, wrote the paper, and got a C. She went home to tell Hitchcock and Hitch replied with: “Sorry dear, that’s the best I can do.”

There there is a gap between artists and critics/academics is usually inevitable to some agree, because they’ve devoted their lives to different pursuits. And yet, there is often a lot of overlap, especially with the greats. If you read the interviews with Hitch, he clearly had a conscious understanding of how suspense works. In fact, his explanations still find themselves in textbooks as the perfect explanation (“surprise is a bomb going off suddenly in a room with two people talking; suspense is the audience knowing there’s a bomb in the room while two people are talking.”). I think much the same would apply if we talk about the great poets, even the romantics. Wordsworth clearly understood the value of line breaks in poetry, likely from reading Milton (though it could’ve come from elsewhere), and whether or not he ever formally ruminated on this is somewhat beside the point. With something like Negative Capability Keats had clearly tapped into a key tool of the trade of the great writers, and I think he sought to apply it himself—the notion that an artist can’t and shouldn’t have all of the answers to their work, because then it becomes too much of a crossword puzzle, rather than an artistic experience that closely mimics the various perspectives on life. But even understanding that effect of Negative Capability is an intellectual concept. That Keats could grasp something so profound without ever formally developing is certainly proof of his innate intellectualism, an insight he gained in reading and studying (even if informally) the work of Shakespeare.

As for study implying something academic, I guess it’s different for people who are autodidacts. Study is just something that happens naturally everyday without being told what and how to read.


Indeed, there is no need to defend the canon, the establishment has already taken care of that.You talk about “the establishment” as a hive mind and, believe me, it’s not. Christopher Ricks talks about the thing that lead him to write his excellent “Milton’s Grand Style” is that two academics of the establishment that he respected disagreed strongly on the quality of Milton’s work (I know FR Leavis was the academic he referred to that disliked Milton). That Milton is a pillar of the canon is undeniable, but that he has always had his detractors in the establishment is also undeniable. If anything, one thing that’s kept him in the canon is that dynamic tension created between those who think he’s up there with Shakespeare, and those that think he’s the most overrated poet who ever lived. Canons aren’t always created out of the hive-mind agreement of the establishment.


I will admit that most of the names you mentioned are not familiar to me, and while it is not fair to dismiss work that one has not read, I imagine that I would find most of these poets -- who are respected in academia -- dull and unappealing.Wow! Way to admit doing something is unfair and then in the very next clause (not even separated by a period!) do the thing you claim is unfair! Having read many of those poets Luke listed (though mostly just the English language ones), allow me to say that they are radically different in style and content, so to find all of them “dull and unappealing” would likely mean you don’t like poetry to begin with. Any list that includes writers as diverse as Heaney and Ashbery is bound to find something to appeal to a lover of poetry.


I can pick two poets here who are obviously schooled, but their poems are no different to a pastor's sermon or a professor's memorized lecture. They are affected, contrived, conscious, and prosaic. There is no randomness, no life, no spirit Lorca called "duende." I suspect they write to impress not express and their poems are written for others not for themselves.Very subtle references, miyako. ;) “Writing to express” is very 1800s and the confessional school of 20th century poetry. How about being a bit more modern where what’s affected, contrived, and conscious is “in”?

[JCamilo]

Ironically, intellectual was term coined to separate the scholar/academic from those who learned and studied and took that learning outside of the academy to engage others in less formal ways. The person who holds down a job, but reads voraciously and then discusses/debates with people online today would be closer to the classic “intellectual” than the professor that never takes their learning out of the classroom, or never publishes outside of journals on the subjects they study. So when it comes to people like Keats, who would read and study and think and then discuss his ideas on poetry with friends and acquaintances in letters, that’s much closer to the classic intellectual than whatever academic you can name. Obviously there is a continuum between an academic and intellectual, or even academic and critic. Eliot once used the distinction to almost mean those that were concerned about facts (academic) and those that took facts and used them in creative evaluation (critic), and the latter is closer to how I imagine the intellectual.

Ironically, I am a man of XXI century, Keats from XIX and by them the term was already used to refeer to specific class , which was related to scholars and academics, not always being the same (intellectual was even more specific), but, all of them, not related to Keats except for his medical trainning.

The origem of the term (not oposed to scholars or academics at all, rather related as it meant to reffer to people who could read, not to chit-chat among friends) is a bit irrelevant here.


There was that classic poem about AC Bradley and his criticism of Shakespeare that goes:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.

There’s also the classic story about Hitchcock’s granddaughter, who took a class on Hitchcock, and when it came time to write a paper she chose Shadow of a Doubt, and she asked Hitchcock about the film, wrote the paper, and got a C. She went home to tell Hitchcock and Hitch replied with: “Sorry dear, that’s the best I can do.”

:D Funny, I had a similar experience. A teacher once gave us a paper on social-historical background of our city, we could pick the theme. I picked the formation of the neighbourd where my grandfather lived, he being a philosopher/historian that was one of the founders of that same university i was studying. She gave me what would be a C and said I made up all that as nobody really lived it and my source was unreliable in the sense my grandfather would be describing wrongly his own life. Her evidence was that she could not find a book with the title. I ask which title. She shows me the reference. And I was: not a book of course, it is the speech of my grandfather when he was nominated for a chair in the Historical Institute of our state... Anyways.


There there is a gap between artists and critics/academics is usually inevitable to some agree, because they’ve devoted their lives to different pursuits. And yet, there is often a lot of overlap, especially with the greats. If you read the interviews with Hitch, he clearly had a conscious understanding of how suspense works. In fact, his explanations still find themselves in textbooks as the perfect explanation (“surprise is a bomb going off suddenly in a room with two people talking; suspense is the audience knowing there’s a bomb in the room while two people are talking.”).

Obviously there is many artists who can explain what is art, understand it, etc. Not all. Not the majority. Hence the claim that understanding art or his precussors is trait of all the best poets is false.


I think much the same would apply if we talk about the great poets, even the romantics. Wordsworth clearly understood the value of line breaks in poetry, likely from reading Milton (though it could’ve come from elsewhere), and whether or not he ever formally ruminated on this is somewhat beside the point.

Yes, Wordsworth had a keen understanding of poetry. He also knew the basics, had knowledge of grammar, etc. But Wordsworth explains well his own poetry, the poetry of Pope for example is not something he dwells well. In fact, Coleridge-Wordsworth divergences come from Coleridge understanding the poetry of Wordsworth a little better than his friend.


With something like Negative Capability Keats had clearly tapped into a key tool of the trade of the great writers, and I think he sought to apply it himself—the notion that an artist can’t and shouldn’t have all of the answers to their work, because then it becomes too much of a crossword puzzle, rather than an artistic experience that closely mimics the various perspectives on life.

Yes and Negative Capability is exactly what I say: poets do not need to understand all to access their poetic capacity. That is what Keats says and he even goes onwards to say Coleridge need to explain and rationalize all that exists. I will not discuss if Keats is wrong to say it about Coleridge (as his incapacity to work harder is more due to other reasons than stopping all day trying to answer every question) but Keats is clearly pointing understandment (fully) or capacity of explanation is secundary to a great poet than his sense of beauty.


But even understanding that effect of Negative Capability is an intellectual concept. That Keats could grasp something so profound without ever formally developing is certainly proof of his innate intellectualism, an insight he gained in reading and studying (even if informally) the work of Shakespeare.

I have no problem if you want to use the word intellectual for every product of our minds or a replacement for intelligence. I see it as pointless, as obvious this make no relevant distinction between all forms of thinking, when intellectual can and is used with a more specific form. But I do find strange you use "innate intellectualism', mixing one word related to instinct and another to reason. It is strange, specially considering this topic. But claiming someone has something innate due to study is just a mistake. Innate is something which is born with the individual, something that come without experience, study or anything else. It is like too much words and not much content.




As for study implying something academic, I guess it’s different for people who are autodidacts. Study is just something that happens naturally everyday without being told what and how to read.

Again, Study as something naturally and daily is like kicking out all teachers, pedagogy, schools of the map. Experience is something that happens naturally everyday. Study is something more specific and I found very strange we talk about studying poetry and studying without knowing what and how to read...

[hallaig]

miyako73 I agree, I agree. I would say that rules can be learned, but vision is more important. The ideal is the melding of both: 'beauty captured in tranquil form'.

[stuntpickle]

I know posting something by a performance poet isn't likely to win me many friends here, but I find this hilarious and appropriate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2Z7uQkag0

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I know posting something by a performance poet isn't likely to win me many friends here, but I find this hilarious and appropriate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2Z7uQkag0

Actually, I found that hilarious, too. Definitely better than those "poetry slams" or whatever. Honestly, this seemed more of a stand-up comic for poets/poetry fans and literature lovers. The crowd interaction was great, too. Definitely going to watch more of his vids.

[hallaig]

I know posting something by a performance poet isn't likely to win me many friends here, but I find this hilarious and appropriate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2Z7uQkag0


It's certainly apposite. People can take their opinions of poetry far too seriously. Something not quite similar but in the same vein- maybe you know it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxRS6CGrhtM

[stuntpickle]

Glad you guys enjoyed it. This one is my favorite by him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OonDPGwAyfQ

[MorpheusSandman]

Hence the claim that understanding art or his precussors is trait of all the best poets is false.I'd say it's true of the majority of the greats, but now it seems we've shifted to discussing exactly what constitutes an intellectual artist. You'd claim Keats wasn't one, I think he was one, even if he was not as much of a critic in the manner of Coleridge or Eliot. But, anyway, more on this below:


I have no problem if you want to use the word intellectual for every product of our minds or a replacement for intelligence. I see it as pointless, as obvious this make no relevant distinction between all forms of thinking, when intellectual can and is used with a more specific form. But I do find strange you use "innate intellectualism', mixing one word related to instinct and another to reason... Innate is something which is born with the individual...I think the distinction I've been trying to make is between intellectual and academic/critic, but another distinction would have to be drawn between intellectual and just "everyday thinker" or "every product of our minds" as well. I see an intellectual as being someone more in between those extremes. Someone who spends more time thinking on intellectual, theoretical subjects (even if they're aesthetics and poetry), but perhaps does not solely make their living at it in a formal setting. Wikipedia says of an intellectual that:
An intellectual is a person who primarily uses intelligence in either a professional or an individual capacity. As a substantive or adjective, it refers to the work product of such persons, to the so-called "life of the mind" generally, or to an aspect of something where learning, erudition, and informed and critical thinking are the focus...

"Intellectual" can denote three types of people:

An intellectual is a person who uses thought and reason, intelligence and critical or analytical reasoning, in either a professional or a personal capacity and is

1. a person involved in, and with, abstract, erudite ideas and theories;
2. a person whose profession (e.g. philosophy, literary criticism, sociology, law, political analysis, theoretical science, etc.) solely involves the production and dissemination of ideas;[1]
3. a person of notable cultural and artistic expertise whose knowledge grants him or her intellectual authority in public discourseI think one reason it's tempting to consider most of the great poets as intellectuals is that poetry, being the art of language and form, is an inherently intellectual pursuit. You can not utilize language without having learned language, and you can not utilize form without having learned form. But, what's more, one can't use either if they have no thoughts, nothing the least bit intellectual, to write about in the first place. I don't think it would be difficult to fit most of the great poets into one (or more) of the three categories listed above.

As for "innate intellectual," perhaps a better term would've been "half-intellectual," which is stranger, but is perhaps open to more of a new definition. What I meant was that in reading and absorbing poetry, Keats was "innately," or perhaps "intuitively" would've been a better term, learning from it. One doesn't necessarily have to sit down with the conscious intent of "I'm going to learn," and then drill facts into their head through repetition. I think most great artists have that ability to transform even cursory reading into a kind of intuitive, instinctual knowledge, the kind of knowledge that they may not be completely aware or conscious of themselves, but is nonetheless in them simply from what they've absorbed. But that absorption still required them to read and to think on what they read to some extent, and Keats' theories are a reflection of his reading and his reflecting on that reading, which is an entirely intellectual pursuit.


Yes and Negative Capability is exactly what I say: poets do not need to understand all to access their poetic capacity. That is what Keats says and he even goes onwards to say Coleridge need to explain and rationalize all that exists.Yes, but surely you can see that Negative Capability in itself is a very intellectual concept. It's a theory that a lack of conscious knowledge is better than complete conscious knowledge because, amongst other things, it allows artists to mimic the moments of life where we simply don't understand what's happening to us and we have more questions than answers. So even in its argument against not completely understanding everything poetic, Negative Capability is still a thoroughly intellectual concept.

In general, one simply can't read Keats' letters and say that he was not someone who thought a great deal, and thought quite deeply, about poetry. His odes are an amazing testament to his aesthetic theories, even if they're expressed through abstraction and metaphor. Grecian Urn is as potent a revelation of how our reaction to art is one both of conscious curiosity and unconscious experience, and how experience in one state necessitates an exit from the other. Which, while perhaps not a brand new concept (even in Keats' age), is still one that your average thinker wouldn't grasp (and certainly wouldn't have been able to express with the power of Keats' Ode).


Again, Study as something naturally and daily is like kicking out all teachers, pedagogy, schools of the map. Experience is something that happens naturally everyday.I meant "study for autodidacts is just something that happens everyday," meaning people that are self-tought. One does not NEED teachers and schools to learn. It is perfectly allowable to buy and read textbooks and teach one's self, especially on subjects that aren't too mind-bendingly technical (it's probably easier to teach one's self poetry than, say, algebra).


I know posting something by a performance poet isn't likely to win me many friends here, but I find this hilarious and appropriate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK2Z7uQkag0Pretty funny, but the best part was the "Aramaic, b!tch!" someone in the crowd screamed! :lol:

Although, Shakespeare probably parodied intellectuals better than anyone in Love's Labour's Lost because he actually could write like they wrote and spoke. What Mali wrote doesn't actually sound like any poetry by any academics I know of, and it is helpful if what you're parodying actually resembled your parody! :D

[Delta40]

Will it help my education if I watch these links Morpheus?

[miyako73]

I guess this one is not modern because it is expressive and confessional:

A Lament for the Dead Pets of Our Childhood (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/167/3#20604682)

[MorpheusSandman]

Will it help my education if I watch these links Morpheus?No, but it will probably give you a good laugh.


I guess this one is not modern because it is expressive and confessional:It's not confessional as it's miles away from, eg, Sylvia Plath (http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Daddy). Expressive? Eh, I guess it would depend on how you want to define the term. But modern? Well, in the sense that it's contemporary, yes, but in the sense that it resembles recent aesthetics, I'd say not. Stallings is not one to use as an exemplar of modernistic tendencies. Try Ashbery (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/self-portrait-in-a-convex-mirror/).

Anyway, I was only joking with that last comment. But it is true that modernism tended towards detachment and depersonalization (http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html) more akin to the metaphysical poets as opposed to the Romantics. The Confessional school was, in one respect, romanticism pushed to an extreme, and I think there's been an uneasy tension ever since between those extremes of extremely personal poetry and extremely impersonal poetry. That you prefer the personal is fine, but don't assume that it's innately better or more modern than that which is "affected, contrived, and conscious." Your entire poetic freedom was earned by people like Pound and Eliot who were very much these things. That Eliot provided scholarly notes to his revolutionary The Waste Land was proof that he wanted the reader to be consciously aware of his "borrowings" and "affectations". Or, to quote Clive James:
the whole of English poetry’s technical heritage was present in Eliot’s work, and never more so than when it seemed free in form.

But since that time, there has been a big shift in belief, and we are living with the consequences now. Ezra Pound might have insisted that only a genius should excuse himself from traditional measures, but he soon decided that he was a genius, and several generations of his spiritual descendants either felt the same about themselves or—much more likely—took the new liberties more and more for granted as time went on.We have certain people on these forums that have clearly "decided they are geniuses," or "more likely" have just "took the new liberties more and more for granted."

[Delta40]

No, but it will probably give you a good laugh.

You mean like all the beer comments too? :lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol: you intellects, you're not only highly educated but so hilarious too!

I'm clutching my side, so my guts don't spill out onto the floor of the forum

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

[MorpheusSandman]

You mean like all the beer comments too? you intellects, you're not only highly educated but so hilarious too!A poet and a critic walk into a bar. Bartender asks what they want to drink. Poet says "give me a beer." Critic says, "Ahh, notice how he uses the imperative speech-act, beginning with the command to "give," followed by the 2nd person pronoun "me," the article "a" and the noun "beer." He could've specified what "beer," but by leaving it vague he leaves it open to interpretation what kind of beer he wants." The bartender says: "Yeah, but what do you want to drink?" Critic says: "Drink? I don't drink."

[miyako73]

Read how Irving Howe defines and argues what confessional poetry is.

A confessional poetry to me is the use of I to reveal memories repressed or unsaid. A poet who shares a part of his childhood is doing a confessional poetry.

Another one by Stallings:

Fear of Happiness

Looking back, it’s something I’ve always had:
As a kid, it was a glass-floored elevator
I crouched at the bottom of, my eyes squinched tight,
Or staircase whose gaps I was afraid I’d slip through,
Though someone always said I’d be all right—
Just don’t look down or See, it’s not so bad
(The nothing rising underfoot). Then later
The high-dive at the pool, the tree-house perch,
Ferris wheels, balconies, cliffs, a penthouse view,
The merest thought of airplanes. You can call
It a fear of heights, a horror of the deep;
But it isn’t the unfathomable fall
That makes me giddy, makes my stomach lurch,
It’s that the ledge itself invents the leap.

[Silas Thorne]

I've been on and off following this forum with detached interest, since I'm more interested in thinking about poetry rather than deciding on whether poets are 'born with it' or not.

So, glancing at the recent developments in this thread, and operating purely out of personal bias, I have this to say:

1. Beer is wonderful.
2. So is Monty Python.
3. MorpheusSandman is making a criticism of people that write poetry in a particular way, saying that they consider themselves 'geniuses,' by using Clive James' views on Ezra Pound.
4. I don't really like most 'intellectual' poetry, apart from the stuff I like. Some other people do like really intellectually complex and challenging intertextual poetry that requires a lot of research though. I'll leave them to squint over the lines I use for toilet paper.
5. Not all academics write 'academic poetry'.

I dislike most of Clive James' poetry, but like Ezra Pound's. I love ee cummings. I also like chocolate, but the good stuff mind you, none of that Hershey's crap.
Beer anyone? I have Guinness. ;)

[paradoxical]

You talk about “the establishment” as a hive mind and, believe me, it’s not. Christopher Ricks talks about the thing that lead him to write his excellent “Milton’s Grand Style” is that two academics of the establishment that he respected disagreed strongly on the quality of Milton’s work (I know FR Leavis was the academic he referred to that disliked Milton). That Milton is a pillar of the canon is undeniable, but that he has always had his detractors in the establishment is also undeniable. If anything, one thing that’s kept him in the canon is that dynamic tension created between those who think he’s up there with Shakespeare, and those that think he’s the most overrated poet who ever lived. Canons aren’t always created out of the hive-mind agreement of the establishment.

Yes, academics often disagree but like you stated, Milton is firmly lodged within the canon of English literature so I'm not sure what this proves. And I don't see "the establishment" as necessarily reactionary or hostile but perhaps overly conservative and too slow to recognize new voices. Maybe there is no other way to preserve what is worthy and exclude that which has little worth.


Wow! Way to admit doing something is unfair and then in the very next clause (not even separated by a period!) do the thing you claim is unfair! Having read many of those poets Luke listed (though mostly just the English language ones), allow me to say that they are radically different in style and content, so to find all of them “dull and unappealing” would likely mean you don’t like poetry to begin with. Any list that includes writers as diverse as Heaney and Ashbery is bound to find something to appeal to a lover of poetry.

Yes, I said it was unfair then went ahead and did it anyway. I guess what I was trying to say was that I find most of the poetry that is admired by critics to be rather effete, dull, and tepid. So I went ahead and made an assumption about these poets (which I admit was wrong). Which of these poets do you suggest I try? What I am looking for is subject matter that is at least a little bit controversial, or shocking. Offensive, even.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Hershey's is ****ing awesome.

[Pierre Menard]

Yes, I said it was unfair then went ahead and did it anyway. I guess what I was trying to say was that I find most of the poetry that is admired by critics to be rather effete, dull, and tepid. So I went ahead and made an assumption about these poets (which I admit was wrong). Which of these poets do you suggest I try? What I am looking for is subject matter that is at least a little bit controversial, or shocking. Offensive, even.

More and more it seems people are confusing their own singular opinion as 'right' and everyone elses, including people far more well read, as 'wrong'.


Why should we take your singular opinion on the canon seriously, but ignore people who've read more than you know more than you as well the authors influenced by other work and the general common educated reader who have loved and read the classics for hundreds of years (in some cases).

To be honest, after reading that you want shocking and offensive I'm starting to believe that it's simply a case of 'not enough of my favourite new writers are in the canon therefore it's wrong'.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

To be honest, after reading that you want shocking and offensive I'm starting to believe that it's simply a case of 'not enough of my favourite new writers are in the canon therefore it's wrong'.

This, I suspect, plays a large role in the anti-canon crowd's thinking (though they'll never admit to it). I knew a guy whose favorite poet/author was Bukowski and, surprise surprise, he was completely against the canon.

[Delta40]

So Paradoxical, the upshot is this, if you're going to claim to have a spiritual self in search of something refreshingly different, at least read, appreciate and agree on the f ucking bible first will you? :chillpill:

[paradoxical]

More and more it seems people are confusing their own singular opinion as 'right' and everyone elses, including people far more well read, as 'wrong'.


Why should we take your singular opinion on the canon seriously, but ignore people who've read more than you know more than you as well the authors influenced by other work and the general common educated reader who have loved and read the classics for hundreds of years (in some cases).

To be honest, after reading that you want shocking and offensive I'm starting to believe that it's simply a case of 'not enough of my favourite new writers are in the canon therefore it's wrong'.

Good Lord, I'm not asking anyone to take my opinion seriously. I'm just thinking out loud. And I never said that I was right and everyone else was wrong. Far from it. I didn't say the cannon was necessarily wrong, just too conservative and slow to acknowledge what is new. I also said there may be no other way. Read my last post. Like the comment made by Morpheus, you skipped over the part where I mentioned that I am a fan of T.S. Eliot, Blake, Shakespeare, Wordsworth. Surely they are part of the cannon? I also like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, and many others. But I stand by my statement that much of what is considered good poetry, or even great poetry is rather dull and tepid. Another thing, they refer to it as Dead White Men for a reason. Look at how much resistance there has been to allow Black voices, women, or queer writers. Look at the visceral reaction it causes. Many are entrenched in their beliefs and take things personally if you dare question the cannon.

So I don't qualify as a "general common educated reader"? I did study English literature at university, for what it's worth. How do you know how much I have read? And notice the comment I made at the end of my reply to StLukes, where I acknowledged that is very well-read and educated. He has obviously read more then I have and I told him that I respect his opinion. But yes, I prefer something along the lines of Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, or Kerouac. I'd rather read Henry Rollins pathetic "poetry" then most of what is considered fine and good by most. I think we need more poetry that disturbs people, that wakes people up. It has to be at least a little exciting. Not more boring middle-class and upper-class white people droning on about the same subjects. Not all of it is like that, of course. But that element is certainly there. Sorry, but I feel that it is true. Call me wrong. Ignore what I say. Hell, I don't care.


This, I suspect, plays a large role in the anti-canon crowd's thinking (though they'll never admit to it). I knew a guy whose favorite poet/author was Bukowski and, surprise surprise, he was completely against the canon.

Whatever. This thread is getting tiresome.


So Paradoxical, the upshot is this, if you're going to claim to have a spiritual self in search of something refreshingly different, at least read, appreciate and agree on the f ucking bible first will you? :chillpill:

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. The bible?

edit: Ah, never mind. Now I get it. LOL.

[miyako73]

The question is simple: Are poets born or made?

I wonder why there are talks about beer, intellectuals, Monty Python, etc.

My answer: born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

[Delta40]

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. The bible?

Och dinna worry ye wee hede aboot it! Oh no! I've turned all Scottish! Must mean it's time to read Rabbie Burns - I will have to locate him in Seven Centuries of Poetry in English. Phew! I will now carry my intellectual nobody to bed with a mug of hot milk and ponder, For A' That...

Is there for honest poverty
That hangs his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toil's obscure, and a' that;
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,-
The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,
Wear hoddin' grey, an' a' that?
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine,-
A man's a man, for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show an' a' that;
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd a lord,
Wha struts an' stares an' a' that,-
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof for a' that;
For a' that, an' a' that
His riband, star, and a' that;
The man o' independent mind,
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak' a belted knight
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon his might,-
Gude faith, he maunna fa' that!
For a' that, an' a' that;
Their dignities an' a' that,
The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,-
(As come it will for a' that),-
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree an' a' that.
For a' that an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,-
That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that!

[ShadowsCool]

The question is simple: Are poets born or made?

I wonder why there are talks about beer, intellectuals, Monty Python, etc.

My answer: born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

How can one know one from the other? It's such a personal issue. Most writers are not poets and most poets are not made. You either are or you're not.

[stuntpickle]

(it's probably easier to teach one's self poetry than, say, algebra).

Oh, I don't know. With algebra, one need only follow the directions. Of course, I suppose that's how some approach poetry too.

Maybe you have an instructive quote handy?

[JCamilo]

I think the distinction I've been trying to make is between intellectual and academic/critic, but another distinction would have to be drawn between intellectual and just "everyday thinker" or "every product of our minds" as well. I see an intellectual as being someone more in between those extremes. Someone who spends more time thinking on intellectual, theoretical subjects (even if they're aesthetics and poetry), but perhaps does not solely make their living at it in a formal setting. Wikipedia says of an intellectual that: I think one reason it's tempting to consider most of the great poets as intellectuals is that poetry, being the art of language and form, is an inherently intellectual pursuit. You can not utilize language without having learned language, and you can not utilize form without having learned form. But, what's more, one can't use either if they have no thoughts, nothing the least bit intellectual, to write about in the first place. I don't think it would be difficult to fit most of the great poets into one (or more) of the three categories listed above.

Well, like i said It is ok if you define intellectual as the use of intellect, but even wikipedia rules out keats (it is a person who is analytical, use reason, etc), so some poets would be like this and Keats, one that use primary emotion not. But we could avoid it and move on, as we agree on something enough to discuss, does not matter if we do not agree how we name it.


As for "innate intellectual," perhaps a better term would've been "half-intellectual," which is stranger, but is perhaps open to more of a new definition. What I meant was that in reading and absorbing poetry, Keats was "innately," or perhaps "intuitively" would've been a better term, learning from it. One doesn't necessarily have to sit down with the conscious intent of "I'm going to learn," and then drill facts into their head through repetition. I think most great artists have that ability to transform even cursory reading into a kind of intuitive, instinctual knowledge, the kind of knowledge that they may not be completely aware or conscious of themselves, but is nonetheless in them simply from what they've absorbed. But that absorption still required them to read and to think on what they read to some extent, and Keats' theories are a reflection of his reading and his reflecting on that reading, which is an entirely intellectual pursuit.

Mostly fine. I would just say innate genius, could be easily understood. Then we have a guy like Keats, which poetic method is based on emotion. A different claim (I say claim because it may be possible they claim it different and pratice it alike) is the one of Poe, which method is based on reason. So, maybe they are actually talking about how to construct a poem (poe) and how to find poetic inspiration (Keats), and we may say a poet is born, but poetry is crafted. What probally make a great poet is not explaning the craft, maybe it is the famous: the rules and models are not jails, not rigid, but mallable, so it is when the innate traits (which we may extend to every writer) is able to deal with the materials he have. Even a critic is good when his insight is able to change what he studies and he have the capacity to explain it and make it "believable".

And yes, I agree much about Keats natural critical insights. Maybe the great difference if he lived longer would not be better poems, but a critical body organized and original that would be a work of genius... Anyways, I also think there was a huge mistake when they related his failures, specially the long poems or dramatic poems as failures in attempts of intellectualization. I think it was just not the best suited form, one he needed more pratice.


Yes, but surely you can see that Negative Capability in itself is a very intellectual concept. It's a theory that a lack of conscious knowledge is better than complete conscious knowledge because, amongst other things, it allows artists to mimic the moments of life where we simply don't understand what's happening to us and we have more questions than answers. So even in its argument against not completely understanding everything poetic, Negative Capability is still a thoroughly intellectual concept.

If intellectual meant product of his tought, i would just say all concepts are, so I would not use the word. But yes, a great concept that shows someone with a sharp capacity to feel poetry.

Keats certainly presents something else beyond what romantic poets were thinking.


I meant "study for autodidacts is just something that happens everyday," meaning people that are self-tought. One does not NEED teachers and schools to learn. It is perfectly allowable to buy and read textbooks and teach one's self, especially on subjects that aren't too mind-bendingly technical (it's probably easier to teach one's self poetry than, say, algebra).

Yes, sure. Learning can be done everyday, in many ways.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The question is simple: Are poets born or made?

I wonder why there are talks about beer, intellectuals, Monty Python, etc.

My answer: born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

And how do you distinguish between the two? By what you like?

[MorpheusSandman]

Read how Irving Howe defines and argues what confessional poetry is: A confessional poetry to me is the use of I to reveal memories repressed or unsaid. Then I am a confessional poet.


born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.So you get to arbitrarily decide based on subjective reaction of what is 'exciting' and 'boring' whether a poet was born or made? So, if I think your poetry is boring, then I get to call you a 'made poet'?

================================================== =


3. MorpheusSandman is making a criticism of people that write poetry in a particular way, saying that they consider themselves 'geniuses,' by using Clive James' views on Ezra Pound. More like I'm criticizing people that choose to dismiss/ignore the poetic tradition while (ironically) being allowed to do so because of that tradition. James' point was that the moderns who "freed" everyone were steeped in that tradition, and everyone now that chooses to ignore it have only been given that liberty because of people that actually DID learn it and DID work hard at it. What I'm really criticizing is the anti-intellectual attitude (which I think is born out of xenophobia and laziness, more than anything) that poets are just these divinely inspired creatures that don't need to work at or learn their craft.

================================================== =


I didn't say the cannon was necessarily wrong, just too conservative and slow to acknowledge what is new... I stand by my statement that much of what is considered good poetry, or even great poetry is rather dull and tepid.Canons have ALWAYS been slow, though. It's not as if those in the 17th Century considered Shakespeare as the greatest writer ever in the English language. He owes much of that reputation to the 19th Century and, especially, the German intellectuals. So criticizing the canon for being slow is bizarre to me, because all canons are formed via a "consensus" of what emerges out of criticism over a long period of time.

But your "much of what is considered good/great... is dull and tepid" is a really, really, general and vague statement. You've admitted you like some of the canon, so what part of the canon is "dull and tepid?"


Another thing, they refer to it as Dead White Men for a reason. Look at how much resistance there has been to allow Black voices, women, or queer writers.The reason is because for centuries it was primarily white men that were writing poetry. A good chunk of poets from the 20th century that are, let's say, eligible for the canon are black, female, and queer (Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Rita Dove, Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komunyakaa, WH Auden, James Merrill), and they have predecessors like Whitman and Dickinson.


I think we need more poetry that disturbs people, that wakes people up.Hey, I dig Burroughs, but it seems like what you're hankering for is some kind of sensationalist shock. It's been done and, quite frankly, I feel more "awakened" by Blake than I do by Bukowski (whom I don't like) or Burroughs (whom I do).

================================================== =


Well, like i said It is ok if you define intellectual as the use of intellect, but even wikipedia rules out keatsWikipedia rules out Keats? Did I miss that?


Then we have a guy like Keats, which poetic method is based on emotion.What I'd say it's based on eliciting emotion via a very learned craft and technique. Keats' placing emphasis on imagery over philosophical statements came out of his reading of Shakespeare's sonnets, and loving those parts where Shakespeare carried the meaning through metaphor and imagery. In fact, Keats' rejection of the couplet ending was partly due to his distaste for how Shakespeare would often restate what he had already said in a more appealing way in the first 12 lines. Something like To Autumn is very much the pinnacle of using imagery that is very much symbolic, and it's an allegorical mode that he developed throughout his earlier poetry and through his reading of Shakespeare. So it was not something that came strictly innately, it was something that was made out of his reading and reflection.


I also think there was a huge mistake when they related his failures, specially the long poems or dramatic poems as failures in attempts of intellectualization.I don't think it was a failure of intellectualization as much as it was a failure of presenting intellectual concepts. The Odes are, in their way, MORE intellectual in how they carry their intellectual concepts through imagery, allegory, and dramatic development.


If intellectual meant product of his tought, i would just say all concepts are, so I would not use the word..I did state that "intellectual" needs to be distinguished from just "everyday learning" and "academic" and that I think it resides somewhere in the middle. Again, most "everyday learners" do not come up with something like "Negative Capability," which is the product of much reading and reflection. But because it was done outside of the academy, it couldn't be said to be "academic" either, so "intellectual," to me, seems the right way to describe it.

[ShadowsCool]

Then I am a confessional poet.

So you get to arbitrarily decide based on subjective reaction of what is 'exciting' and 'boring' whether a poet was born or made? So, if I think your poetry is boring, then I get to call you a 'made poet'?


That was my thinking also when I read that. The fact that some people think certain poetry is inferior to their own, speaks of presumptuous righteousness on their part.

We all are different writers with different skill sets. I never went to writing school, nor did I finish college. Does that mean I suck because I don't write like the Harvard grads? Or that my style is more narrative and not modern enough?

If I comment on their poetry but they don't even acknowledge me as a writer, then why should I care about their writing?

This is why I wrote what I wrote before (A Certain Snobbery in Poetry). Some people come off high on their rocker! And it stinks to high heaven!

[MorpheusSandman]

I would hope that we're all here to improve and none of us think that we've really "made it." If we had arrived we be getting published in Poetry and APR and Tin House and Ploughshares and getting selected for anthologies or being up for awards and having decent selling books and probably be getting paid to teach (or lecture or something). Most of the work I post here is work that I know is incomplete and needs work, and I'm open for suggestions on how to do it better. Others, though, seem to have this attitude that they're infallible, their work can't be improved upon, they don't need to learn anything new, they don't care about reader's reactions or criticism... and to them I can't help but wonder why they're posting their poetry here in the first place. If they're all that and we're just bad readers, go find better readers that will actually pay you for your work. This SHOULD be a place for learning and improving and helping others do the same, more than anything else, not a place for being above that, either as a writer or as a critic.

[ShadowsCool]

And this is why I have utmost respect for the following posters. In no particular order:

Twota - Always good natured, willing to learn, a solid poet and has something positive to say.

Silas Thorne - Another who is a solid contributor. Leaves a positive impression. Professional. Superb writer.

MystyrMystyry - A writer of the highest order, filled with imagination.

Hawkman - Is willing to break down your poetry and leaves no punches. In a good natured way. And writes superb stuff.

Delta - The first lady of poetry of the highest order; who is a stunning poet and solid all around. Very humble!

Jack of Hearts - Another who is willing to take the time to comment. Tells you what he likes and don't like. A superb writer himself.

Bar22do - Another all around great contributor and a solid writer in his own right!

Jerrybaldy - A superb writer and also contributes, helping others.

hillwalker - Though he don't post much anymore, is still remembered as a learned master of the art of writing. And is missed. Superb writer.

Bewlay Brother - Another solid writer who gives his time in sharing and commenting on other poetry.

Dark Muse - An interesting writer with a fresh prospective on the art of writing.

paradoxical - Ditto

PrinceMyshkin - Ditto

DocHeart - Ditto

Kittypaws - Ditto

Cacian - Ditto

Bookbeauty - Ditto

Yes/No - Ditto

Tah - A major contributor to the poetry boards. A solid writer in his own right!

Mutatis-Mutandis - A willing participant and knows the genre. Is willing to lay it on the line. Knows the art well and writes top notch too.

Buh4Bee - A very good character, who is always willing to share his assessment of your writing. A very good writer.

And you Sandman, though we don't always agree on stuff, you know your stuff (I can't deny) and you're as good as they come.

And them too: Paperleaves, blank|verse, Alexander III, Qimi, and firefangled.

[MorpheusSandman]

I certainly can't disagree with anyone on that list, Shadows, and I'd add your name to it as well, as well as others that haven't been around as much lately, like Paperleaves, blank|verse, Alexander III, Qimi, and firefangled.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

No MystyrMystyry? I love his stuff.

And thanks for the nod, Shadows, though I'm not sure its warranted. :D

[ShadowsCool]

No MystyrMystyry? I love his stuff.

And thanks for the nod, Shadows, though I'm not sure its warranted. :D

Good point. I hope no one thinks I'm kissing butt here LOL. Just my assessment and humble opinion.

Thanks!

[stlukesguild]

But I stand by my statement that much of what is considered good poetry, or even great poetry is rather dull and tepid.

And that's but a personal opinion that may say more about you that the poets you question. Let's look at this "canon". Ultimately the "canon" is some abstract ideal not some simple list made up by this critic or that university. The "canon" is something that is ever-changing and fluid. Essentially, it is constructed of the writers whose work has survived and continues to resonate with an audience. You seemingly assume that this audience is made up solely of dry academics. Even if it were true that academics were the sole arbiters of what survives, you cannot argue that all academics are dry (hell, a great deal are quite passionate about literature that they have invested so much time and effort into studying). Nor can you find a clear consensus of agreement by such academics.

But the canon is not constructed solely upon the opinions of academia; it is also the product of subsequent generations of writers. A critic like Samuel Johnson was able to dismiss Lawrence Sterne, but writers such as Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, J.L. Borges etc... counter this. You also must consider the opinions of what Virginia Woolf called the "common reader"... the well-read passionate reader. Tolkein and Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexander Dumas survive more upon the opinions of common readers than critics.

Ultimately, if a work of literature has survived for a great period of time there is probably a reason for its survival. This does not mean that we MUST like every book that is deemed a classic... but it does mean that there are obviously more than a few among those who have invested a good deal of time and effort into reading that feel the work is of real merit and to suggest that all those readers are of of some lock-step mentality (unable to think for themselves) and merely glom onto whatever academia has deemed to be a "classic" is unrealistic... if not insulting.

Another thing, they refer to it as Dead White Men for a reason.

The primary reason is a misguided notion that we can effect social change by rewriting history... even the history of the arts. There aren't more women in the history of art and literature because men in power are hiding their existence from us. They simply aren't there because women were rarely afforded the education or the opportunity to even consider a career in the arts. Why aren't there more Blacks in the history of Western Literature? Is that really a serious question. Why not ask why there aren't more Germans in the history of Asian art. My God! It's an obvious conspiracy! And why aren't there more Jewish writers included in the history of Middle-Eastern literature? It must be antisemitism! Let's use the grey matter a bit here. What percentage of the population of Europe was black? Until recently how many Blacks were afforded an education in the United States? Over the last century just how great has the Black contribution to literature been? I don't think anyone in their right mind would even begin to suggest that it in any way approaches the Black contribution to music... which is in no way denied in academia.

This is combined with a warped notion that art is or should be a democratic... or even an egalitarian endeavor, when the reality is that art has always been elitist. Yes... all cultures produce human beings of exemplary intelligence in the same proportion... but not all cultures have produced achievements in the arts and culture at the same level. The Germans and Austrians have produced more great music than any other culture in history. The Italian Renaissance resulted in far more painting and sculpture of real genius than any other European culture. Much of this has to do with access to education, financial support, the access to the time and materials. Much of this has to do with the simple reality that life isn't fair.

As for "queer" voices. Again I must say... "Really?" "Really?" No major homosexuals in the arts... locked out by entrenched beliefs, eh? All except for Michelangelo, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Donatello, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Hart Crane, Tennessee Williams, Herman Melville, Allen Ginsberg, etc... One could certainly go on for quite some time.

The fact is that there isn't so much a resistance to women-writers, Hispanic-writers, Jewish-writers, homosexual-writers, etc... Rather there is a resistance to politicizing the arts in an attempt to enforce some notion of egalitarianism: so many Black writers, so many Jewish writers, etc...

But yes, I prefer something along the lines of Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, or Kerouac. I'd rather read Henry Rollins pathetic "poetry" then most of what is considered fine and good by most.

That's well and fine. Some people prefer Pink Floyd and Aerosmith to Mozart and Bach... but how likely is it that Pink Floyd and Aerosmith will survive another 200 years? It's more that a good guess that Mozart and Bach will still be recognized as classics

I think we need more poetry that disturbs people, that wakes people up. It has to be at least a little exciting. Not more boring middle-class and upper-class white people droning on about the same subjects.

How does it wake you up? Any half-literate buffoon can string together a stream of profanity, sexually graphic imagery, and the sad ramblings of an alcoholic. Shock value is cheap. The real excitement comes in shaking up our perceptions of those same boring subjects and our notions of the use of language. Seriously, considering what I have read over the years I can't even begin to fathom what you mean when you speak of writers harping on over the same "boring, middle-class, white subject matter. Please do inform me as to just what these are?

[miyako73]

Poetry, at least to me, is an acquired taste. In my case, I want it raw. I prefer sashimi over the trendy california roll. Besides, dildoes are too artificial and mechanical and made of plastic or silicone.

This is my favorite poet before he went to Amherst to study literature:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaBX7_g5KMQ

This is him already a student at Amherst. The raw before, it seems, has been cooked.

http://vimeo.com/6902718

His earliest works are even better:

the zoo

My words, indifferent as a gray tortoise,
remind me of an old woman
smoking tobacco by the window.

My words are as invisible
as the old kitchen rag
I use to wipe the grease off the cages.

My words are clumsy
as a frog saturated with mud
wishing to hibernate.

My words have the deliberate solitude of lizards,
their tongues unfold like a royal carpet
straining to hear the inward music
of distant saxophones.

I come in and find abundant thick hairs,
droppings, and tangerine peels,
a familiar scent fills my nostrils.

My words have escaped.
I’m too tired or too wound up
to go after them.

THE IRREVERSIBLE WORD

In endless seas of words I struggle,
barnacles of distraction
cling idle to my boat.

Me alone with my images
like fish riding on the water
or coral reefs deep below the surface.

I pull on the oars,
but why do I struggle if I know
I will never reach the shore?

My poem still incomplete, I am a bird
knowing I will never reach the sun's round perfection.
Why then do I struggle
trying to weave these threads of words?

Beyond, beyond, always beyond
sailing to the horizon,
no boundaries on the sea nor in the sunlit sky.
My journey is always beginning,
that in itself keeps me content.

If one day I reach the shore
or fly like a phoenix to meet the source of light
or make my poem complete
and weave my words into a cloak of patterns
and go back to the Irreversible Word
from which all words came forth,
then I'd be silent
for fear of staining
the delicate silk of its totality.

In the meantime here I come!
pulling on the oars,
and there's plenty of songs
to keep me going.


I just hope he finds his voice back. I'll wait for it. I want to fall in love with his words again like before.

[MorpheusSandman]

Some people prefer Pink Floyd and Aerosmith to Mozart and Bach... but how likely is it that Pink Floyd and Aerosmith will survive another 200 years? I know this wasn't addressed to me, but:

Aerosmith has almost no chance. Floyd, on the other hand, has a better than average chance, if only because they seem to keep finding passionate, devoted fans with each new generation. But, really, The Beatles and Dylan would be a better comparison to Mozart and Bach, as I believe both of them will survive another 200 years (and, personally, I'd take both over Bach, though not Mozart... preferences, preferences).


Poetry, at least to me, is an acquired taste. In my case, I want it raw. I prefer sashimi over the trendy california roll. Which is just fine, but all we ask is that you recognize that this IS personal taste and not some objective comment on the quality of "fully cooked" poetry.

[Delta40]

That was a well written and very patient post St Lukes but I think The Beatles might last 200 years

[MorpheusSandman]

It's always, at best, a semi-educated guess about what will enter the canon long-term, but we should probably realize that SOME things from each century will get there. I'd say The Beatles and Dylan are our best guess as far as last century's pop music goes.

But, is it just me, or does the classical music canon seem to change much faster than the others? Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Bartok, Strauss, et al. from the last century are already canonical...

[stlukesguild]

miyako73- born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

MorpheusSandman- So you get to arbitrarily decide based on subjective reaction of what is 'exciting' and 'boring' whether a poet was born or made? So, if I think your poetry is boring, then I get to call you a 'made poet'?

Well... actually it would seem that if her poetry is boring then we simply must assume that she's not a born poet... and as poetry is something either one was born with or not... then it seems obvious that she's simply not a born poet and thus never has the least chance of becoming a poet... regardless of effort, education, etc...

Of course the very notion of a "born artist" in any genre is naive... if not sophomoric. All art forms involve a language... and all languages must be learned. Certainly, studies of the human brain have proven that certain individuals are more predisposed toward rapidly mastering a given set of skills or knowledge than another... but to rise to the level of true mastery in any art form a degree of discipline... study and practice is involved.

The idea that one might become "too learned"... "too well practiced" etc... is simply moronic... and in all likelihood based in a degree of envy... and/or laziness. The idea that the well-informed or scholarly artist is more likely to follow some lock-step mentality while the intuitive "natural" artist is willing to break the rules is little more than Romantic claptrap... and surely not supported by the examples of cultural history. Was Cervantes illiterate? It seems to me that he was more than well versed in the traditional Romances that his novel parodied. Was Michelangelo just naturally talented? from what I recall, he had one of the most intense formal training and education possible.

Silas Thorne- MorpheusSandman is making a criticism of people that write poetry in a particular way, saying that they consider themselves 'geniuses,' by using Clive James' views on Ezra Pound.

More like I'm criticizing people that choose to dismiss/ignore the poetic tradition while (ironically) being allowed to do so because of that tradition... What I'm really criticizing is the anti-intellectual attitude (which I think is born out of xenophobia and laziness, more than anything) that poets are just these divinely inspired creatures that don't need to work at or learn their craft.

Exactly!

paradoxical- I didn't say the cannon was necessarily wrong, just too conservative and slow to acknowledge what is new... I stand by my statement that much of what is considered good poetry, or even great poetry is rather dull and tepid.

Canons have ALWAYS been slow, though. It's not as if those in the 17th Century considered Shakespeare as the greatest writer ever in the English language. He owes much of that reputation to the 19th Century and, especially, the German intellectuals. So criticizing the canon for being slow is bizarre to me, because all canons are formed via a "consensus" of what emerges out of criticism over a long period of time.

The notion of "the canon" or the "classics" is based upon something which has survived for a reasonable period of time and garnered the continued admiration or consensus of those who have invested the most into the study of a given art form. The idea of a "contemporary classic" or the "contemporary canon" is an oxymoron. This is not to say that none of the literature of here and now has any worth... nor that none of it will eventually rise to the status of a "classic"... but how is this process too conservative? Of what value is gushing over every best-seller and proclaiming equal to Shakespeare?

I think we need more poetry that disturbs people, that wakes people up.

Hey, I dig Burroughs, but it seems like what you're hankering for is some kind of sensationalist shock. It's been done and, quite frankly, I feel more "awakened" by Blake than I do by Bukowski (whom I don't like) or Burroughs (whom I do).

I quite agree.

ShadowsCool- The fact that some people think certain poetry is inferior to their own, speaks of presumptuous righteousness on their part.

Some people might just be right.

We all are different writers with different skill sets.

This is merely cultural relativism... the notion that there is no good nor bad art... merely "different" art. No artist of any real ability believes this to be true even of his or her own work.

I never went to writing school, nor did I finish college. Does that mean I suck because I don't write like the Harvard grads? Or that my style is more narrative and not modern enough?

No... it doesn't inherently mean that your work sucks or is less modern than the Harvard grads.

If I comment on their poetry but they don't even acknowledge me as a writer, then why should I care about their writing?

I'm confused here. Where do you get the idea that the poets championed as part of the "canon" or admired by academia are all graduates of some elite university or college? I suspect this is more about envy than about anything else.

This is why I wrote what I wrote before (A Certain Snobbery in Poetry). Some people come off high on their rocker! And it stinks to high heaven!

Again... this seems to be more about an inferiority complex than a response to some real prejudice directed toward those lacking certain formal credentials.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Another thing, they refer to it as Dead White Men for a reason.

The primary reason is a misguided notion that we can effect social change by rewriting history... even the history of the arts. There aren't more women in the history of art and literature because men in power are hiding their existence from us. They simply aren't there because women were rarely afforded the education or the opportunity to even consider a career in the arts. Why aren't there more Blacks in the history of Western Literature? Is that really a serious question. Why not ask why there aren't more Germans in the history of Asian art. My God! It's an obvious conspiracy! And why aren't there more Jewish writers included in the history of Middle-Eastern literature? It must be antisemitism! Let's use the grey matter a bit here. What percentage of the population of Europe was black? Until recently how many Blacks were afforded an education in the United States? Over the last century just how great has the Black contribution to literature been? I don't think anyone in their right mind would even begin to suggest that it in any way approaches the Black contribution to music... which is in no way denied in academia.

This is combined with a warped notion that art is or should be a democratic... or even an egalitarian endeavor, when the reality is that art has always been elitist. Yes... all cultures produce human beings of exemplary intelligence in the same proportion... but not all cultures have produced achievements in the arts and culture at the same level. The Germans and Austrians have produced more great music than any other culture in history. The Italian Renaissance resulted in far more painting and sculpture of real genius than any other European culture. Much of this has to do with access to education, financial support, the access to the time and materials. Much of this has to do with the simple reality that life isn't fair.
I think I'm going to copy and paste this so I remember to bring up these points next time complains about the lack of diversity in the canon, which I hear all the time, especially when it comes to education: "Why aren't there more black/women/Hispanic/etc writers in textbooks? That discrimination." No, it's because there've been more good white male writers (in the western canon, of course) than anything else. Just the way it is.


I never went to writing school, nor did I finish college. Does that mean I suck because I don't write like the Harvard grads?
Yeah, but you have to go both ways with this statement, right? The answer is obviously no, and I don't think any college grads would disagree. If the question was switched, "I went to writing school and completed my masters in creative writing. Does that mean I such because I write like a Harvard grad?" For this, too, obviously no (and I'm not entirely sure what writing is like from a Harvard grad--I'm assuming the assumption is it's akin to 200 year olds poetry or something). Yet there are a lot of people saying exactly that--learning about writing poetry in a formal setting diminishes the quality of that writer and his/her poetry, which is preposterous.

[ShadowsCool]

That was a well written and very patient post St Lukes but I think The Beatles might last 200 years

:iagree:

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think he pointedly didn't use the Beatles as an example because he would agree, the chances of their music lasting a very long time is definitely possible--he is a huge Beatles fan, if I'm not mistaken.

How he could put Pink Floyd and Aerosmirh in the same category is a huge faux pas, though. Aerosmith is horrible.

[ShadowsCool]

I think I need to add St. Lukes on the list of contributors. :p

As for the Beatles lasting 200 years, I'd put my money on it.

Top 10 Artist of the Rock era:

1. Beatles**
2. Dylan**
3. Presley*
4. Stones*
5. Hendrix
6. James Brown
7. Ray Charles
8. Bob Marley
9. Michael Jackson
10. Led Zeppelin

A list I kinda put together, determining many factors; like importance, impact and lasting impression on the industry.

* A 100 year impression
** 200 year impression

Top Poets of all time:

1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Chaucer
4. William Wordsworth
5. John Keats
6. T.S. Eliot
7. John Milton
8. William Blake
9. W.B. Yeats
10. ?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I hope the Stones don't last that long, but they probably will.

I actually don't think Pink Floyd would be too unreasonable for the hundred year bracket. I saw plenty of Pink Floyd shirts when I student taught high school. There's something about their sound that appeals to youth.

Another band I think is going to stick around for a long, long time is Nirvana.

Oh, and, uhhhhh, no one is born a poet.

[ShadowsCool]

I hope the Stones don't last that long, but they probably will.

I actually don't think Pink Floyd would be too unreasonable for the hundred year bracket. I saw plenty of Pink Floyd shirts when I student taught high school. There's something about their sound that appeals to youth.

Another band I think is going to stick around for a long, long time is Nirvana.

Oh, and, uhhhhh, no one is born a poet.

Please don't get me wrong. I'd love to put Floyd in there. They to me belong in there. But this is a purely objective list determining many factors. I saw Floyd in concert many times and it was an experience of a lifetime. I also saw the Wall a couple of years ago and was blown away. So I'm a huge fan. Perhaps, people will realize how important they were.

As for Nirvana? I personally like em. But their niche didn't carry on too long. In the long wind of it, I don't think they will be remembered that long.

As for the Stones? I'm not a huge fan but all things considered, they do belong in there. Even though, I personally think they are a tad overrated.

As for the poet statement? I don't know about that. Aren't some athletes born to be great? Why should it be different with poets?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

The only reason Nirvana has a chance is because of Kurt Cobain. Grunge is dead, true, but Nirvana isn't.

All athletes have to train and practice for their sport. No babies come out of the womb poll-vaulting . . . though that would be pretty ****ing awesome.

[ShadowsCool]

I think Nirvana has made a huge impact. And I'm sure many would agree. It's just that, there's not enough substance. I think they made 3 albums. That's hardly enough to make a lasting impression. They do have sort of a cult following. But in the long run? I can't say. It seems they fall short. Perhaps mid-teens in terms of importance.

Again, as for the poet statement. That's true obviously that no babies poll-vault out of their mother's womb. But isn't it fascinating that the human DNA seems to determine many things you or I will be stuck with.

For instance, getting a disease. It's pretty proven that some people are susceptible to certain illnesses, i.e. cancer, at an earlier age than say someone who may have the same exposure to its causes. Some people may get a certain cancer when they are relatively young, while other's may smoke away until they are 70. That tells me, genes play a huge roll. So why should that be different with the mind? Yes you can train the mind, but you can't really make someone smarter, only more informed. How many of these poets were writing at the age of 7? I bet many of them.

[stlukesguild]

I hope the Stones don't last that long, but they probably will.


Accck!!! Aaacckk!!!

First it's beer... and now the Stones!!!

Blasphemer!!! Away I say!!! Away!!!

Get thee to a nunnery!!!




Oh, the shame... the shame of it all!!!:frown2::eek:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rnxQBizoU

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Me in a nunnery? That would be fun. Poor nuns.


I think Nirvana has made a huge impact. And I'm sure many would agree. It's just that, there's not enough substance. I think they made 3 albums. That's hardly enough to make a lasting impression. They do have sort of a cult following. But in the long run? I can't say. It seems they fall short. Perhaps mid-teens in terms of importance.

Again, as for the poet statement. That's true obviously that no babies poll-vault out of their mother's womb. But isn't it fascinating that the human DNA seems to determine many things you or I will be stuck with.

For instance, getting a disease. It's pretty proven that some people are susceptible to certain illnesses, i.e. cancer, at an earlier age than say someone who may have the same exposure to its causes. Some people may get a certain cancer when they are relatively young, while other's may smoke away until they are 70. That tells me, genes play a huge roll. So why should that be different with the mind? Yes you can train the mind, but you can't really make someone smarter, only more informed. How many of these poets were writing at the age of 7? I bet many of them.
Yeah, but what were they writing at 7?

I'm not disputing that some people are born with minds more inclined to the arts. That's been all but proven. My assertion is simply this: anyone can be a poet, but being a good poet is going to take practice, no matter what kind of mind.

[ShadowsCool]

Yeah, but what were they writing at 7?

I'm not disputing that some people are born with minds more inclined to the arts. That's been all but proven. My assertion is simply this: anyone can be a poet, but being a good poet is going to take practice, no matter what kind of mind.

Crap I'm sure. But they were inclined. And for what else you just said. I agree. Practice, Practice, Practice.

[stlukesguild]

As for the poet statement? I don't know about that. Aren't some athletes born to be great?

Actually, Howard Gardner's studies on the human brain and the different "intelligences" would counter this. Where traditional IQ tests focused upon verbal and mathematical thinking and problem solving, Gardner's studies of the brain (with stroke patients) discovered different zones effecting skills ranging from spatial thinking to visual thinking to collaborative thinking, etc... Gardner's and later studies in education and intelligence recognized that intelligence is far more complex than originally thought and that the mastery of skills such as the performance of music or playing basketball are just as much the result of intellect as brilliance in science. Artists, musicians, and athletes have long been spoken of as "talented". While on one level this conveys a certain awe for their ability, on the other hand it undermines it as well by suggesting that the brilliant musician, artist, or athlete was merely blessed by nature or God. What these studies have shown is that an athlete like Michael Jordan was certainly not endowed with some inherently superior physical capabilities. Rather he was able to out-think his opponents... to envision what an opponent might do, process this, and respond far more rapidly than another. In other words... he was a "genius" at basketball... talented. This "genius", however, needed to be developed through practice and study.

[ShadowsCool]

~"This "genius", however, needed to be developed through practice and study."~

The study seems to make sense on the surface. I or anyone not involved with the study could not know what went into the study to determine the results. We have only the results they provided. Yet such a study requires certain imputes, which mean everything to an outcome. Though I am not disputing such a study on a first glance, just aware of how studies work. Because I've been involved with many studies myself and are familiar with the very process. You can almost make a study say what you want them to. I'm not saying that was done here at all. Just a reminder when I see such a study done. Okay now my head is shaking LOL.

Common sense should also be a determining factor when coming up with a plausible answer. How one uses that is important too. The rule stick should be all things known and the possible unknowns. Then a determination can be made.

[IntravenousJava]

No matter how vigorously I apply myself to the mastery of certain arts, I find that I am genetically predisposed to succeed at some and fail at others.

Likewise, I am certain that many potentially great artists have faded into oblivion with talents unrealized for lack of application.

So, in answer to the original question, both: some poets are born and others made, but the best are those who apply themselves to the utmost realization of innate aptitude.

[ShadowsCool]

My "hunch" unscientific theory in spatial terms.

Let's say an average Joe has a writing ability (or any talent) of a 20 out of 100. Let's say that is the lowest limit of the ability of an average human being in the gene pool. Now let's take an exceptionally "gifted" writer like (fill in the blank) and say he has a 80 out of 100. Let's say that is the upper limit of human writing ability you are born with.

Now if example B, just applied himself 40% in terms of developing his craft, and say example A, applied himself 100 percent in terms of developing his craft, then both come out to a 120. But if (B) applies himself 80% of full ability then you got a master genius in that field.

That's just a "hunch" I have with the human gene pool. This seems very plausible because it pools together many evidences acquired.

I don't want to come across as a smart-person, cause I'm not:lol:

[MorpheusSandman]

Of course the very notion of a "born artist" in any genre is naive... if not sophomoric... The idea that one might become "too learned"... "too well practiced" etc... is simply moronic... and in all likelihood based in a degree of envy... and/or laziness.Indeed. I can do little but: :iagree:

As another example, I always loved Mozart's quote on his art (considering Mozart is thought of by many as a "born composer," someone who "had it" since birth): "People are wrong who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I."


The idea of a "contemporary classic" or the "contemporary canon" is an oxymoron.What some call the "contemporary classic/canon" is what I call the "potential canon," simply works and artist that have the potential of one day being considered amongst the best.

[MorpheusSandman]

Top 10 Artist of the Rock era:

1. Beatles**
2. Dylan**
3. Presley*
4. Stones*
5. Hendrix
6. James Brown
7. Ray Charles
8. Bob Marley
9. Michael Jackson
10. Led ZeppelinCan't really disagree with this list in terms of historical influence/importance. I do hope Hendrix is remembered, as after Beatles and Dylan he's my favorite from the list.


Top Poets of all time:

1. Shakespeare
2. Dante
3. Chaucer
4. William Wordsworth
5. John Keats
6. T.S. Eliot
7. John Milton
8. William Blake
9. W.B. Yeats
10. ?Wordsworth, Keats, and Eliot before Milton? BLASPHEMY! Personally, I'd have Milton ahead of Dante and Chaucer, but he at least deserves to be in that quartet. Although, if we're including foreign writers, how does one not have Homer and Virgil in the Top 10?

[miyako73]

miyako73- born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

MorpheusSandman- So you get to arbitrarily decide based on subjective reaction of what is 'exciting' and 'boring' whether a poet was born or made? So, if I think your poetry is boring, then I get to call you a 'made poet'?

Well... actually it would seem that if her poetry is boring then we simply must assume that she's not a born poet... and as poetry is something either one was born with or not... then it seems obvious that she's simply not a born poet and thus never has the least chance of becoming a poet... regardless of effort, education, etc...

Of course the very notion of a "born artist" in any genre is naive... if not sophomoric. All art forms involve a language... and all languages must be learned. Certainly, studies of the human brain have proven that certain individuals are more predisposed toward rapidly mastering a given set of skills or knowledge than another... but to rise to the level of true mastery in any art form a degree of discipline... study and practice is involved.

The idea that one might become "too learned"... "too well practiced" etc... is simply moronic... and in all likelihood based in a degree of envy... and/or laziness. The idea that the well-informed or scholarly artist is more likely to follow some lock-step mentality while the intuitive "natural" artist is willing to break the rules is little more than Romantic claptrap... and surely not supported by the examples of cultural history. Was Cervantes illiterate? It seems to me that he was more than well versed in the traditional Romances that his novel parodied. Was Michelangelo just naturally talented? from what I recall, he had one of the most intense formal training and education possible.

Silas Thorne- MorpheusSandman is making a criticism of people that write poetry in a particular way, saying that they consider themselves 'geniuses,' by using Clive James' views on Ezra Pound.

More like I'm criticizing people that choose to dismiss/ignore the poetic tradition while (ironically) being allowed to do so because of that tradition... What I'm really criticizing is the anti-intellectual attitude (which I think is born out of xenophobia and laziness, more than anything) that poets are just these divinely inspired creatures that don't need to work at or learn their craft.

Exactly!

paradoxical- I didn't say the cannon was necessarily wrong, just too conservative and slow to acknowledge what is new... I stand by my statement that much of what is considered good poetry, or even great poetry is rather dull and tepid.

Canons have ALWAYS been slow, though. It's not as if those in the 17th Century considered Shakespeare as the greatest writer ever in the English language. He owes much of that reputation to the 19th Century and, especially, the German intellectuals. So criticizing the canon for being slow is bizarre to me, because all canons are formed via a "consensus" of what emerges out of criticism over a long period of time.

The notion of "the canon" or the "classics" is based upon something which has survived for a reasonable period of time and garnered the continued admiration or consensus of those who have invested the most into the study of a given art form. The idea of a "contemporary classic" or the "contemporary canon" is an oxymoron. This is not to say that none of the literature of here and now has any worth... nor that none of it will eventually rise to the status of a "classic"... but how is this process too conservative? Of what value is gushing over every best-seller and proclaiming equal to Shakespeare?

I think we need more poetry that disturbs people, that wakes people up.

Hey, I dig Burroughs, but it seems like what you're hankering for is some kind of sensationalist shock. It's been done and, quite frankly, I feel more "awakened" by Blake than I do by Bukowski (whom I don't like) or Burroughs (whom I do).

I quite agree.

That I am a poet is debatable; that I write what seem to me as poems is not. I have no education in writing poetry. I haven't attended any workshop. I used to do readings and slams. I don't know if they are counted as poetic education.

I also don't write at my whim. Without my mood, I can't think of apt words to use. Without my sensitivity, I am blind to the images in my head. Without my emotions, my metaphors are stale. My writing skill may not be natural or inborn, but my mood, sensitivity, and emotions are.

As I said, poetry is an acquired taste. In my case, I would rather read or listen to the works of that rapper named Tai Mahmud than waste my time on Dr. Maya Angelou's lecture notes she and her fans call poems.

[MorpheusSandman]

My writing skill may not be natural or inborn, but my mood, sensitivity, and emotions are. Everyone has inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions; not everyone can write like Milton, Keats, Heaney, etc.

[Silas Thorne]

I used to do readings and slams. I don't know if they are counted as poetic education.



Yes, why not? :) And when young, reading nursery rhymes, nonsense poems, Dr Seuss, well-written childrens' books that care about the weight of words, the joy of words, can all be part of a poetic education. Which is why I've have to now take the stand with those who believe that poets are made not born, but who use their own natural mood, sensitivity and emotions, as you have said that you do to produce their poetry. Parents can help to instill a love of language, but I think as to whether they will become poets or not depends on people's influences.

Although personally I value poetic form a great deal now, I think a problem can come with forcing form on language too much, which can interfere with our own natural poetry.

Maybe I've lost the logic of what I was writing about. If so, oh well. I'll find it later. :)

[miyako73]

Everyone has inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions; not everyone can write like Milton, Keats, Heaney, etc.
Can you fix your logic in this one?

[stuntpickle]

This thread has devolved into reciprocal back-patting and cliched thinking. I mean, consider for a moment that you're having a discussion about music, which includes mention of the Beatles, Michael Jackson and Nirvana, and another about literature, which includes mention of Shakespeare, Milton and Keats. The discussion about music largely concerns culturally relevant artists from the last fifty or so years, whereas the discussion of literature concerns relics as far back as antiquity (Virgil!). Has the disparity occurred to no one?

The distinction between the different varieties of education appropriate to artists and scholars is a well established convention. For instance, a musician attending Berklee, a top tier jazz conservatory, is generally considered a failure if he actually graduates since that means that he didn't get picked up by some pro group before then. Of course, a performing musician must "learn" things, but what he must learn and how he must learn it are entirely different from what someone studying to be an historian of music or a professor of theory must learn. Being able to articulate various theoretical justifications for this or that solo is absolutely irrelevant to the playing of one. Most often the performing musician is more concerned about developing chops and a good ear. J was absolutely correct when he talked about artists developing a "craft" as opposed to becoming scholars.

Writers too are interested in developing an ear. They are far more concerned with practical ability rather than theoretical understanding. Moreover, it is generally acknowledged that a preoccupation with literary theory, on the part of postmodern writers, has had a corrosive effect on the literature of the last fifty years.

You guys can keep patting one another on the back and reassuring each other how central this or that Elizabethan is to the Canon, but being conversant in Romantic verse and Structuralist inanities has little to do with being a writer in the 21st Century. Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course. But he has a more immediate need to be familiar with his immediate predecessors. He isn't concerned with an academic approach to the Canon, but rather his immediate cultural antecedents. And he's interested not in applying the mechanisms of critical evaluation, but in emulating the mechanisms of artistic generation, and these are not the same. One needn't know what a foil is to write one. The learning an artist does is more osmotic than analytic. And this is well understood among the initiated.

Sorry, there are "born" artists, which is not to say they fly out of the womb composing symphonies, but rather they are predisposed to certain endeavors. The hard-work canard just makes people feel better. The truth is that work is the easiest thing to do; all one has to do is DO IT. Being a great artist requires some amalgamation of mysterious abilities that we do not entirely understand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpSiohXCXMo

[Catamite]

Stuntpickle, I think you are right about developing an ear, but where that ear fo sound will be developed is surely in relation to one's enviroment, to common speech, to the music of poetry, not the writing of poetry itself. You mentioned jazz - Miles Davis said that his time at Juliard was invaluable because of his instruction in music theory. A poet must refine the methods for expression -which can come only from hard study of method and of poets themselves- for their own idiosyncracies in sound or form to be of any use. To be revlotuinary one must know what one is revolting against - not that should ever be the intention of a poet, for it is weak. In the end, all this talk of poetry that 'disturbs' is childish - doesn't Shakespeare disturb you? Dante? Spenser? If not you probrably aren't reading poetry very well.

[MorpheusSandman]

Can you fix your logic in this one?I don't see what needs fixing. Your own quote seems to violate your notion about poets being born and not made because, by your logic, everyone is born a poet because we all have inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions. Of course I'd agree that we're all born with those things, but then what allows some to become (insert great poet here) and others not to? Could it be that the (insert great poet here) is actually made because they learn how to write poetry, and how to transfer those inborn things into language and form and drama?


The discussion about music largely concerns culturally relevant artists from the last fifty or so years, whereas the discussion of literature concerns relics as far back as antiquity (Virgil!). Has the disparity occurred to no one?I know you're a fan of ignoring contexts, but if you had paid attention you would know that the disparity was recognized when it was introduced, and it was introduced because of that disparity.


J was absolutely correct when he talked about artists developing a "craft" as opposed to becoming scholars.Then, by extension, I was right about the same thing when I was discussing it back on Page 2 before J had ever posted. He was the one who equated "scholars" and "intellectuals" as opposed to poets "learning technique," which was all that had been discussed before he entered. I even noted this on page 3: "There's a disconnect between what was originally being said about artists studying their art, and them being academics."


it is generally acknowledged that a preoccupation with literary theory, on the part of postmodern writers, has had a corrosive effect on the literature of the last fifty years.Weasel words: "generally acknowledged" by whom? Why wasn't such a "preoccupation" corrosive to those who concerned themselves with theory BEFORE postmodernism?


Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course. But he has a more immediate need to be familiar with his immediate predecessors.... The learning an artist does is more osmotic than analytic.It's good we have you to try and contradict us by stating what we have already stated:

Me (on studying craft VS intellectuals/scholars, Pg. 3): "I would argue that Keats... clearly thought deeply about poetry, as even many of his comments and scribblings testified to... Really, that kind of "study" is all I meant by the term in the first place. Obviously being a great poet does not require one to be a scholar or academic."

Me (on reading predecessors, Pg. 2): "I certainly agree that new poets need to balance studying the distant masters as well as the more recent masters and their contemporaries. All three, I think are important for getting a grasp on where poetry came from, where it's recently been, and where it's at."

Me (on osmosis, Pg. 2): "Shakespeare might not have been a scholar, he was still clearly well-read and had an amazing ability to absorb, digest, and then represent almost everything (and everyone) experienced."


The truth is that work is the easiest thing to doAll the more reason to deride those that refuse to do it! :lol:

[miyako73]

"I don't see what needs fixing. Your own quote seems to violate your notion about poets being born and not made because, by your logic, everyone is born a poet because we all have inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions. Of course I'd agree that we're all born with those things, but then what allows some to become (insert great poet here) and others not to? Could it be that the (insert great poet here) is actually made because they learn how to write poetry, and how to transfer those inborn things into language and form and drama?"

Again, your reading is frustratingly flawed. I said (or wrote) "my mood", "my sensitivity", and "my emotions". No two individual personalities are the same. I write a certain way, I am not a Milton or a Heaney, and I will never become like them because they have their own unique moods, sensitivities, and emotions.

[MorpheusSandman]

"my mood", "my sensitivity", and "my emotions". No two individual personalities are the same. No two individual personalities are completely unalike, either, so I still don't get your point. Everyone has SOME moods, sensitivities, and emotions, and not everyone can write as well as everyone else. As someone in another thread said, people are pretty much people wherever you go. You can't chalk up their talent as being due to their "unique moods, sensitivities and emotions," in which case why can two writers express the same mood and emotion and one be better at it?

[miyako73]

No two individual personalities are completely unalike, either, so I still don't get your point. Everyone has SOME moods, sensitivities, and emotions, and not everyone can write as well as everyone else. As someone in another thread said, people are pretty much people wherever you go. You can't chalk up their talent as being due to their "unique moods, sensitivities and emotions," in which case why can two writers express the same mood and emotion and one be better at it?

One can have a mood to murder, the other, a mood to write. The problem with you is your assumption that all writers have the same mood, the same sensibility, and the same emotion, and if someone has those, he should be a writer. Also, you assume all moods, sensitivities, and emotions are the same. Damn! Just damn! Is this a first grade philosophical logic lost in the misreading of psychology 101?

[stuntpickle]

I know you're a fan of ignoring contexts, but if you had paid attention you would know that the disparity was recognized when it was introduced, and it was introduced because of that disparity.

I know the context: you weaseling out of everything you say. You use asinine terminology such as "innate intellectual" in order to obscure any sort of rational discussion so long as you can maintain the facade of being right. You might as well talk about "naturally manufactured" caves.

Because you seem deaf to any connotation, let me quickly explain that "intellect" and "intellectual" generally imply a rational or academic faculty, as opposed to an emotional or intuitive one, and that you would use that word to describe Keats is ridiculous. For Chrissake, you had someone for whom English is a second language trying to explain this to you.



Me (on studying craft VS intellectuals/scholars, Pg. 3): "I would argue that Keats... clearly thought deeply about poetry, as even many of his comments and scribblings testified to... Really, that kind of "study" is all I meant by the term in the first place. Obviously being a great poet does not require one to be a scholar or academic."

Me (on reading predecessors, Pg. 2): "I certainly agree that new poets need to balance studying the distant masters as well as the more recent masters and their contemporaries. All three, I think are important for getting a grasp on where poetry came from, where it's recently been, and where it's at."

Me (on osmosis, Pg. 2): "Shakespeare might not have been a scholar, he was still clearly well-read and had an amazing ability to absorb, digest, and then represent almost everything (and everyone) experienced."

Yeah, unfortunately, I read all your bogus posts wherein you desperately tried to backpedal to keep from looking absurd. Keats was no intellectual despite all your "research" on Wikipedia.




All the more reason to deride those that refuse to do it! :lol:

Look, I have an advanced degree in English literature that is absolutely worthless unless I want to teach overconfident dullards who go around quoting Pope as if it matters. Who is it that you think isn't doing this work? Which poet is it that a twenty-six year old writer of mediocre verse is entitled to deride?

That you think aspiring poets need to be told to read and work at their craft is ridiculous. But that's not really what you were saying. You seemed particularly concerned about who they're reading and how. And when someone suggested that your antediluvian study plan was unnecessary, you suggested that he was anti-intellectual.

One minute you're crying about how your presence here testifies to how much you have to learn, and the next you're making pronouncements on the Canon from atop your wobbly soapbox.

For the record, poets don't require a "balance" of antique and modern literature. They can do just fine with the modern stuff alone.

[JCamilo]

Then, by extension, I was right about the same thing when I was discussing it back on Page 2 before J had ever posted. He was the one who brought up "scholars" and "intellectuals" as opposed to poets "learning technique," which was all that had been discussed before he entered. I even noted this on page 3: "There's a disconnect between what was originally being said about artists studying their art, and them being an intellectual and/or academic."

Sorry, but words like anti-intellectual and intellect are there before I posted. Anyways, I told you we do not have much disagreement and I was not answering you, but rather someone else that mentions you (Pierre) and that come to a jump in space, equating domain of technique as fully understament, reading experience as fully understandment, etc.

Afterwards we developed this discussion with two pararel topics, because I found the use of the world intellectual (you just are in love with this word) confusing as Intellectual - even by the same wikipedia link who relate intellectual with analyct thinking and use of reason in the place of intuition and emotion that is represented by Keats or the word study, which you used in the place of Learning. It seemed to me you were claiming everytime a man thinks something, he does it in a specific way and everytime he learns he also did in a specific way. But as I said, I can see what you want to mean and there is no need for wasting time with vocabulary discussions, considering in the end we are not claiming poets are born writing poetry.

Also, it became an argument about Keats, which is topic related (as Keats composition method, ideas, etc. help it), but seems like we are the only two interessed and it can be left to a specific Keats topic.

Either way, I do think you are presenting with a very specific kind of poet (or artist) but our disagreements seems to be so small relating this thread that it is better we wait another oportunity to discuss it as we are not leaving the site so soon.



You guys can keep patting one another on the back and reassuring each other how central this or that Elizabethan is to the Canon, but being conversant in Romantic verse and Structuralist inanities has little to do with being a writer in the 21st Century. Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course. But he has a more immediate need to be familiar with his immediate predecessors. He isn't concerned with an academic approach to the Canon, but rather his immediate cultural antecedents. And he's interested not in applying the mechanisms of critical evaluation, but in emulating the mechanisms of artistic generation, and these are not the same. One needn't know what a foil is to write one. The learning an artist does is more osmotic than analytic. And this is well understood among the initiated.



Now that you talk, I seem to recall to read (I think in Guardian) about a research that showed today writers are making more references to writers from now than classic writers.

They do not present the full study, but first wondered if they considered how relevant is this reference and if they really analysed if past writers didnt the same (for example, Wordsworth and Byron influence on keats seems almost as notable as Spencer and Champman)... Popular poetry influence seems much closer, I have seen poets improvising on spot poems with classical structure which they learned listening to other poets and then trial and error.

[miyako73]

Some people in this forum have the annoying braggadocio of a latent megalomaniac. They create their own literary terms as if they have the authority, in skill and in scholarship, to do so. In truth, they actually build mirrors and smokes, so they can still project a semblance of what is true, valid, and correct. The fact is that they haven't written any poetry or prose that has moved me the way those of the canonical authors have. This is the danger in this forum. Due to cliquish patronizing and thoughtless appreciation of mediocrity, the mediocre think they are superior. What a farce!

[stuntpickle]

Stuntpickle, I think you are right about developing an ear, but where that ear fo sound will be developed is surely in relation to one's enviroment, to common speech, to the music of poetry, not the writing of poetry itself. You mentioned jazz - Miles Davis said that his time at Juliard was invaluable because of his instruction in music theory. A poet must refine the methods for expression -which can come only from hard study of method and of poets themselves- for their own idiosyncracies in sound or form to be of any use. To be revlotuinary one must know what one is revolting against - not that should ever be the intention of a poet, for it is weak. In the end, all this talk of poetry that 'disturbs' is childish - doesn't Shakespeare disturb you? Dante? Spenser? If not you probrably aren't reading poetry very well.

This is addressed to me, so I will assume you're speaking to me. Having said that, I don't recall ever having discussed "disturbing poetry". But now that you bring it up, I would say that someone should read "disturbing" poetry if that's what he wants to read. Moreover, I would say it is childish to pretend to instruct him on what he should read instead. I take it for granted that what someone likes is automatic and not susceptible to change by way of lecture.

I'll resort again to the beer analogy. There's nothing wrong with drinking an American lager even though some idiot demands you drink Guinness under the pretense that it is "better". In fact, I find drinking a beer one likes far more respectable than drinking one simply because other people like it. Of course, some people do actually like dark beers, but they generally don't give a **** what anyone else is drinking. The people who concern themselves with what other people are drinking/reading/watching are called "snobs".

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

You guys can keep patting one another on the back and reassuring each other how central this or that Elizabethan is to the Canon, but being conversant in Romantic verse and Structuralist inanities has little to do with being a writer in the 21st Century. Should a writer be familiar with his predecessors? Of course.
This is (and the rest of your post, except the little rant about us discussions music, which was a sidetrack discussion in the first place) pretty much what a lot of us have been saying.

And what "back-patting"?


One can have a mood to murder, the other, a mood to write. The problem with you is your assumption that all writers have the same mood, the same sensibility, and the same emotion, and if someone has those, he should be a writer. Also, you assume all moods, sensitivities, and emotions are the same. Damn! Just damn! Is this a first grade philosophical logic lost in the misreading of psychology 101?
He didn't say any of that.

I like when someone gets so caught up in showing up another person because they don't like them that they'll go to such great lengths to purposefully obfuscate their points in an attempt to make them look stupid. It's quite amusing.

Some people in this forum have the annoying braggadocio of a latent megalomaniac. They create their own literary terms as if they have the authority, in skill and in scholarship, to do so. In truth, they actually build mirrors and smokes, so they can still project a semblance of what is true, valid, and correct. The fact is that they haven't written any poetry or prose that has moved me the way those of the canonical authors have. This is the danger in this forum. Due to cliquish patronizing and thoughtless appreciation of mediocrity, the mediocre think they are superior. What a farce!
I thought you didn't like canonical authors. . . that they didn't **** you awake, or whatever that dumb saying was.

[miyako73]

Mutatis, read what he wrote:

"Everyone has inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions; not everyone can write like Milton, Keats, Heaney, etc."

Who told you I don't like canonical authors? I don't like all of them. Auden's queer works excited me as if it was a woman who wrote them. I've been reading canonical texts since I was a kid. My reading is separate from my writing.

[stuntpickle]

Popular poetry influence seems much closer, I have seen poets improvising on spot poems with classical structure which they learned listening to other poets and then trial and error.

Yes, this is much like what occurs at "jam sessions". You get all the historical context second or third-hand. Culture is a synthesizing machine that keeps building on itself. There's no reason one HAS to go back and start at the beginning.

The irony, of course, that I'm sure you, of all people, are aware of, is that I greatly appreciate Shakespeare and the English Romantics. I think reading Shakespeare can be aesthetically rewarding and that the Canon is pedagogically useful, but not for any PRACTICAL reason. "All art is useless," etc. I don't think close reading of Shakespeare is necessary to be a good poet. I can't even imagine how someone would think it was.


This is (and the rest of your post, except the little rant about us discussions music, which was a sidetrack discussion in the first place) pretty much what a lot of us have been saying.

And what "back-patting"?


It's unfortunate that you cut the quote off where you did since the following sentence expresses something very different from what everyone else has been saying. My point was that, yes, artists should acquaint themselves with their predecessors, but they should acquaint themselves with more culturally relevant predecessors. You know, someone who has lived in the last century--sort of like how you guys relate to music. I wasn't ranting about the music. I think everyone's statements here about music are more honest than their statements about literature, which I find to be largely affected.

And by "back-patting" I meant giving each other pats on the back.

[My2cents]

considering in the end we are not claiming poets are born writing poetry.

I change my mind; poets are made...still art can't be taught. You can be guided in the right direction but what does that mean ultimately? That you understand the value of taking directions? Which in turn would mean that you're just one of the guys, a normal fella like everyone else. Nothing wrong with that. But that's not art. That's being a normal guy, well respected, humble--being someone no one could possibly hate. It's what 99% of humanity aspires to.

[miyako73]

"For Chrissake, you had someone for whom English is a second language trying to explain this to you."

I hope there is no condescension in that, Stunt. English may be my second language, but I like to think my thoughts are not second-rate; thus, I should speak.

[stuntpickle]

"For Chrissake, you had someone for whom English is a second language trying to explain this to you."

I hope there is no condescension in that, Stunt. English may be my second language, but I like to think my thoughts are not second-rate; thus, I should speak.

Uhm... I didn't know English was your second language. I was talking about J. I just thought it was telling that someone whose native language is Spanish was informing a native English speaker about the appropriate meaning of a word in English. Of course, I suspect that Morph knew what it meant. I just think his whole "innate intellectual" was a retrospective rationalization he used to attempt an escape from his initial use of "anti-intellectual".

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

It's unfortunate that you cut the quote off where you did since the very following sentence expresses something very different from what everyone else has been saying. My point was that, yes, artists should acquaint themselves with their predecessors, but they should acquaint themselves with more culturally relevant predecessors. You know, someone who has lived in the last century--sort of like how you guys relate to music. I wasn't ranting about the music. I think everyone's statements here about music are more honest than their statements about literature, which I find to be largely affected.
Yeats, Eliot, Neruda, Auden (all of which mentioned by your pal Moprheus, no less), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Bukowski is mentioned who knows how many times, Tennyson, Maya Angelou, Morgenstern, Olson, Vallejo, Carson, and, well, I quit scanning posts after page four. All of those authors have been mentioned, most in the sense that they should be admired, studied, or are part of the canon.


And by "back-patting" I meant giving each other pats on the back.
I meant examples, as you know.

[miyako73]

Okay, Stunt, I got it. Thanks.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Mutatis, read what he wrote:

"Everyone has inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions; not everyone can write like Milton, Keats, Heaney, etc."

He also wrote this. He obviously doesn't think everyone has the same emotions:


No two individual personalities are completely unalike, either, so I still don't get your point. Everyone has SOME moods, sensitivities, and emotions, and not everyone can write as well as everyone else. As someone in another thread said, people are pretty much people wherever you go. You can't chalk up their talent as being due to their "unique moods, sensitivities and emotions," in which case why can two writers express the same mood and emotion and one be better at it?
He's emphasizing that we all feel emotions, many times the same emotions (emotions like love, anger, hate are not unique) nothing more. He is saying that if everyone feels emotion, there must be more that goes into writing poetry than feeling emotion. That's all his point was. It was obvious.

[stuntpickle]

but what does that mean ultimately? That you understand the value of taking directions? Which in turn would mean that you're just one of the guys, a normal fella like everyone else. Nothing wrong with that. But that's not art. That's being a normal guy, well respected, humble--being someone no one could possibly hate. It's what 99% of humanity aspires to.

Amen.

People in the present often judge people from the past poorly. They marvel at how uniformly idiotic past persons seem. How could everyone be so stupid, so myopic, so oblivious, so agreeably monstrous? they ask. Yet it never occurs to them how uniformly well they get along with everyone in their own time.

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

--Jonathan Swift

[Delta40]

I get the impression that literary theory is a world apart from those that write poetry. How one applies literary theory in any meaningful way is the full responsibility of the person waving the flashy piece of paper around an online forum. One would certainly hope that all that theory actually gets proactively applied, to enrich the lives of others and doesn't become a pissing contest between like minds or used against those who chose a different path.

[miyako73]

He also wrote this. He obviously doesn't think everyone has the same emotions:


He's emphasizing that we all feel emotions, many times the same emotions (emotions like love, anger, hate are not unique) nothing more. He is saying that if everyone feels emotion, there must be more that goes into writing poetry than feeling emotion. That's all his point was. It was obvious.

And you think he is right? Emotion is a broad whole that you cannot dissect into specific parts. Maybe you hate something I love and vice versa, do you think it's the same kind of hate? C'mon, neuroscientists have been telling us that personality like emotion is a web of interconnections, and that makes every human being unique.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

And you think he is right? Emotion is a broad whole that you cannot dissect into specific parts. Maybe you hate something I love and vice versa, do you think it's the same kind of hate? C'mon, neuroscientists have been telling us that personality like emotion is a web of interconnections.

I think he is right in his position that emotion isn't, nor can be, the only factor that creates good poetry.

I get the impression that literary theory is a world apart from those that write poetry. How one applies literary theory in any meaningful way is the full responsibility of the person waving the flashy piece of paper around an online forum. One would certainly hope that all that theory actually gets proactively applied, to enrich the lives of others and doesn't become a pissing contest between like minds or used against those who chose a different path.

So learning for learning's sake isn't enough of a reason to learn?

[Delta40]

So learning for learning's sake isn't enough of a reason to learn?

That isn't what I said Mutatis but you're welcome to apply whatever meaning you like to comments I make.

[miyako73]

Mutatis, I give up... to your control. I'm weak. hehehe

[ShadowsCool]

Does any of it matter, for Christ sake! Whether you're made or born with a poet's halo over your head. Does it really matter? I like some poetry that people think is crap. And I like some music that people think is crap. So what? I also hate some poetry that people think is brilliant. Same goes for music. So what? Let the world argue over the merits of the canon. As for I, I'm just gonna kick back and enjoy what I like.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

That isn't what I said Mutatis but you're welcome to apply whatever meaning you like to comments I make.
I can only comment on meanings I perceive from posts; if I perceived wrong, I'm sorry--it's not the first time I have, nor will it be the last. You seemed to give the impression that anyone studying literary theory should be using that knowledge for something ("One would certainly hope that all that theory actually gets proactively applied, to enrich the lives of others").

Mutatis, I give up... to your control. I'm weak. hehehe
YES! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dJolYw8tnk)

[The Artist]

Yeah, so I'm not sure if this topic itself is still open for unbiased discussion, but I'd like to contribute.

So, the questions are poets born, not made?

Well, I would say there are many ways to approach this. I've been writing for a majority of my high school life. If you skip forward two years(that being six years in total), I can safely say that poets are both born and made. It just depends on who you ask and what you personally believe. The way I look at it is simply, that if you have the heart and passion, you can become a poet. There isn't any detour around the matter. It simply relies on the heart and passion. I know we can all agree to this, no?

[ShadowsCool]

Yeah, so I'm not sure if this topic itself is still open for unbiased discussion, but I'd like to contribute.

So, the questions are poets born, not made?

Well, I would say there are many ways to approach this. I've been writing for a majority of my high school life. If you skip forward two years(that being six years in total), I can safely say that poets are both born and made. It just depends on who you ask and what you personally believe. The way I look at it is simply, that if you have the heart and passion, you can become a poet. There isn't any detour around the matter. It simply relies on the heart and passion. I know we can all agree to this, no?

Welcome aboard Artist! And welcome to the fire!

[stuntpickle]

I get the impression that literary theory is a world apart from those that write poetry. How one applies literary theory in any meaningful way is the full responsibility of the person waving the flashy piece of paper around an online forum. One would certainly hope that all that theory actually gets proactively applied, to enrich the lives of others and doesn't become a pissing contest between like minds or used against those who chose a different path.

If you think literary theory and writing are that different, it could only be because you're paying attention. For 2,000 years literary theory was aesthetic theory, largely concerned with the agreement of constituent parts in the service of beauty. Then English professors got jealous of all the philosophers and scientists, with all their jargon and obese ideas, so the English professors just started aping them until everyone forgot why they were there in the first place.

Screw Shakespeare; let's read Derrida!

[miyako73]

Derrida, Foucault, Baudelaire, Deleuze, Guatari, and Lyotard once ruined my passionate attempt in creative nonfiction. Since then, I have not regained my lost voice back. Deleuze and Guatari's rhizomatic scheme left me scattered- my thoughts and how my brain works. The rabid postmodernist among them pushed me to victimhood. They shattered me emotionally. There are moments now when everything to me is a purgatory of limbo, dilemma, and grey.

[stuntpickle]

Yeats, Eliot, Neruda, Auden (all of which mentioned by your pal Moprheus, no less), Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Bukowski is mentioned who knows how many times, Tennyson, Maya Angelou, Morgenstern, Olson, Vallejo, Carson, and, well, I quit scanning posts after page four. All of those authors have been mentioned, most in the sense that they should be admired, studied, or are part of the canon.

Not so great a list there to argue the point. Tennyson? Are you serious? He died in the 19th Century. Yeats wrote most of his stuff before 1930. Of course, one person brought up Bukowski and Angelou, but then everyone else made a point to say they were both awful. It is true that there are some relatively recent poets in your list, but that doesn't change the fact that the GENERAL conversation concerned whether one should read so-called Canonical poets in order to write. The exceptions do not make the rule.

This reminds me of another discussion I had on this forum with one of these self-assured "experts" on the topic of Fitzgerald. This person demanded to know who Fitzgerald had influenced, and I said Charles Bock, who had just written a literary novel that had gone mainstream and was sort of the talk of the town. The person who had asked the question started to make fun of Bock because this person had never heard of him, as though that were the primary mechanism to determine the value of a writer.

What I thought odd then and now was that both that person and many others in the thread seem entirely disconnected from modern literature and modern writers simply because it's easier to look cultured or smart by sticking to the Canon. I think it's an abortion of taste to merely inherit the tastes of the establishment--not to mention liking the Canon uniformly so that one need never actually think about what one really likes. It's much easier to quote Pope and tell people to read Shakespeare--neither of which are all that helpful if the topic is modern poetry.



I meant examples, as you know.

I did not know, and still, I find it hard to believe that you missed the person listing the names and finest attributes of those he agreed with. And this was followed up immediately by another declaring that the original poster's name should be added to the fine list of respectable personages. Then another.... It's just typical herd behavior. "We're on the same team. I like you; let's stick together!"

[Silas Thorne]

Derrida, Foucault, Baudelaire, Deleuze, Guatari, and Lyotard once ruined my passionate attempt in creative nonfiction. Since then, I have not regained my lost voice back. Deleuze and Guatari's rhizomatic scheme left me scattered- my thoughts and how my brain works. The rabid postmodernist among them pushed me to victimhood. They shattered me emotionally. There are moments now when everything to me is a purgatory of limbo, dilemma, and grey.

Personally, I try to stay away from the Postmodernists as much as possible. I don't think knowing about their ideas will help me create. I believe thinking too much about this kind of literary theory blocks creativity, for me anyway.

Actually I was at a conference once, listening to a particular talk and was so bored I wrote down some key phrases from the talk and made them into a 'poem' (read 'monotonous drivel'). It sounded like a monk's chant to me so I lengthened some syllables:

' ......The agency in the power dynamic
serves, separating the sacred
and the everyday spaces,
creating meaning within the tactics
of association and negoti-a-tion,
transgressing and resisting
established norms against the patriarchal
male hie-ra-chy,
negotiating the power relations
in the force of an authoritarian force,
calling into question
the established dis-course. '

Direct quotes. Repeat until numb.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Not so great a list there to argue the point. Tennyson? Are you serious? He died in the 19th Century. Yeats wrote most of his stuff before 1930. Of course, one person brought up Bukowski and Angelou, but then everyone else made a point to say they were both awful. It is true that there are some relatively recent poets in your list, but that doesn't change the fact that the GENERAL conversation concerned whether one should read so-called Canonical poets in order to write. The exceptions do not make the rule.
Right, and it could easily be argued that all of those I listed are canonical poets.

And, yeah, I screwed up on Tennyson, I'm so, so sorry.



What I thought odd then and now was that both that person and many others in the thread seem entirely disconnected from modern literature and modern writers simply because it's easier to look cultured or smart by sticking to the Canon. I think it's an abortion of taste to merely inherit the tastes of the establishment--not to mention liking the Canon uniformly so that one need never actually think about what one really likes. It's much easier to quote Pope and tell people to read Shakespeare--neither of which are all that helpful if the topic is modern poetry.

Was that the topic? I must have missed that post.

What I think odd is your inability to think that people may actually enjoy canonical authors.

Actually I was at a conference once, listening to a particular talk and was so bored I wrote down some key phrases from the talk and made them into a 'poem' (read 'monotonous drivel'). It sounded like a monk's chant to me so I lengthened some syllables:

' ......The agency in the power dynamic
serves, separating the sacred
and the everyday spaces,
creating meaning within the tactics
of association and negoti-a-tion,
transgressing and resisting
established norms against the patriarchal
male hie-ra-chy,
negotiating the power relations
in the force of an authoritarian force,
calling into question
the established dis-course. '

Direct quotes. Repeat until numb.
:lol: I did that with a professor once.

If you think literary theory and writing are that different, it could only be because you're paying attention. For 2,000 years literary theory was aesthetic theory, largely concerned with the agreement of constituent parts in the service of beauty. Then English professors got jealous of all the philosophers and scientists, with all their jargon and obese ideas, so the English professors just started aping them until everyone forgot why they were there in the first place.

Screw Shakespeare; let's read Derrida!
:rolleyes:

[stlukesguild]

If you think literary theory and writing are that different, it could only be because you're paying attention. For 2,000 years literary theory was aesthetic theory, largely concerned with the agreement of constituent parts in the service of beauty. Then English professors got jealous of all the philosophers and scientists, with all their jargon and obese ideas, so the English professors just started aping them until everyone forgot why they were there in the first place.

Screw Shakespeare; let's read Derrida!

OK... I pretty much agree with this.

For the record, poets don't require a "balance" of antique and modern literature. They can do just fine with the modern stuff alone.

This I question. Now granted... I'm not a poet, and whatever efforts I made at poetry over the years are admittedly bad to an embarrassing degree. Yet coming to this debate from the point of view of a visual artist I must say that I know of very few artists of any real merit who do not look to the "old masters" as well as to their immediate predecessors. Certainly they need not be aware of the masters of the past to the same extent as an academic... an art historian. They probably won't know of Rosso Fiorentinio or Il Sodoma... but quite often their work is just as much inspired by the art of the long-past as it is by the art of their immediate predecessors... or even the popular culture of today. Surely anyone having done a little study of poetry can show how any number of major poets were profoundly inspired by poets/writers well before their time.

[Pierre Menard]

What I thought odd then and now was that both that person and many others in the thread seem entirely disconnected from modern literature and modern writers simply because it's easier to look cultured or smart by sticking to the Canon. I think it's an abortion of taste to merely inherit the tastes of the establishment--not to mention liking the Canon uniformly so that one need never actually think about what one really likes. It's much easier to quote Pope and tell people to read Shakespeare--neither of which are all that helpful if the topic is modern poetry.



The 'people only like the canon so they can looked cultured' nonsense is really starting to get tiresome. Could it be that these writers are considered part of the canon because they are actually that good and that there may be reasons why they're considered good? And those reasons are why people might actually enjoy those writers...because there are qualities to enjoy.

For what it's worth, I've seen a number of posters on this thread talk about modern writers they like in other threads. I mean, in the topic 'favourite literary era', a large number chose the 20th century.

Your entire post is based on generalisation and assumption.

"Oh, those people have inherited those tastes, they're just trying to look smart by ignoring modern writers."

[shortstoryfan]

If you think literary theory and writing are that different, it could only be because you're paying attention. For 2,000 years literary theory was aesthetic theory, largely concerned with the agreement of constituent parts in the service of beauty. Then English professors got jealous of all the philosophers and scientists, with all their jargon and obese ideas, so the English professors just started aping them until everyone forgot why they were there in the first place.

Screw Shakespeare; let's read Derrida!

Indeed! Though, I do enjoy Shakespeare....

[stuntpickle]

The 'people only like the canon so they can looked cultured' nonsense is really starting to get tiresome. Could it be that these writers are considered part of the canon because they are actually that good and that there may be reasons why they're considered good? And those reasons are why people might actually enjoy those writers...because there are qualities to enjoy.

For what it's worth, I've seen a number of posters on this thread talk about modern writers they like in other threads. I mean, in the topic 'favourite literary era', a large number chose the 20th century.

Your entire post is based on generalisation and assumption.

"Oh, those people have inherited those tastes, they're just trying to look smart by ignoring modern writers."

"Tiresome" is right. I wrote my master's thesis on Coleridge's ironic notion of an insufficient poetic language, and it's a bit tiresome to listen to all the teenyboppers and young adults instruct me in the importance of the Canon (with an emphasis on the English Romantics). I say this not to brag, as the paper was tedious and unimportant as all theses are, but I certainly don't need to be instructed in the importance of such things.

Of course, the writers of the Canon are good... Duh! I'm certain the same could be said of an early cinema auteur, but I don't think such persons are so absurdly esteemed to the exclusion of more relevant ones by modern filmmakers.

It's such a bore to listen to mediocrities equivocate about what "born poet" and "intellectual" might mean since no one intends, by "born poet", someone who comes out of the womb reciting heroic couplets or, by "intellectual", someone with innate capacities for expression. Nor does a statement suggesting that reading Canonical literature isn't a necessary prerequisite for poetic technique mean anything like "Canonical poets are bad." So perhaps when you get done with all the pseudo-intellectual equivocations, you could actually join me in a real conversation.

You know, if someone wants to restrict his reading to the Canon, fine. I don't give a damn, but when someone starts quoting Pope as if he were directly relevant to modern poetic technique and admonishing others for not approaching the Canon in the conventional manner of a matriculating undergrad, then I will certainly point out the idiocy of it--even if the person(s) in question refuses to listen.

If my posts consist of generalizations and assumptions, then yours consist of fallacious misrepresentations and faulty reasoning, which is symptomatic of someone who has learned not to think for himself, but reiterate all the prevailing liberal arts platitudes.

[miyako73]

My God, Stunt, you still have the energy to engage with people who argue for argument's sake. Misreading, it seems, is the worst in this forum.

[MorpheusSandman]

The problem with you is your assumption that all writers have the same mood, the same sensibility, and the same emotion, and if someone has those, he should be a writer. Also, you assume all moods, sensitivities, and emotions are the same.How is it possible that you can write this crap and accuse ME of misreading people's posts and poetry? Really, where in the world did I ever say ANY of this?

It seems that you're the one incapable of distinguishing any middle ground between "everyone feels the same emotions/moods" and "everyone feels entirely unique emotions/moods". Would you really deny that everyone experiences a lot of the same emotions, but perhaps in slightly different ways? That two people can experience love, but that perhaps those two experience it slightly differently? Tons of writers have written about falling in love, but do you want to claim that what separates good love poetry from bad love poetry is the uniqueness of those poets feelings of love? So Shakespeare and Donne (eg) wrote great love poetry because they experienced love in totally unique ways from everyone else?


I know the context: you weaseling out of everything you say.You know the context... yet you accuse me of comparing modern music to canonical poetry when I wasn't the one that brought it up? The very first post that mentioned the musical canon as an example was stlukes (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1142895&postcount=114), and he was replying to a poster that had said they'd take certain modern poets over the canonical poets, and stlukes brought up Pink Floyd and Aerosmith by saying most would take them over Bach and Mozart. So, if you really understood the context, you would see that the disparity between modern poetry and the poetry canon was being compared to modern music and the musical canon.

But, of course you read all this, which is why you're blaming me for bringing it up and think that the discussion was all about classic poets and modern music. Sure.


"intellect" and "intellectual" generally imply a rational or academic faculty, as opposed to an emotional or intuitive one, and that you would use that word to describe Keats is ridiculous.Keats' aesthetic theories have been as influential and widely discussed as any intellectual aesthetic theories of the 19th century. They are CLEARLY intellectual concepts. That you're trying to make some discrete split between intuition and intellect is a bit strange... Keats intuits that there's something powerful about Shakespeare's plays, and reasons about it enough to come to the conclusion that it was his ability to not have to know everything about his writing, and he reasons that this is what separates him from someone like Coleridge that has to theorize everything. So what, pray tell, about that theory is not intellectual?

Really, though, and this is a question I asked back when that discussion started: why do we have the term "intellectual" if it's just synonymous with academic and scholar? Because if all intellectuals are academics and scholars, the word intellectual would be redundant. I argued that intellectual should be the middle ground between just average/everyday thinking and academics and scholars, describing those people that think a great deal about intellectual matters, like aesthetics, but do so in a completely informal manner, and that description fits Keats perfectly.


Yeah, unfortunately, I read all your bogus posts...Even the "bogus" ones where you stated the same things I had stated several pages back while pretending that you were stating something new that hadn't already been stated? You want to cut off your nose to spite your face here?


Who is it that you think isn't doing this work? Someone like miyako who thinks that all a poet needs is their moods, emotions, and sensibilities.


That you think aspiring poets need to be told to read and work at their craft is ridiculous. But that's not really what you were saying.It wasn't? Here was my first post:
"I still think Pope had it right when he said: "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, / As those move easiest who have learned to dance" A while back there was an author on The Colbert Report who was promoting a book about creativity in humans, and he gave a surprising statistic that in kindergarten over 95% of kids will say they're creative, while in high school that number drops to below 50%. So I don't think people are born being more creative at all, I simply think some choose to cultivate that universal creativity that all of us possess and some don't, and somewhere along the line people forget they ever had that creativity in them at all.

As for the whole "technique VS creativity, intuition VS intellect" debate, I always thought it was a false dichotomy. When we look at the greats in all mediums, the most creative were frequently the most technically accomplished, and this is hardly limited to literature. Although I do agree that the entire point of learning technique is to be able to forget it. It's like learning all of the minute techniques of a jump shot so that in a game you can do it automatically without thinking. Art is the same way. You consciously learn technique so that it's always there when you need it. There's a lot of mediocre art made where technique was never learned and ignored, as well as where technique becomes the sole focus. It can't be to either extreme. The technique needs to be there, but in the service of intuitive creativity. "

Now, would you mind please pointing out where I was "particularly concerned about who (poets are) reading and how"? Because, I don't see anything there about me saying poets must read the canon, I'm saying they need to work at their craft. Here was my second semi-lengthy post:


"It seems to me that there's a lot of the anti-intellectual approach to art and creativity around today, even on these forums, but I ask those that promote this view: what great artists they can name that became great through nothing but natural talent and with no learning and no hard work? If you rattle off any list of the great poets--Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Chaucer, Yeats, Eliot, Keats, Blake, Wordsworth, Neruda, Hill, Auden--none of them were dummies that wrote their masterpieces by never learning about the art and craft of poetry. I simply don't think it is possible to ever be great, perhaps even good, without spending a significant time learning the craft that you intend to practice. As the saying goes, art is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration."

Now, what there is me being "particularly concerned about who (poets are) reading and how"? What I see is me arguing that the great poets of the past put work into learning their craft. In fact, the first post I made on that subject at all was in response to shortstoryfan talking about poetry being a response to other poetry. In fact, the first real post that started the discussion on who SHOULD be read wasn't mine, but stlukes. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1141988&postcount=36)

So, would you mind not accusing me of things I haven't done? My posts from the beginning have been about poets learning the craft, and later posts developed into saying that it was good for poets to read and study their early predecessors, recent predecessors, and contemporaries. It was OTHERS who brought up the discussion about who should and shouldn't be read, about the canon VS contemporary poetry. I was promoting contemporary poetry as far back as page 2 where I mentioned Geoffrey Hill, and page 4 where I mentioned Larkin, Ashbery, Merrill, Neruda, Lowell, etc. Are they recent enough for you?

[stuntpickle]

You know the context... yet you accuse me of comparing modern music to canonical poetry

I wonder whether the problem is that you don't read or can't. I never accused you or anyone else of "comparing" poetry to music. I pointed out what I thought seemed to be a disparity between the two discussions, in which people seemed enthused about recent popular music, on the one hand, and fairly dated Canonical literature, on the other. It seemed to me wonderfully emblematic of the point I was trying to make.



That you're trying to make some discrete split between intuition and intellect is a bit strange

You can't be this clueless! I am not making a distinction at all, the language is! The distinction is friggin conventional. Just now, I typed in on Google "intellect vs...." and Goggle filled in "emotion" as the first option and "intuition" as the second one. It's not simply a connotation either, but one of the primary denotative meanings. From Merriam Webster:

intellectual

developed or chiefly guided by the intellect rather than by emotion or experience : rational


why do we have the term "intellectual" if it's just synonymous with academic and scholar? Because if all intellectuals are academics and scholars, the word intellectual would be redundant.

Are you kidding me? Why do we have the word intellectual in addition to scholar? Because intellectual is used specifically to contrast with emotional and intuitive and "scholar" isn't. This conversation is such a joke. Kids in junior high know this stuff.


Even the "bogus" ones where you stated the same things I had stated several pages back while pretending that you were stating something new that hadn't already been stated?

I concede entirely that you have said similar things to what I've said. But I also recognize that they have been in service of your obfuscation. This whole ridiculous discussion of intellectual is the vestigial reminder of what you meant. The only reason you're trying to pervert the language is so that you don't look as ignorant as you did initially.



Someone like miyako who thinks that all a poet needs is their moods, emotions, and sensibilities.

I've seen miyako posting a number of published poems and essays on this forum (for instance, one by Lorca). I take it for granted that she is reading them before doing this.


As for the whole "technique VS creativity, intuition VS intellect" debate,

So now you're acknowledging the convention of intuition vs intellect? Well, then why are you, elsewhere, pretending otherwise. FYI, it isn't a "debate"; it's a well established convention.


"It seems to me that there's a lot of the anti-intellectual approach to art and creativity around today, even on these forums, but I ask those that promote this view: what great artists they can name that became great through nothing but natural talent and with no learning and no hard work?

You see, here's another convention that you seem to be ignorant of. "Learning" is often contrasted with "practical experience", and it seems you're trying to conflate the two. Doing such is an error.

You know, this conversation would have been over had you simply admitted the error, but, no, you will defend it to the death. I can't believe that anyone buys your whole "innate intellectual" obfuscation. The understanding is so basic.

Morpheus,

I've just reread the thread, and I've come to a realization, one that J apparently came to much earlier than I. You see, this entire discussion owes to that you don't understand the word "intellectual". I say this not to berate you or make fun of you, but simply to address the crux of the issue. Let me say I'm sorry since I could have, had I been a bit more reasonable about it, noticed it earlier. You see, I thought you were saying one thing, and then trying to cover it up with a deceptive use of "intellectual", but now that I've looked at the thread again the issue seems to be that you're just unacquainted with how the word is used in this context.

You see, the conversation we're having is older than any of us, and historically the divisions have been drawn along the lines of intellect vs intuition and formal education vs practical experience. When you started using the words "anti-intellectual" and "intellectual", you were raising a recognizable battle standard, and I simply don't think you knew this. As it transpired, J realized this error long before I did. And, of course, he's more charitable than I. So he's just willing to let it go.

To be honest, I'm not particularly interested in arguing over it anymore simply because I think you're confused. When one uses "intellect" and "education" as the justification for artistic skill, typically one does so in contrast to "intuition" and "experience". Eliot, for instance, is someone typically considered to be representative of the intellectual side of the coin. Keats and Shakespeare, however, are typically thought to represent the other side. I thought your misunderstanding of the issue was an instance of deception, but now that I've looked over it again, I think it's simply one of ignorance.

In short, I think this conversation has been entirely pointless. It's just an error. It happens to everyone. If you'd just admit the error, it would be no big deal.

[stlukesguild]

My God, Stunt, you still have the energy to engage with people who argue for argument's sake. Misreading, it seems, is the worst in this forum.

Some people in this forum have the annoying braggadocio of a latent megalomaniac. They create their own literary terms as if they have the authority, in skill and in scholarship, to do so. In truth, they actually build mirrors and smokes, so they can still project a semblance of what is true, valid, and correct. The fact is that they haven't written any poetry or prose that has moved me the way those of the canonical authors have. This is the danger in this forum. Due to cliquish patronizing and thoughtless appreciation of mediocrity, the mediocre think they are superior. What a farce!

The image of a mirror is surely apt. :rolleyes5:

[miyako73]

My God, Stunt, you still have the energy to engage with people who argue for argument's sake. Misreading, it seems, is the worst in this forum.

Some people in this forum have the annoying braggadocio of a latent megalomaniac. They create their own literary terms as if they have the authority, in skill and in scholarship, to do so. In truth, they actually build mirrors and smokes, so they can still project a semblance of what is true, valid, and correct. The fact is that they haven't written any poetry or prose that has moved me the way those of the canonical authors have. This is the danger in this forum. Due to cliquish patronizing and thoughtless appreciation of mediocrity, the mediocre think they are superior. What a farce!

The image of a mirror is surely apt. :rolleyes5:

Indeed you would know.

Originally Posted by miyako73
The problem with you is your assumption that all writers have the same mood, the same sensibility, and the same emotion, and if someone has those, he should be a writer. Also, you assume all moods, sensitivities, and emotions are the same.
How is it possible that you can write this crap and accuse ME of misreading people's posts and poetry? Really, where in the world did I ever say ANY of this?

It seems that you're the one incapable of distinguishing any middle ground between "everyone feels the same emotions/moods" and "everyone feels entirely unique emotions/moods". Would you really deny that everyone experiences a lot of the same emotions, but perhaps in slightly different ways? That two people can experience love, but that perhaps those two experience it slightly differently? Tons of writers have written about falling in love, but do you want to claim that what separates good love poetry from bad love poetry is the uniqueness of those poets feelings of love? So Shakespeare and Donne (eg) wrote great love poetry because they experienced love in totally unique ways from everyone else?

Weren't you the one who generalized "my" into "everyone"? Reread your responses.

Put this in your head: what makes me unique is the totality of my emotions or personality which is unique and mine alone. You cannot select parts of the two wholes then compare. My fantasy affects my emotional capability to love. Maybe my being an emo is the root of my fantasy. I act out my love through my being an emo. Can't you see the web of interconnections? You can add biochemistry, cognition, social response, culture into that web. The result is a web of endless permutations. So you cannot really say two personalities or emotions can be the same. Find a psychologist who does not say that every personality or emotion is unique, then I'll shut up.

[stlukesguild]

Indeed you would know.

Talk about mediocrity... one might as well be back exchanging insults on the playground in middle-school.

[miyako73]

Well, you started it like a middle schooler would. Could you really expect a professional response?

[MorpheusSandman]

I pointed out what I thought seemed to be a disparity between the two discussions, in which people seemed enthused about recent popular music, on the one hand, and fairly dated Canonical literature, on the other.Amazing you said nothing about this level of enthusiasm in your post. All you said was: "The discussion about music largely concerns culturally relevant artists from the last fifty or so years, whereas the discussion of literature concerns relics as far back as antiquity (Virgil!). Has the disparity occurred to no one?"

But you have no point, because the original post that mentioned modern music was comparing modern music to canonical music as being analogous to modern poetry and canonical poetry, and there HAS been discussion of modern poetry, as well as plenty of people recommending certain contemporary poets and deriding others, the same way we were recommending certain modern music and deriding others. There's no disparity. Everyone on both sides has mentioned modern music/poets they like/dislike and canonical music/poetry they like/dislike. All four groups have been aptly represented, I think.


I am not making a distinction at all, the language is! The distinction is friggin conventional.Please go back and reread what you quoted, because I did not say you were unfairly making a distinction. What I said was: "you're trying to make some discrete split." I then went on, in that very post, to illustrate how intuition can lead to an intellectual formulation through Keats. Nowhere was I attempting to argue intuition and intellect were identical or the same, but that they are not mutually exclusive and, in fact, the former often leads to the latter, just like Keats' reading and intuiting there was something unique in Shakespeare that separated him from Coleridge lead to his theory of Negative Capability.


Because intellectual is used specifically to contrast with emotional and intuitive and "scholar" isn't.Can one be an intuitive or emotional scholar? Anyway, then explain to me how Keats formulating the theory of Negative Capability is not the product of an intellectual? How is Negative Capability emotional or intuitive rather than rational?


I've seen miyako posting a number of published poems and essays on this forum (for instance, one by Lorca). I take it for granted that she is reading them before doing this.I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't even reading them. In our first debate regarding formalism and formalists, she seemed to be in favor of Vendler as a critic, but tried to claim Vendler wasn't a formalist. Then, when she challenged me by asking what critics support noticing anagrams in poetry, I posted repeated excerpts from Vendler's Shakespeare book. Then, after realizing that Vendler supported the kind of criticism she (miyako) disliked, she posted one of the only critical attacks on Vendler online by an idiot named Dan Schneider. I doubt seriously she even read it, because when I countered several of Dan's points, miyako didn't even bother addressing them.

So, she went from: seeming to support Vendler by claiming she wasn't a formalist, to trying to attack her when she realized Vendler engaged in the kind of criticism she found distasteful.

But, regardless of all that, miyako has come out against poets trying to learn their craft several times. You both say "nobody's claiming poets come out of the womb composing masterpieces," but then... what happens? What separates "born" poets from "made" poets? miyako keeps mentioning emotions, sensibilities, and moods. Do you think all that it takes to make a great poet is them having the right emotions, et al.?


So now you're acknowledging the convention of intuition vs intellect? Well, then why are you, elsewhere, pretending otherwise.I never was. I stated even within that post I felt it was a false dichotomy (it has to be either/or), and for the same reasons I've explained numerous times and you have (surprise, surprise) completely failed to address. We agree there is a difference between intuition and intellect, but my argument has always been (from the beginning) that one does not have to exclude the other and, in fact, intuition usually leads to intellectual formulations. One is built upon another, intuition can transition, sometimes little by little, into intellectualism, rather than being two completely different modes.

You know, me bringing semiotics up in that other thread was important, because you seem to be completely lost in this area. Really, a lot of our disagreements would be aided tremendously if you had the first clue how language works. Every time you find me using a word that's different from the way you use it and the way you define it, you try to act like I'm the idiot who's confused, without considering that I could be using it in another way that's perfectly legitimate. Look at the various definitions of intellectual on Dictionary.com that fit perfectly what I've been saying about Keats:

noun
6.
a person of superior intellect.
7.
a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, especially on an abstract and general level. (So Keats didn't pursue knowledge about aesthetics?)
8.
an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings.
9.
a person professionally engaged in mental labor, as a writer or teacher. (One reason I said it's tempting to call all writers intellectuals)

— n
4. a person who enjoys mental activity and has highly developed tastes in art, literature, etc
5. a person who uses or works with his intellect
6. a highly intelligent person

A person who engages in academic study or critical evaluation of ideas and issues. (Negative Capability comes out of Keats' critical evaluation of Coleridge's literary theory)

Merriam Webster:

a : given to study, reflection, and speculation

b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

Now, call me crazy, but a lot of these definitions describe Keats perfectly. So, as much as you'd like to make it out that I'm "confused" regarding the meaning of the term intellectual, it could also very well possibly be that you (and I, and JCamillo) simply had different definitions of the term in mind when we brought it up. But the real crime here is that I have repeatedly attempted to clarify my definition--perhaps not in the most lucid ways, granted, and I even already admitted that "innate intellectual" was a plain bad term on my part. But when neither you or J has made one attempt to distinguish intellectual from "everyday thinking" or "scholar/academic," then how have you helped matters at all?


I'm not particularly interested in arguing over it anymore simply because I think you're confused.Yeah, yeah, you've pulled this trick numerous times, stunt, and if anyone's actually reading this exchange, and reading all of the numerous times you have flatly misread who's-said-what in this thread and what the context was that certain things were said in, I doubt they're going to take your word that you've read through this thread and now have it all figured out.


what makes me unique is the totality of my emotions or personality which is unique and mine alone. So everyone is a unique little snowflake; so why are some people better writers than others? Because all it requires is the right kind of uniqueness? Really, I could use your argument to argue that there is no difference between born and made poets, because made poets are unique in the totality of their emotions and personality which is theirs and theirs alone no different than anyone else... so why the distinction again?

miyako, you're the type that could look at the numbers 1,595,320,005 and 1,595,320,006 and call them "unique" even though they have 9 integers in common and 1 different. You seem to see this issue only in black-and-white, completely alike/completely unalike, rather than "certain things in common, certain things that are different." If we were all as unique as you make it out to be, we could never see ourselves reflected in the writings of others to begin with.

[Drkshadow03]

Some people in this forum have the annoying braggadocio of a latent megalomaniac. They create their own literary terms as if they have the authority, in skill and in scholarship, to do so. In truth, they actually build mirrors and smokes, so they can still project a semblance of what is true, valid, and correct. The fact is that they haven't written any poetry or prose that has moved me the way those of the canonical authors have. This is the danger in this forum. Due to cliquish patronizing and thoughtless appreciation of mediocrity, the mediocre think they are superior. What a farce!

The image of a mirror is surely apt. :rolleyes5:

I was literally going to write the exact same thing this morning when I read that exact same comment.

[miyako73]

I was literally going to write the exact same thing this morning when I read that exact same comment.

Spare me from this cliquishness and back-patting. I'm not the one who invents literary terms to support my arguments. I don't also have the arrogance to say that if Sylvia Plath or Elizabeth Bishop could do it, I also can. I am no Plath or Bishop. Go and find out who has that arrogance.


So everyone is a unique little snowflake; so why are some people better writers than others? Because all it requires is the right kind of uniqueness? Really, I could use your argument to argue that there is no difference between born and made poets, because made poets are unique in the totality of their emotions and personality which is theirs and theirs alone no different than anyone else... so why the distinction again?

miyako, you're the type that could look at the numbers 1,595,320,005 and 1,595,320,006 and call them "unique" even though they have 9 integers in common and 1 different. You seem to see this issue only in black-and-white, completely alike/completely unalike, rather than "certain things in common, certain things that are different." If we were all as unique as you make it out to be, we could never see ourselves reflected in the writings of others to begin with.

You are also the kind of person who thinks a shirt and a flower are the same as long as they are red and fragrant.

[Drkshadow03]

Spare me from this cliquishness and back-patting. I'm not the one who invents literary terms to support my arguments. I don't also have the arrogance to say that if Sylvia Plath or Elizabeth Bishop could do it, I also can. I am no Plath or Bishop. Go and find out who has that arrogance.

I just found it amusing that I had the exact same reaction to your post. 'Tis all.

[miyako73]

Originally Posted by stuntpickle
I've seen miyako posting a number of published poems and essays on this forum (for instance, one by Lorca). I take it for granted that she is reading them before doing this.
I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't even reading them. In our first debate regarding formalism and formalists, she seemed to be in favor of Vendler as a critic, but tried to claim Vendler wasn't a formalist. Then, when she challenged me by asking what critics support noticing anagrams in poetry, I posted repeated excerpts from Vendler's Shakespeare book. Then, after realizing that Vendler supported the kind of criticism she (miyako) disliked, she posted one of the only critical attacks on Vendler online by an idiot named Dan Schneider. I doubt seriously she even read it, because when I countered several of Dan's points, miyako didn't even bother addressing them.

So, she went from: seeming to support Vendler by claiming she wasn't a formalist, to trying to attack her when she realized Vendler engaged in the kind of criticism she found distasteful.

But, regardless of all that, miyako has come out against poets trying to learn their craft several times. You both say "nobody's claiming poets come out of the womb composing masterpieces," but then... what happens? What separates "born" poets from "made" poets? miyako keeps mentioning emotions, sensibilities, and moods. Do you think all that it takes to make a great poet is them having the right emotions, et al.?

First: yes, I read first before I post. I don't post materials I'm not familiar or I've not encountered before.

Second: you have the habit of twisting my statement to support your argument. Find my post that said what you wrote:

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman
Someone like miyako who thinks that all a poet needs is their moods, emotions, and sensibilities.

Third: also find a post where I expressed my being a fan of Vendler. Right from the start, I've questioned your graphic mangling of the text. You've said again and again that you are the Vendler in this forum and what you've been doing is Vendler's method. Now, did you really think that I've agreed to everything your goddess does and writes as far as literary criticism is concerned? Simple logic.

Fourth: Schneider's essay is not the only one that questions Vendler's lucidity. Read Rita Dove's. Are you even published in your local paper? What gives you the gall to call a known essayist an idiot? You wanted me to respond to your misreadings? It would have been a waste of time in my part, frankly.

[tailor STATELY]

ee cummings




birn



ou
mad


5/24/2012

Just curious.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

I think this thread has exhausted itself.

[Delta40]

I think this thread has exhausted itself.

I agree. There's enough puff here to fill a balloon and fly us all to the moon :biggrin5:

[tailor STATELY]

before you turn


off the lights would
someone care to answer my question

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[miyako73]

what was the question?

[tailor STATELY]

Sorry -

I left it in the form of a poem titled ee cummings:

Was he born a poet or made a poet ?

... just curious.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[miyako73]

I don't really know what kind of poetic education trained him. He had his own style. If some of his poems were due to his tantrums and bad mood while in front of his typewriter, he indeed had a gift. He even made his typewriter, maybe out of boredom, speak for his current state of mind. Wasn't that original?

[Delta40]

If some of his poems were due to his tantrums and bad mood while in front of his typewriter, he indeed had a gift.

Lol. Tantrums and moods don't constitute the criteria for a gift. I'm sure there are plenty of poets out there who write crap then throw their computer against the wall but it doesn't improve the poor quality of their work!

On the other hand I'm sure it would have still been termed a gift if Cummings beat his wives and only through that violence could he produce his best work.

[stuntpickle]

Amazing you said nothing about this level of enthusiasm in your post. All you said was: "The discussion about music largely concerns culturally relevant artists from the last fifty or so years, whereas the discussion of literature concerns relics as far back as antiquity (Virgil!). Has the disparity occurred to no one?"

But you have no point, because the original post that mentioned modern music was comparing modern music to canonical music as being analogous to modern poetry and canonical poetry, and there HAS been discussion of modern poetry, as well as plenty of people recommending certain contemporary poets and deriding others, the same way we were recommending certain modern music and deriding others. There's no disparity. Everyone on both sides has mentioned modern music/poets they like/dislike and canonical music/poetry they like/dislike. All four groups have been aptly represented, I think.

You said I was "accusing" you of comparing poetry to music.

Consider:

yet you accuse me of comparing modern music to canonical poetry when I wasn't the one that brought it up?

This is flatly false since I was the one doing the comparing. Moreover, I wasn't even talking about you at all in that section. But this is standard BS with you. You completely misrepresent what I say in this endless quest to satisfy your narcissistic desire to be right ABOUT ANYTHING. You're so desperate to prove that you are some big intellectual; the irony, of course, is that in your quest to demonstrate this, all you demonstrate is that you have NO CLUE what you're talking about.


I then went on, in that very post, to illustrate how intuition can lead to an intellectual formulation through Keats.

The problem here is your tin-eared ignorance of “intellectual”. I take it for granted that you know what “connotation” means. How is it that you are incapable of recognizing that what most persons mean by “intellectual” is precisely NOT something that can be derived by intuition. For Chrissake, even in the friggin Wikipedia article you, yourself, cited it made this distinction VERY CLEAR.



Anyway, then explain to me how Keats formulating the theory of Negative Capability is not the product of an intellectual? How is Negative Capability emotional or intuitive rather than rational?

When one says a person has a certain intuitive capacity, one does not mean a person is unintelligent or incapable of making rational statements. One means that their skills are largely inherent and natural, as opposed to acquired through the application of formal criticism, education and plain ratiocination. You seem to be presenting the absurd argument that if someone has intuitive knowledge then he is incapable of making an intelligent statement without immediately becoming an “intellectual”. The absurdity of this statement is plain, as it seeks to appropriate the rightness of an idea or notion into a necessarily “intellectual” formulation. This is not only wrong, but idiotic too.


I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't even reading them.

Who cares if you'd be surprised? You are not the supreme interpreter of Miyako's actions. I find it strange to think that she could have ever posted a relevant poem had she not read them. I mean, why didn't she post a recipe for biscuits if she was totally ignorant of the content?


In our first debate regarding formalism and formalists

That was hardly a debate. That was you attempting to shame her in public with your presumed superiority. You're a narcissist who doesn't know what he's talking about. When this is demonstrated unequivocally to you, you always resort to the worst sort of semantic legalism to confound the discussion because the truth is that you're not at all interested in the discussion, itself, but rather only in demonstrating how smart you are. The problem, of course, is that your general ineptitude results in demonstrating the contrary.


, she seemed to be in favor of Vendler as a critic, but tried to claim Vendler wasn't a formalist. Then, when she challenged me by asking what critics support noticing anagrams in poetry, I posted repeated excerpts from Vendler's Shakespeare book. Then, after realizing that Vendler supported the kind of criticism she (miyako) disliked, she posted one of the only critical attacks on Vendler online by an idiot named Dan Schneider. I doubt seriously she even read it, because when I countered several of Dan's points, miyako didn't even bother addressing them.

So, she went from: seeming to support Vendler by claiming she wasn't a formalist, to trying to attack her when she realized Vendler engaged in the kind of criticism she found distasteful.

It seems to me that all you're trying to do here is embarrass her. If you think it's okay to constantly point out what someone got wrong, then perhaps you'd care to discuss metaphysics, fallacies, logical validity, or any of the other things about which you have demonstrated a complete ignorance.


What separates "born" poets from "made" poets? miyako keeps mentioning emotions, sensibilities, and moods. Do you think all that it takes to make a great poet is them having the right emotions, et al.?

Forget Miyako for a second. That you continue to try and assault her while addressing me is telling. What separates a born poet from a made poet? The distinction is elementary. What one means by a born poet is someone with an inherent artistic capacity who acquires technique in a manner that is apart from the conventions of formal learning. What one means by a made poet is someone who has been INSTRUCTED according to the conventions of formal learning and has acquired knowledge ABOUT poetry and has tried to parlay that knowledge into a rational approach to the medium.

In music, the distinction is more obvious. You have persons who sit in their rooms as children trying to puzzle out songs on the radio, and then you have the typical persons who are EDUCATED in the art and then attend various institutions in the hope that they can make progress.

This is NOT to say that a natural talent cannot receive an education or that an intellectual is debarred from having any innate skills. We are discussing the issue in principle rather than in practice. It seems as though you are attempting to appropriate both sides of the discussion so that there exists no opposition. You are trying to reconstruct your position into one that has all these contradictory elements. I think you are doing this to try and win the argument by leaving the opposition no territory to occupy. But it seems that you lack the intellectual capacity to understand that all you accomplish is undermining the coherency of your own position. And so we have to deal such incoherent, implausible terms as “innate intellectual.” And when someone points out the absurdity of this, you resort, as usual, to more hand-waving.


I stated even within that post I felt it was a false dichotomy (it has to be either/or),

What I find most telling about your absurd argument is that when you try and demonstrate what a poet must do to be good, you almost invariably start talking about activities that are more commonly associated with the intuitive side rather than the intellectual one. So for instance you talk about people imbibing poetry. But you never talk about listening to a theoretical lecture and deriving the necessary skills from that. So it seems as though you are honoring the dichotomy. The strange thing is that you're proposing an intuitive approach and calling it intellectual. What we mean by the natural or intuitive approach is deriving automatically the necessary lessons from familiarity with the medium. What we mean by an intellectual approach is LEARNING, perhaps even by rote, a theoretical understanding of poetry. Of course, this is not to say than an intuitive approach can never lead one to an idea that sounds “intellectual”. By intellectual and intuitive we mean to address the methods rather than the results. As J pointed out, you are trying to suggest that the means of arriving at an idea must necessarily be intellectual if it is a good idea. And this is simply wrong.


and for the same reasons I've explained numerous times and you have (surprise, surprise) completely failed to address. We agree there is a difference between intuition and intellect, but my argument has always been (from the beginning) that one does not have to exclude the other and, in fact, intuition usually leads to intellectual formulations.

Your “argument” is at its heart (surprise, surprise) an equivocation.

1. Stunt and J say Keats was not an intellectual, by which they mean someone who had a primarily rational understanding of poetry acquired through formal education, erudition and learned conventions.
2. But Keats was clearly an intellectual, by which I mean someone who, through hard work and familiarity with poetry, came to some intelligent conclusions.
Therefore, Stunt and J are wrong.
Consider:

Equivocation
Equivocation is the illegitimate switching of the meaning of a term during the reasoning.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#Equivocation



You know, me bringing semiotics up in that other thread was important, because you seem to be completely lost in this area.

You really are clueless. Your whole hilarious point about semiotics was that “nothing” had no referent. You're kidding! You're such a genius.

All anyone means by “nothing” is the absence of any referent. It's a common grammatical construction that any schoolboy knows. You make the sophomoric mistake trying to ascribe positive attributes to it.

You have misinterpreted the fact that I chose not to address the point as a concession. The truth is that I was more concerned about your consistent reliance on fallacious reasoning than a relatively minor misappropriation of semiotics.

The notion that words have uses as opposed to meanings is something that comes to us by way of Wittgenstein. I would suggest you try reading him, but I think you'd be better served by reading Descartes or Aquinas and trying to learn how to assemble logical statements into coherent arguments.

The point is that both “nothing” and “intellectual” have appropriate uses, and you're simply using them both incorrectly.



Really, a lot of our disagreements would be aided tremendously if you had the first clue how language works.

Says the projecting narcissist.


Every time you find me using a word that's different from the way you use it and the way you define it, you try to act like I'm the idiot who's confused,

Have you been to elementary school? I ask because that's generally when they teach people connotation. Regardless of who you are, you have the obligation to adhere to certain conventions of language. I can't believe that I have to tell someone who calls himself a poet that words have currency beyond their strict denotation.




without considering that I could be using it in another way that's perfectly legitimate. Look at the various definitions of intellectual on Dictionary.com that fit

First my point did not primarily concern, the denotative meaning of “intellectual”. I quoted Merriam Webster's since you seemed to think that my suggestion about the connotation had come from nowhere. And you demonstrate that you don't know how to use a dictionary, since you try to use a definition that includes the point of contention “intellect” in a way that undergirds the entire definition, as though it completely agrees with you.



a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, especially on an abstract and general level.[/b] (So Keats didn't pursue knowledge about aesthetics?)

Oh gee, I wonder what the word “intellect” in that definition means.

M-W:

:*the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will*:*the capacity for knowledge

an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings.
9.
a person professionally engaged in mental labor, as a writer or teacher. (One reason I said it's tempting to call all writers intellectuals)

The reason you said something was derived from a some secondary definition in a descriptivist dictionary? God, you're hilarious.


Merriam Webster:


a : given to study, reflection, and speculation

b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

You're so clueless! You purposely leave out the primary definition and then subsequently demonstrate that you don't understand the secondary one. The essence of the word “intellectual” involves the mind as opposed to what is traditionally called “the heart”. And that meaning/use overhangs all the others. It's called connotation. And every schoolboy understands this.


So, as much as you'd like to make it out that I'm "confused" regarding the meaning of the term intellectual, it could also very well possibly be that you (and I, and JCamillo) simply had different definitions of the term in mind when we brought it up. But the real crime here is that I have repeatedly attempted to clarify my definition

No the real crime is that you are AGAIN engaged in equivocation. You have relinquished the entirety of your original point in order to agree exactly with me and J—except that you're calling it “intellectual” in hopes of salvaging your initial idiotic point, which was to admonish someone for daring to suggest that “learning” (and spare me more of the semantic waffling please) wasn't central to being a poet. I'm happy that you agree with me in principle, but I do wish you would stop trying to disagree in name. It seems that your only point is that you have a bizarre understanding of the word “intellectual”.

So if you think someone can become a great poet, quite apart from any academic structure or regimented learning, and do it ALL by himself simply by applying his innate capacities to the medium, then WHAT THE HELL is the argument about? It would seem that you agree that poets are born but only if we'll allow you to maintain your dignity by agreeing that intellectual means something it doesn't.

If the only disagreement is about what "intellectual" means, then why are you so desperately trying to demonstrate the impossibility of intuitive talent?

If someone taught himself to play the piano without any instruction, he would be considered a "born" talent, right?


Yeah, yeah, you've pulled this trick numerous times, stunt,

There's no trick. More than once, I have offered to let you escape from your idiotic misstatements, and you have refused to accept, presumably, because I didn't say you were right. If you really want me to, I can simply go back to pointing out all the fallacies.

[miyako73]

A person whose logic I question cannot embarrass me.

I wrote the following:

"I also don't write at my whim. Without my mood, I can't think of apt words to use. Without my sensitivity, I am blind to the images in my head. Without my emotions, my metaphors are stale. My writing skill may not be natural or inborn, but my mood, sensitivity, and emotions are."

I have no idea how it became what he wrote:

"Everyone has inborn moods, sensitivities, and emotions; not everyone can write like Milton, Keats, Heaney, etc."

"Someone like miyako who thinks that all a poet needs is their moods, emotions, and sensibilities."

Now, whose logic is faulty?

[stlukesguild]

Now, whose logic is faulty?

I would say it is your logic that is at question... or your fluency in English isn't quite up to the level you think it is.

The dispute is really not all that complex here. You have stated that your moods, sensitivity, and emotions are inborn. Everyone has moods, sensitivities, and emotions. Moods, sensitivities, and emotions don't create works of art. We all have perceptions as well. We see, hear, smell, touch, taste... But these alone do not create poetry either. Poetry is a form of art and all art forms involve a language and a vocabulary which must be learned. Some individuals have a predisposition for rapidly learning and mastering these skills. Their brain is wired in such a way that language or images or colors or forms or the organization of sound makes rapid sense to them. Others must labor to a greater extent to master the artistic language they love. Some benefit from a structured formal education, while others are "self-taught." Regardless of whether one is born with the seemingly inherent ability to rapidly and fluidly master an artistic idiom ala Mozart, Keats, Rimbaud, or Peter Paul Rubens... or one struggles and only succeeds through hard-labor and trial-and-error ala Cezanne, T.S. Eliot, or Beethoven, no one is a "born artist" and no one achieves anything as an artist without having gained a certain body of knowledge and experience through a degree of discipline and learning. This is all that we have been arguing. I somehow doubt that you would deny that your own poetic abilities did not owe something to what you have read, to practice, and to a degree of self-discipline and not to staring at your navel and waiting for the muses to arrive.

[JCamilo]

To be frankly, Stukles, she is kind of right about this specific misinterpretation of what she said.

She did not claimed - otherwise - that she did not need formal skills or anything she may have learnt. Or that any poet needs only this. She just said without her emotions all her formal skills will be not enough for her to write poetry. And she said those emotions are innate.

The reply of Morpheus is just bad.

[stuntpickle]

Now, whose logic is faulty?

I would say it is your logic that is at question... or your fluency in English isn't quite up to the level you think it is.

The dispute is really not all that complex here. You have stated that your moods, sensitivity, and emotions are inborn. Everyone has moods, sensitivities, and emotions. Moods, sensitivities, and emotions don't create works of art. We all have perceptions as well. We see, hear, smell, touch, taste... But these alone do not create poetry either. Poetry is a form of art and all art forms involve a language and a vocabulary which must be learned. Some individuals have a predisposition for rapidly learning and mastering these skills. Their brain is wired in such a way that language or images or colors or forms or the organization of sound makes rapid sense to them. Others must labor to a greater extent to master the artistic language they love. Some benefit from a structured formal education, while others are "self-taught." Regardless of whether one is born with the seemingly inherent ability to rapidly and fluidly master an artistic idiom ala Mozart, Keats, Rimbaud, or Peter Paul Rubens... or one struggles and only succeeds through hard-labor and trial-and-error ala Cezanne, T.S. Eliot, or Beethoven, no one is a "born artist" and no one achieves anything as an artist without having gained a certain body of knowledge and experience through a degree of discipline and learning. This is all that we have been arguing. I somehow doubt that you would deny that your own poetic abilities did not owe something to what you have read, to practice, and to a degree of self-discipline and not to staring at your navel and waiting for the muses to arrive.

Emotions, sensitivities, etc. aren't interchangeable. This discussion reminds me of the debate over design in the universe. An atheist physicist once said in a debate that every person was an improbable event. One in eight billion. Another physicist later corrected him that the odds of being one person out of all persons was a bad analogy in that simply being a person "won", and the arguments concerning design were essentially saying that all the other outcomes, besides one, resulted in no persons. No one is suggesting that "any" emotional state will do. But there are certain states that matter.

Dexter Gordon started out as a promising young tenor sax player. But problems with addiction drove him to squander most of his gifts. Yet he is also recognized as having made some of the most soulful recordings of all time.

Consider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Lx3n10fkc

No one would argue that the above is technically impressive. But most persons would recognize the extraordinary feeling contained therein.

Billie Holiday was far from being technically excellent. A former prostitute, she had a horrible voice and no chops to speak of. Almost anyone alive would tell you that Ella was superior in every way--except one. Billie Holiday was capable of a monstrous amount of feeling.

Consider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs

Both of the above examples are fairly unimpressive technically, but emotionally they are outstanding. To listen to those recordings and try to discuss technique is to miss the point. It's about the soul, the duende, brother. Both of those artists had hard, and in some ways disappointing, lives, and their sensitivities and emotions were central to their artistic statements. To suggest other people have emotions too is to miss the point. We're not talking about one in a million in which all the other 999,999 are winners too. We're talking one in a million in which all the other 999,999 fall short of the criteria.

In literature, of course, there's this one little ditty written by this guy whose only love in life was unrequited and who knew he was going to die early from a family disease. He wrote the following:

NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries, 5
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, 15
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 20

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight 25
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Duende, man, duende.



The reply of Morpheus is just bad.

I agree. I think Miyako has been cast in the role of a villain, and everyone feels compelled to interpret everything she says incorrectly.

P.S. I'm sorry about accusing you of speaking Spanish. I just realized you're from Brazil.

[miyako73]

Now, whose logic is faulty?

I would say it is your logic that is at question... or your fluency in English isn't quite up to the level you think it is.

The dispute is really not all that complex here. You have stated that your moods, sensitivity, and emotions are inborn. Everyone has moods, sensitivities, and emotions. Moods, sensitivities, and emotions don't create works of art. We all have perceptions as well. We see, hear, smell, touch, taste... But these alone do not create poetry either. Poetry is a form of art and all art forms involve a language and a vocabulary which must be learned. Some individuals have a predisposition for rapidly learning and mastering these skills. Their brain is wired in such a way that language or images or colors or forms or the organization of sound makes rapid sense to them. Others must labor to a greater extent to master the artistic language they love. Some benefit from a structured formal education, while others are "self-taught." Regardless of whether one is born with the seemingly inherent ability to rapidly and fluidly master an artistic idiom ala Mozart, Keats, Rimbaud, or Peter Paul Rubens... or one struggles and only succeeds through hard-labor and trial-and-error ala Cezanne, T.S. Eliot, or Beethoven, no one is a "born artist" and no one achieves anything as an artist without having gained a certain body of knowledge and experience through a degree of discipline and learning. This is all that we have been arguing. I somehow doubt that you would deny that your own poetic abilities did not owe something to what you have read, to practice, and to a degree of self-discipline and not to staring at your navel and waiting for the muses to arrive.

Philo 101?

[JCamilo]

No worries man. Ironically yesterday I was needing a better domain of spanish... :D

I know Stlukes dislikes the idea of natural artist, the absence of techniques, etc. Maybe because his pratic goes beyond the theoretical or romantic, so he does not need to remind people they must work beyond "inspirations" or "musings", so I guess he may have gotten on because Miyako has reacted sometimes due to frustation in a eager way, but in this specific post I do not see much confusion with her argument. I suspect we all got in the middle of a more older story between her and Morpheus which is not related to this thread.

Her quote seems even similar in spirt to Keats " If Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all." . Keats does not say he only thinks like a tree, only use emotion (it is the same guy who seems to understand quite well the artificial role of poetry in the Grecian Urn and Nightingale Odes, and the distance between the inspiration and craft of a poem), only that his sensibility must be aroused naturally to allow the poetic production with watever skills he may have.

[miyako73]

It seems both of them think that my emotion (that pushes me to write) is the same as everyone's emotion. Hence, they should write too because I write or emotion is not important because not everyone writes even though everyone has it.

Damn! I can see at least five fallacies in that argument.

I already said my emotion that pushes me to write is unique and mine alone. It involves what I have felt since my childhood, what my culture makes me feel, and what the society restricts me to feel. I won't even include biology or illness in that equation. That equation is already too complex for simplification (ex. two personalities are the same) to be possible.

Okay I'll bare myself here. One of the things that really make me feel loved, my bf has to suck my toes. Do you have that idea about love too, St. Luke? You better take care of your feet from athlete's foot. That's just one of the ten things that must happen for me to have a successful relationship. I won't reveal the rest, they might shock you. What may shock you are about love to me and to my senses?

Can't you tell why there are toes, toenails, soles, heels, ankles, feet in my twisted erotic and love poems?

Also, I have and have been reading these books:

An Intro to Literature (Barner, Berman, Burto)
Literature (DiYanni)
Living Literature (Brereton)
Approaching Literature in the 21st century (Schakel, Ridl)
Discovering Literature (Guth, Rico)
Literature and Society (Annas, Rosen)
Literature (Kennedy, Gioia)
Elements of Literature (Scholes, Comley, Klaus, Silverman)
Perrine's Literature (Arp, Johnson)
Literarure and Its Writers (Charters, Charters)
Literature (Wingard)

Enough to be called literary education right? Why is it that, for the past three days, I could only write uninspired poetry? The last one I posted was this:

Sound of Discontent

eye
dew
knot
here;
eye
sea.

My emotion that pushes me to write is simply not there.

[stlukesguild]

Emotions, sensitivities, etc. aren't interchangeable. This discussion reminds me of the debate over design in the universe. An atheist physicist once said in a debate that every person was an improbable event. One in eight billion. Another physicist later corrected him that the odds of being one person out of all persons was a bad analogy in that simply being a person "won", and the arguments concerning design were essentially saying that all the other outcomes, besides one, resulted in no persons. No one is suggesting that "any" emotional state will do. But there are certain states that matter.

Dexter Gordon started out as a promising young tenor sax player. But problems with addiction drove him to squander most of his gifts. Yet he is also recognized as having made some of the most soulful recordings of all time.

Consider:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Lx3n10fkc

No one would argue that the above is technically impressive. But most persons would recognize the extraordinary feeling contained therein.

Billie Holiday was far from being technically excellent. A former prostitute, she had a horrible voice and no chops to speak of. Almost anyone alive would tell you that Ella was superior in every way--except one. Billie Holiday was capable of a monstrous amount of feeling.

But again... Billie or Dexter could feel the most incredible degree of "feeling"... but it would all be irrelevant if they could not communicate this successfully to others. Every adolescent feels the most incredible emotions. At that age they imagine they are the center of the universe. Suzy gets dumped by Johnny and imagines that it is the end of the world. She spews forth her feelings in her journal... but almost none of us would think to suggest that the resulting work is likely to be a poetic masterpiece. All that has been said here is something that should be obvious: whether one is a virtuoso, an academic, or your notion of a "natural" artist, all art demands a degree of study, practice, and discipline.

Both of the above examples are fairly unimpressive technically, but emotionally they are outstanding. To listen to those recordings and try to discuss technique is to miss the point. It's about the soul, the duende, brother. Both of those artists had hard, and in some ways disappointing, lives, and their sensitivities and emotions were central to their artistic statements. To suggest other people have emotions too is to miss the point. We're not talking about one in a million in which all the other 999,999 are winners too. We're talking one in a million in which all the other 999,999 fall short of the criteria.

I don't think the notion is to suggest that all art can be broken down or reduced to some collection of elements. It is virtually impossible to offer up a catalog defining just what exactly makes Rembrandt or Miles resonate so. If we could do that, we'd all be capable of producing the same. What is being questioned is the rather juvenile and Romantic notion that all one needs to become a masterful artist in whatever genre you choose, is some degree of strong feeling. How many horrible works of art, music, poetry etc... are produced with the utmost sincerity of a deep feeling? How many artists/poets/musicians had disappointing... even tragic lives... and yet fell far short of producing art of any lasting value?

[miyako73]

Since the Chicago exhibit is over, just grab this one:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tragic-Muse-Emotion-1700-1900/dp/0935573496

[stlukesguild]

I know Stlukes dislikes the idea of natural artist, the absence of techniques, etc. Maybe because his pratic goes beyond the theoretical or romantic...

I do not reject the romantic notion of inspiration. Rather I fully agree with Picasso's statement: "Inspiration exists, but it has go to find you working". No one would think to categorize Picasso as an intellectual or an academic artist... but he recognized that the notion of the "natural artist" who never needed to explore the work of his or her predecessors, or put forth any serious effort is a myth. Mozart was undeniably a natural artist. He could churn out the most exquisite music under the most impossible of deadlines... virtually without the least need to go back and edit things. Beethoven, on the other hand, struggled... often for years... to bring a single work to completion. Rubens was clearly a natural, He hardly ever changed a brushstroke... let alone make any major shift in composition. Cezanne, on the other hand, often spent years on a single canvas... building the paint up in layer after layer until it appeared so encrusted one might have thought ikt was the remnant of an ancient fresco. His dealer spoke of visiting him at his estate, only to come upon numerous paintings in the trees. He was only temporarily perplexed, for a moment later he heard the artist bellowing a stream of profanities and then another painting came flying out of his window.

Miyako has reacted sometimes due to frustation in a eager way, but in this specific post I do not see much confusion with her argument. I suspect we all got in the middle of a more older story between her and Morpheus which is not related to this thread.

Miyako has a habit of insulting any one with whom she disagrees. Snide comments concerning other's inability to read or their lack of education ("Philo 101?") are par for the course.

[stuntpickle]

Every adolescent feels the most incredible emotions.

I think that's false. I think adolescents feel exaggerated shallow emotions. For instance, take the song "Strange Fruit" which is about a lynching. The psychological and emotional landscape requisite to write about that come with experience NOT education. It's a fairly banal notion to suggest that children lack a robust emotional palette.


At that age they imagine they are the center of the universe. Suzy gets dumped by Johnny and imagines that it is the end of the world. She spews forth her feelings in her journal

But that has nothing to do with what we're discussing. What adolescent has come to realize that all beauty must die, must fade, and that our pleasure serves primarily to enhance our sadness? An infant cannot be said to feel deeply merely because he cries loudly.


whether one is a virtuoso, an academic, or your notion of a "natural" artist, all art demands a degree of study, practice, and discipline.

First, the notion of a natural artist isn't mine; it's not something I generated for the purposes of this discussion. It's a fairly conventional idea. Practice and discipline, sure. "Study" is trickier. If you mean attention to the medium, then fine. If you mean formal learning, then there's sufficient reason to doubt that.


What is being questioned is the rather juvenile and Romantic notion that all one needs to become a masterful artist in whatever genre you choose, is some degree of strong feeling.

I think this is your straw man. No one is suggesting that one can become, in a cultural vacuum, a great artist simply by having emotions. If someone is truly saying this, then point it out to me.


How many horrible works of art, music, poetry etc... are produced with the utmost sincerity of a deep feeling?

I think such "horrible" works of art confuse sentiment with sentimentality.


How many artists/poets/musicians had disappointing... even tragic lives... and yet fell far short of producing art of any lasting value?

How many intellectuals fall short in the same way? Producing "art of lasting value" is such a rare occurrence that it might be properly termed a freakish one. I think it is wrong to suggest that because most persons who feel deeply fail to produce lasting art, it means that feeling deeply has nothing to do with art; just as it is wrong to suggest that because most persons who study art fail to produce lasting art, then it must mean that studying art has nothing to do with being an artist. Both statements seem to use the same fallacious reasoning. We could say that most artists fail to produce lasting art; therefore, being an artist has nothing to do with being an artist.

I AM suggesting that it is possible to be a good artist without any formal training, without any formal education and, in certain cases, with obvious technical deficiencies. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise, as there are too many examples to support this.

[JCamilo]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]
I do not reject the romantic notion of inspiration. Rather I fully agree with Picasso's statement: "Inspiration exists, but it has go to find you working". No one would think to categorize Picasso as an intellectual or an academic artist... but he recognized that the notion of the "natural artist" who never needed to explore the work of his or her predecessors, or put forth any serious effort is a myth. Mozart was undeniably a natural artist. He could churn out the most exquisite music under the most impossible of deadlines... virtually without the least need to go back and edit things. Beethoven, on the other hand, struggled... often for years... to bring a single work to completion. Rubens was clearly a natural, He hardly ever changed a brushstroke... let alone make any major shift in composition. Cezanne, on the other hand, often spent years on a single canvas... building the paint up in layer after layer until it appeared so encrusted one might have thought ikt was the remnant of an ancient fresco. His dealer spoke of visiting him at his estate, only to come upon numerous paintings in the trees. He was only temporarily perplexed, for a moment later he heard the artist bellowing a stream of profanities and then another painting came flying out of his window.

I think we all can agree there is not a formula (Chesterton's “There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.”) etc. There is artists (and I am not talking with judgement of vallue, I do not mind of great or not) with formal training, those who go back and analyse their precussors, those who learn by pratice, by copy, those who just follow a hunch, learn by ear, adquire knowledge with experience, with a master, etc. Does not matter much, some are more intuitive, other more analyct. And sometimes, one is both for different momments of artistic production. No formula, no rule.


Miyako has a habit of insulting any one with whom she disagrees. Snide comments concerning other's inability to read or their lack of education ("Philo 101?") are par for the course.

Well, yes. But if anything, this is clearly a proof of her emotions, as she does not control it and maybe the negativity that she receives derives more form her answers than her proposition. I would advice her to take a breath before posting because the emotion she feels lacking while writing poetry is being used in those fights.

And that she should continue her list of 10 things. I am not going to be shocked. Brazilians are not easy to be :D

[stlukesguild]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]To be frankly, Stukles, she is kind of right about this specific misinterpretation of what she said.

She did not claimed - otherwise - that she did not need formal skills or anything she may have learnt. Or that any poet needs only this. She just said without her emotions all her formal skills will be not enough for her to write poetry.[/COLOR

Seriously, I don't recall ever questioning this... nor would I. Again, we can all dissect and deconstruct and analyze what makes a work of art, and we can spend endless years mastering the formal skills and techniques and yet never achieve anything of merit. Robert Motherwell... the most intellectual and educated of the great Abstract Expressionist painters used to speak of the fact that he often feared that he lacked the duende.

You must admit there is a certain prevention... if not arrogance... in essentially proclaiming oneself to have the duende... or genius.

[JCamilo]

I agree that Lorca was very arrogant :D

[stuntpickle]

I agree that Lorca was very arrogant :D

Perfect Riposte. There could be no better rejoinder. Bravo!

[miyako73]

Having a duende is not being a genius. My god, even a gypsy dancer or a tribal drummer can have a duende today and none tomorrow. It is a spirit that stems from an artist's or a writer's emotion.

[stuntpickle]

Having a duende is not being a genius.

She's right about that.

[stlukesguild]

First, the notion of a natural artist isn't mine; it's not something I generated for the purposes of this discussion. It's a fairly conventional idea. Practice and discipline, sure. "Study" is trickier. If you mean attention to the medium, then fine. If you mean formal learning, then there's sufficient reason to doubt that.

OK... study may not be the best word if we take it to mean formal study... but I stated earlier that I am not limiting learning to formal academic study. Obviously Billie Holiday learned by listening to other singers... on recordings and in clubs.

I AM suggesting that it is possible to be a good artist without any formal training, without any formal education and, in certain cases, with obvious technical deficiencies. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise, as there are too many examples to support this.

I don't think anyone here would disagree with this. Early on in this debate others suggested that art was the result of combination of the learned (not to be interpreted as only meaning that learned in a formal, academic setting) and that which the individual is born with. Again, there's no magic formula. If there were, there'd be far more of us recognized as artistic geniuses.

[stuntpickle]

I don't think anyone here would disagree with this. Early on in this debate others suggested that art was the result of combination of the learned (not to be interpreted as only meaning that learned in a formal, academic setting) and that which the individual is born with. Again, there's no magic formula. If there were, there'd be far more of us recognized as artistic geniuses.

I mostly agree with this. Morpheus will probably think I'm simply beating up on him, but I really think the whole "intellectual" debacle derailed the discussion.

[stlukesguild]

Having a duende is not being a genius. My god, even a gypsy dancer or a tribal drummer can have a duende today and none tomorrow. It is a spirit that stems from an artist's or a writer's emotion.

My god... she's been watching TED videos:

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

[JCamilo]

But I hope Miyako foot fetish does not. Specially considering Goethe also had a foot fetish.

[stlukesguild]

I agree that Lorca was very arrogant

So were Michelangelo and Beethoven... yet they earned the right to be. Has Miyako?

[miyako73]

But I hope Miyako foot fetish does not. Specially considering Goethe also had a foot fetish.

did he enjoy it with the rest of the nine?:nod:

[stlukesguild]

Don't forget Pushkin.:eek:

[miyako73]

I agree that Lorca was very arrogant

So were Michelangelo and Beethoven... yet they earned the right to be. Has Miyako?

Logic again. Have I said I have a duende or I am a genius? Mmmmm... three fallacies right there.

My culture, which is semi-Spanish, has a concept of duende, a ruler of emotion; thus, I understand and agree with Lorca.

[JCamilo]

did he enjoy it with the rest of the nine?:nod:

I cann't tell, neither if Pushkin did. You must tell the other 9 :D

[miyako73]

What is TED?

[stuntpickle]

So were Michelangelo and Beethoven... yet they earned the right to be. Has Miyako?

Look, I can't claim to know the whole story concerning Miyako, but I have the impression that she has been under siege on these forums. Can you not understand how she might be overly defensive and a tad ridiculous under these circumstances?

[miyako73]

Look, I can't claim to know the whole story concerning Miyako, but I have the impression that she has been under siege on these forums. Can you not understand how she might be overly defensive and a tad ridiculous under these circumstances?

Don't mind me, Stunt? People are cliquish to feel important and empowered. I'm old enough to understand that. I'm from a family of artists and writers back home. We create; we don't just talk until our mouths bubble. I know what an artist's or a writer's emotion. I also know how it is to be pushed to the margins.

I think this thread has reached its zenith.

I started this thread because of my ambivalence to apply for an MFA in Fiction or Poetry. I'm scared that after 100 thousand dollar-student loans, I'll come out of the program writing like the rest of my classmates. I saw how my cousin entered with writing science fiction and culture in mind but ended up writing unreadable postmodern fiction like some of his classmates in the 90's.

I believe there are two kinds of artists or writers, the ones with talents and the ones with skills. Talent is inborn while skill is acquired. Both talent and skill can improve to near perfection and they can also decline or diminish into oblivion.

The best analogy I think:

Born - talent - already a pencil - sharpen
Made - skill - still a wood and a graphite - made into a pencil - sharpen

The made writers have to do more effort and learning than the born ones to better their craft. But then again, over-sharpening a pencil make its tip thinner and break. That's the dilemma.

[JCamilo]

The zenith still far...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/Martin_van_Maele_-_La_Comtesse_au_fouet_01.jpg/370px-Martin_van_Maele_-_La_Comtesse_au_fouet_01.jpg

(Wikipedia can be such useful tool)

[miyako73]

The zenith still far...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_van_Maele_-_La_Comtesse_au_fouet_01.jpg


Okay, let me use denouement then.

[MorpheusSandman]

you have the habit of twisting my statement to support your argument. Find my post that said what you wrote:

Someone like miyako who thinks that all a poet needs is their moods, emotions, and sensibilities. Look, you started the thread about "born" VS "made" poets, and you clearly consider yourself to be more in the "born poet" mold, if at all, and the only definition I've gotten out of you about the difference is that "born" poets use their moods, emotions, and sensibilities. Where am I wrong? You've given me nothing else to go on.


Third: also find a post where I expressed my being a fan of Vendler. Right from the start, I've questioned your graphic mangling of the text. You've said again and again that you are the Vendler in this forum and what you've been doing is Vendler's method.I think you've completely bungled the order of how this chain of events happened. The very first mention of Vendler between us was in this thread. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68964) I mention Vendler is a "formalist," and you respond here. (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1138199&postcount=3) No, you don't come right out and say you're a fan of Vendler, but you certainly seem to be vigorously defending her by claiming she's not a formalist; why put forth the effort if you didn't like her in the first place? What happened after this was in Delta's thread, where you pointed to my anagrammatic criticism (which hardly constituted the whole of what I was writing) and you asked: "I don't know what kind of a literary mind will accept these:" In response I posted three excerpts from Vendler's Shakespeare book, which you seemed to be promoting in that first thread, as well as Christopher Ricks' The Force of Poetry. So, in response to your "what literary minds accept this," I posted examples from the professors of poetry at Harvard and Oxford. It was only AFTER THAT that you posted the Dan Schneider attack in its own separate thread.

So, again, follow the chain of events:

1. I mention Vendler's a formalist

2. You *seem* to be defending Vendler by claiming she's not a formalist, and that I should "read her books," and I would see she isn't one.

3. You attack my anagrammatic criticism and ask what literary minds would accept them.

4. I post excerpts from Vendler's book on Shakespeare and Ricks' book of essays.

5. You post Dan Schneider online attack against Vendler.

So, following that chain, it hardly *seems* as if you were always against Vendler. What it seems like is that you were for Vendler until you realized she engaged in the same kind of criticism you hated in me. It *seems* like a case of sour grapes, like, initially, you thought Vendler was on YOUR side, she wasn't a formalist, then when you realized she actually did what I did, you had to turn against her, so you found Schneider's terrible article.


Schneider's essay is not the only one that questions Vendler's lucidity. Read Rita Dove's.Dove's and Vendler's debate was really just over aesthetic preferences, and I agree with both of them on some points. Simple fact is that Vendler prefers a narrowing of the canon, which inevitably happens anyway, whereas Dove preferred a broader view. In the end, Vendler will be right, because the majority of the poets Dove anthologized will be forgotten, while the few Vendler praises will be remembered and widely read. That's how canons work, rightly or wrongly. Though, fwiw, I do think Vendler's attack on Dove's choices was a bit out-of-bounds.


What gives you the gall to call a known essayist an idiot? It's called having eyes and a brain. I don't think anyone would take Schneider seriously after reading his exchange with Patrick on PoemShape. Schneider is actually a competent film critic, but he's woefully outmatched when it comes to poetry.


I mostly agree with this. Morpheus will probably think I'm simply beating up on him, but I really think the whole "intellectual" debacle derailed the discussion.If you agree with that, and I agree with that, is there any reason for me to respond to your last post to me? My usage of the term intellectual, which I still don't think was unfair, nonsensical, or out-of-bounds, was always equating it with those who had learned the craft of poetry, but not necessarily in a scholarly, formal, or academic way (I even stressed this difference a few times). Since most of your last post is nothing but blatant flame-throwing, I'd rather ignore it anyway.

EDIT: Well, allow me to address this, since it's the only part that doesn't resemble the ravings of a sad and desperate man:


So if you think someone can become a great poet, quite apart from any academic structure or regimented learning, and do it ALL by himself simply by applying his innate capacities to the medium, then WHAT THE HELL is the argument about? If the only disagreement is about what "intellectual" means, then why are you so desperately trying to demonstrate the impossibility of intuitive talent?Let me use two polar examples to try and clarify where I think the debate is at:

Person A: Has a basic education, leaves school after high-shcool, never formally or informally studies literature or poetry, or even reads them all that much, but likes to write, and takes up writing poetry based on nothing but that basic education and a foggy idea of what poetry is (maybe he came across a few poems in his lifetime as any average person would, or maybe they've read a few poets and have some favorites they like to emulate).

Person B: Studies poetry and literature formally in collage, graduates eventually with a masters, writes poetry as well, but will not write a single line without having some theoretical understanding of what every word connotes, what every line break signifies, how to use every device imaginable, from rhythm, rhyme, parallelism, imagery, metaphor, etc. and feels s/he can theorize why every choice is optimally suited to the expression, and has read a vast array of poetry from every era.

I think we can agree that Person A is the archetypal intuitive/born poet and Person B is the archetypal learned/intellectual poet. Where I think the debate is is in the enormous grey area that lies between A and B, really where I think the vast majority of poets lie. Not every poet has a formal education, not every poet theorizes over every (or even any) choices they make, yet there are many, like Keats, that put an inordinate amount of time into thinking on this subject. They have clearly studied, read, and thought more about the art than Person A who's only concern is for self-expression. That Keats read with the intent of learning from from the greats seems very much like an intellectual endeavor to me, the same way that any apprentice studying under any master would be, even if the master never spoke a word and the apprentice merely watched and emulated it. There is the conscious intent to learn to the craft there, and I don't know why "intellectual" has to be pushed to the farthest boundary extreme of Person B to count as being intellectual. If I know of anyone who dedicates a large amount of time to reading, learning, studying literature, even if completely informally, then I'd call them an intellectual. That you don't want to call them that is fine, but they are clearly not "born" with it either, or else they wouldn't be putting so much time and effort into reading and thinking about it to begin with, they'd just be writing all the time and never giving a thought to why they wrote what they wrote. Keats clearly did, and he commented often on his failures and WHY they were failures.

[stuntpickle]

EDIT: Well, allow me to address this, since it's the only part that doesn't resemble the ravings of a sad and desperate man:

Okay, idiot, we are now officially at odds. I'm so sick of your uneducated, overconfident person pretending to have half a clue about what he's saying. Oh, so you think the Romantic poets are aptly described as "intellectual" when they were, in fact, rebelling against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment? The problem isn't that you're wrong about whether poets are made or born or what "intellectual" means, but rather that you need to go back and finish junior college. Or are you too busy playing poker?

You're a joke, man. You obviously have a Wikipedia education in literature and logic. You can't even use a dictionary properly or even make any point without resorting to fallacious reasoning.

You're equivocating plain and simple. I have pointed this out to you, but you insist on continuing to do so. You keep trying to appropriate Keats, perhaps the archetypal Romantic, into your implausible revision of literary history, simply to win an argument on the internet.


If I know of anyone who dedicates a large amount of time to reading, learning, studying literature, even if completely informally, then I'd call them an intellectual.

If I know of anyone who dedicates a large amount of time to perverting the language just so he can be right about some non-issue, then I'd call him a dumb ***. No one cares about what some uninformed yahoo considers intellectual; people care about established conventions of language that allow them to address other persons--including uninformed yahoos. Calling Keats an intellectual because he used his brain is like calling Voltaire a Romantic because he had feelings.

Consider:

Changes in society, beginning in the 18th century and continuing into our own time, underlie the romantic movement. It starts as a reaction against the intellectualism of the Enlightenment, against the rigidity of social structures protecting privilege, and against the materialism of an age which, in the first stirring of the Industrial Revolution, already shows signs of making workers the slaves of machinery and of creating squalid urban environments.

http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa73#ixzz1wAYZMT1 L

"Romanticism" is the label for a literary-philosophical-artistic-musical-political movement which is often seen primarily as a rebellion against the stifling intellectualism and rigid logic of the Enlightenment

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/hum_303/humintro.html


Get over yourself, scrub. You're wrong. Again. Now go cry in the corner. And then fill out the application for the community college.


Look, you started the thread about "born" VS "made" poets, and you clearly consider yourself to be more in the "born poet" mold, if at all, and the only definition I've gotten out of you about the difference is that "born" poets use their moods, emotions, and sensibilities. Where am I wrong? You've given me nothing else to go on.

If you can't determine what Miyako meant in the post in question, then it's a problem with your reading, not Miyako's writing. For Chrissake, J, for whom English is a second language, understood it perfectly. Why can't you, as a native speaker, do the same?

We all know the answer. You are CONSTITUTIONALLY INCAPABLE of admitting you were wrong. You're a narcissist with some massive insecurity about art and culture. You have some big vendetta against Miyako, presumably, because she suggested you were wrong previously. And so you have no recourse but to demonstrate the inadequacies of your public school education in attempt to discredit her.

They have a name when for when you purposely misrepresent what someone says.

Straw Man
You commit the straw man fallacy whenever you attribute an easily refuted position to your opponent, one that the opponent wouldn’t endorse, and then proceed to attack the easily refuted position (the straw man) believing you have undermined the opponent’s actual position. If the misrepresentation is on purpose, then the straw man fallacy is caused by lying.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#StrawMan

I demand you cite where Miyako claimed that emotions were alone sufficient for the writing of poetry. Can't do it? I wonder why.




So, again, follow the chain of events:

2. You *seem* to be defending Vendler by claiming she's not a formalist, and that I should "read her books," and I would see she isn't one.

Fallacy

1. Miyako says Vendler isn't a formalist.
Therefore, Miyako is defending Vendler

Consider:

Non Sequitur
When a conclusion is supported only by extremely weak reasons or by irrelevant reasons, the argument is fallacious and is said to be a non sequitur.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#NonSequitur

You *seem* to have this sophomoric notion that including the word "seem" in an indictment excuses you from your logical responsibilities. In this, you are wrong.

Consider this similar fallacy:

1. Morpheus is attacking Miyako.
2. Therefore, Morpheus seems to hate Miyako.

The inclusion of "seem" does not avoid the error



It *seems* like a case of sour grapes, like, initially, you thought Vendler was on YOUR side, she wasn't a formalist, then when you realized she actually did what I did, you had to turn against her, so you found Schneider's terrible article.

It "seems" as though you want to kill Miyako. It "seems" as though you're the type of person who hangs corpses in his closet. It "seems" as though you might cannibalize children.

What's the matter? I said "seems".



It's called having eyes and a brain. I don't think anyone would take Schneider seriously after reading his exchange with Patrick on PoemShape. Schneider is actually a competent film critic, but he's woefully outmatched when it comes to poetry.

Says the guy who thinks Keats was a big intellectual, metaphysics is medieval voodoo and the laws of logic and mathematics can, in no way, exist outside the physical universe. So if we can write Schneider off on the grounds of an exchange he had on the internet, then, surely, we can write you off too.

[MorpheusSandman]

people care about established conventions of language that allow them to address other personsYou mean established conventions like those in the dictionaries that I cited that wasn't good enough for you? You know someone is desperate when they have to keep harping at someone over a choice of one word even when that person has gone to great lengths to explain precisely what they mean by that word that has several VALID definitions, one of which said person was using. But, never mind, you'd obviously rather prove my usage of the word intellectual was wrong (even if it wasn't) than actually grasp what I meant by the word and discuss whether or not it applies to certain poets. You keep calling ME a narcissist, but how narcissistic do you have to be to pretend like you are the ultimate arbiter of language and definitions? That because someone is using a word in a different way than you typically use it they must be ignorant, uneducated, and wrong, rather than you just misunderstanding how they were using it? I find it amazing that it's only you and JCamilo that has taken issue with it; everyone else seemed to understand me and my usage of it just fine, perhaps because they could grasp how I was using it in the context of poets learning the craft, so they took it to mean precisely that.

Anyway, let miyako answer for herself. SHE'S the one that started the thread with the "made" VS "born" poets dichotomy, and, thus far, I haven't read what distinction she's trying to make. If you notice, immediately after she mentioned the whole moods, emotions, sensitivity bit, I asked her, quite plainly, why is it that everyone with their own inborn moods, et al. can't write like the great poets, to which she still hasn't responded. Even Mutatis pressed her on this for a couple of posts, elaborating on my point that even though everyone has these feelings, not everyone can write good/great poetry, and she never, ever answered, eventually ending with: "Mutatis, I give up... to your control. I'm weak. hehehe " I even asked her again, after she started stressing how unique everyone's emotions/feelings are: "So everyone is a unique little snowflake; so why are some people better writers than others?"

Maybe if we're all terribly misreading poor miyako it's because she hasn't really taken the trouble to lay out precisely what she means by "made" VS "born" poets. Frankly, I don't think her sense of the two is much different than what I laid out in my last post with Person A and Person B (that, of course, you completely ignored). My entire point is, and has been since the beginning of this thread, that I don't know of many (perhaps any) poets that are considered "great" that took the Person A route, though I know plenty who took the Person B route and many more who took the in-between route.

By the way, why is it that Stlukes can say: "I stated earlier that I am not limiting learning to formal academic study... Early on in this debate others suggested that art was the result of combination of the learned (not to be interpreted as only meaning that learned in a formal, academic setting)..." yet when I said the same thing (in fact, I was one of the "others" suggesting that earlier in the thread) you felt compelled to jump all over me? Apparently, when Stlukes points out that there are multiple valid definitions of a word, and he's using it in a particular way, that's fine and dandy with you. I do that, and I'm committing some great evil against the English language.

By the way again, I never claimed you and/or J were "wrong," (J even said that he didn't feel he and I were differing and was merely using the word in different ways; if he could admit that, why can't you?) what I claimed was, quite clearly, we were all using different definitions of the word "intellectual." Here's an easy example taken from a classic: If a tree falls in a forest (you know the rest):

Person A: It doesn't make a sound because nobody hears it.
Person B: It does make a sound because it sends vibrations through the air.

Both seem to be disagreeing by stating opposite sides of the "it does/doesn't make a sound," but they're both actually right because they're simply using "sound" in different ways (one being an auditory experience, the other being acoustic vibrations). Similarly, what happened in this thread was I was using intellectual in precisely the way I've repeatedly outlined, while you and JCamilo were reading my usage and thinking of the word in different ways. You were not WRONG to do that, anymore than I was WRONG to do what I did.

But what you ARE WRONG about is continuing the dispute over the word even when I've clarified what I meant by it, and that that meaning is, indeed, a common usage that's in the dictionary. I did not make it up, I did not clearly use it in a different way THEN to how I'm saying I'm using it NOW. I've been consistent, and that consistency has support from numerous dictionaries. That you can't accept it testifies to your obstinacy with regards to proving I was wrong about something. If you're that desperate, latch on like a bulldog to the fact I stated that "innate intellectual" was an admittedly bad term, but quit harping on this one freaking word. You know (now) what I meant by it, so if you were really concerned about discussing anything (rather than just being concerned about "winning") then you would've moved on to actually discussing if Keats (or any other poets you choose) fit under that usage or not. That Keats and the Romantics were not "intellectuals" in the same way as the Enlightenment poets is obvious, but that they were not "intellectuals" in other ways is what's in dispute. You can't just arbitrarily choose one definition of a word, say someone is not that under that particular definition, and then claim they're not that under any other definition.

[stuntpickle]

You mean established conventions like those in the dictionaries that I cited that wasn't good enough for you?

You mean the definitions that demonstrated you didn't understand them since you missed that they hinged upon the inclusion of the word "intellect" whichi was the very point of contention? Dur....



Anyway, let miyako answer for herself.

I'll say what I want to--especially when it involves one person making fallacious accusations against another for the sole purpose of trying to shame her.



By the way, why is it that Stlukes can say: "I stated earlier that I am not limiting learning to formal academic study... Early on in this debate others suggested that art was the result of combination of the learned (not to be interpreted as only meaning that learned in a formal, academic setting)..." yet when I said the same thing (in fact, I was one of the "others" suggesting that earlier in the thread) you felt compelled to jump all over me? Apparently, when Stlukes points out that there are multiple valid definitions of a word, and he's using it in a particular way, that's fine and dandy with you. I do that, and I'm committing some great evil against the English language.

Why do I act differently with StLukes? Because StLukes doesn't insist upon arguing an equivocation. He says "okay, perhaps study isn't the right word"; he doesn't say "no, study is exactly the right word and here's why." Besides the disagreement over "study" is minor compared to the disagreement over "intellectual." StLukes also isn't trying to bully the terms of the conversation by equivocating.


But what you ARE WRONG about is continuing the dispute over the word even when I've clarified what I meant by it, and that that meaning is, indeed, a common usage that's in the dictionary. I did not make it up,

No, you did not make up the word "intellectual", you simply misused it. You also quoted a dictionary that demonstrated the error without you realizing it. You missed the fact that the point of contention was over what we meant by "intellect", which was itself used in the definition you cited. Dur...

I am continuing to dispute the usage of the word because you are still trying to co opt the terms of the conversation with it. You are trying to suggest that Keats was a "made" poet because he viewed poetry intellectually. Concede, and I'll stop kicking your butt.


You can't just arbitrarily choose one definition of a word,

I'm not arbitrarily choosing one definition, dolt. I am using the connotation of the word, which everyone besides you understands. You can't understand this just as you can't understand the friggin dictionary definition you, yourself, cited, just as you couldn't understand the Wikipedia article you, yourself, cited. Talking to you is like talking to an obstinate five year old.

You're wrong; you lose; get over it.

[MorpheusSandman]

You mean the definitions that demonstrated you didn't understand them since you missed that they hinged upon the inclusion of the word "intellect" which was the very point of contention?"Intellect" was not the point of contention, "intellectual" was (I went back and CTRL+F the first several pages just to confirm this, and "intellect" was never mentioned, while "intellectual" was mentioned frequently). That "intellectual" has the root word "intellect" does not mean that the two are identical. The fact that every dictionary has two separate entries for both terms, and that they are slightly different should be proof of that. Again, Merriam-Webster says quite plainly:

a : given to study, reflection, and speculation
b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

Here's their entry for "intellectual defined for English-language learners:"

2. intellectual noun
[count] : a smart person who enjoys serious study and thought

That is pretty damned unambiguous. That you're trying to impose the root word "intellect" on to these two is just you playing dictionary dictator.


He says "okay, perhaps study isn't the right word";Way to cut off his quote. Try again, here's what he said: "study may not be the best word if we take it to mean formal study... but I stated earlier that I am not limiting learning to formal academic study."

So, allow me to appropriate stluke's qualification: "intellectual may not be the best word if we take it to mean only those who have formally studied and learned poetry... but I stated earlier that I am not limiting intellectual to formal academic study. Ironically, I said almost this exact same way earlier in the thread and, again, that wasn't good enough for you (though it is when stlukes does it).

Gee, that was easy. So we're cool now?


You are trying to suggest that Keats was a "made" poet because he viewed poetry intellectually.Keats is not the same Keats we know without his years of studying and critically thinking about the classics and his contemporaries, and even about his own work in terms of what worked and what didn't, as well as about the various aesthetic theories he expressed both inside and outside of his poetry. He wasn't "born" with any of that, and if you want to say it's not the product of formal learning, then I'd agree. If you want to say it's all the product of intuition and instincts then I'd disagree, as he was clearly conscious about many of these ideas. If you want to talk about whether his learning was "intellectual" it would all depend on which definition you pick. My original argument is that one can grasp something intuitive, and then think on it enough until it emerges as an intellectual concept that is rational. I'd suggest even most of the theories offered in formal learning have their roots in that kind of intuitive-to-intellectual progression.


I am using the connotation of the word, which everyone besides you understands. And I am using one of the denotations of the word, which everyone but you understands. Again, you don't get to arbitrarily pick a connotation and claim I'm an idiot for using a different denotation.

You're wrong; you lose; get over it. (Gee, that accomplished a lot).

[stuntpickle]

"Intellect" was not the point of contention,

HAHA! What an idiot. You're right. The root word had nothing to do with the actual word, even if we were all trying to point out the essence of the root word, and there were several posts explicitly discussing the distinction between mind and heart, rationality and emotion. What could "intellect" have to do with that? God, man, if you were any dumber you couldn't breathe.


That "intellectual" has the root word "intellect" does not mean that the two are identical.

The point of contention is whether intellectual properly connotes a reliance on reason as opposed to emotion, which is a problem still contained in the root word. Gee, over-reliance on literal interpretations and a preference for denotation over connotation. Your poetic future is BRIGHT!

For your edification: the point of contention isn't the word "intellectual", moron, but what we mean by it, which is still a problem with any definition using the root word. Durrr.....


So we're cool now?

I'll doubt I'll ever be cool with some second-rate obfuscator whose only skill is confusing himself. You're an idiot who understands nothing of logic or language.


Keats is not the same Keats we know without his years of studying and critically thinking about the classics and his contemporaries,

Spare me the idiocy of you continuing to argue that Keats was some big intellectual. You're talking to someone whose primary emphasis in study concerned the English Romantics. I have little interest in watching some dolt try to appropriate them into his hilarious argument.

1. Keats was smart.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats read lots poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats thought a lot about poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats said some interesting things about poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

Fallacy. Fallacy. Fallacy.

Dude, you're hilarious.

If it's simply a disagreement about what intellectual means, then why are you so insistent about continuing the argument?

Oh! Oh! I know! Because you're a narcissist who can never concede a point.


And I am using one of the denotations of the word,

I hear it's only the good poets who care about denotation. Good luck. Hope the poker thing works out.

[MorpheusSandman]

The root word had nothing to do with the actual word, Welcome to language. That happens sometimes. I'm sure you'll learn to accept it some day.

If you want to have fun with root words, the root words of "intuitive" comes from "intueri" which means "to look at, to consider." "Intellect" comes from "intellectus" which means "discernment, understanding." I wonder how someone "understands" something without "considering" that something? Likewise, did you know that intuition and tuition share the same root word of "tueri" which means "too look at, watch over." Do you want to claim that intuition and tuition have the same meaning like intellect and intellectual because they share a root word?


even if we were all trying to point out the essence of the root word, I didn't notice any until you showed up. Again, those first several pages the entire discussion over the classification of "intellectual," not "intellect."


The point of contention is whether intellectual properly connotes a reliance on reason as opposed to emotion, which is a problem still contained in the root word.No, the point of contention is over what kind of learning and thought it requires for one to be considered an intellectual. Even JCamilo admitted this: "I was using intellectual as the class of person, the scholar, academic." I even noted this afterwards: "now it seems we've shifted to discussing exactly what constitutes an intellectual artist... I think the distinction I've been trying to make is between intellectual and academic/critic, but another distinction would have to be drawn between intellectual and just "everyday thinker" or "every product of our minds" as well... most "everyday learners" do not come up with something like "Negative Capability," which is the product of much reading and reflection. But because it was done outside of the academy, it couldn't be said to be "academic" either, so "intellectual," to me, seems the right way to describe it."

I mean, I think J summed it up better than you did: "I told you we do not have much disagreement... Afterwards we developed this discussion with two pararel topics, because I found the use of the world intellectual confusing... But as I said, I can see what you want to mean and there is no need for wasting time with vocabulary discussions, considering in the end we are not claiming poets are born writing poetry... Either way, I do think you are presenting with a very specific kind of poet (or artist) but our disagreements seems to be so small relating this thread that it is better we wait another oportunity to discuss it as we are not leaving the site so soon."

After that, J and I basically settled (as far as I was concerned) whatever disagreement we had. He admitted that he was using "intellectual" to mean "academic, scholar," I expressed I was not using it to mean this, but what I stated. J understood my usage, and even if he didn't think that usage was appropriate it, he simply moved on once he understood what I meant.


For your edification: the point of contention isn't the word "intellectual", moron, but what we mean by itDuh, and I pointed to several dictionaries that explain what I mean by it and for some reason only you're privy to, you won't accept their definition or mine.


1. Keats was smart.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats read lots poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats thought a lot about poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

1. Keats said some interesting things about poetry.
Therefore, Keats was an intellectual.

Fallacy. Fallacy. Fallacy.So I take it you disagree with Merriam-Webster, then?


If it's simply a disagreement about what intellectual means, then why are you so insistent about continuing the argument?I could ask you the same thing. The only reason I keep continuing is because you won't accept that, by golly, I'm using a word in one of the ways in which a dictionary defines it and, by golly, the initial debate was with someone who was using the word differently and, by golly, we were both using it in completely valid (merely different) ways. That you feel the need to insist someone is "right" and "wrong" rather than that were was simply a misunderstanding that was cleared up by our clarifying what we meant is a reflection on your narcissistic need to "win" the debate.


Hope the poker thing works out.It bought me my house, a high end audio system, a decent home theater, lots of CDs, lots of books, lots of movies, and lots of free time to read, listen, watch, study, and debate with fine folks like yourself. Not bad for a guy that's such an idiot, eh? :)

[miyako73]

I don't want to join in this ruckus, so spare me. I have no more patience for this. I tried to shape this thread by injecting different line of thoughts, so we could have a rich conversation about the topic, but, unfortunately, I failed. The title of this thread should have been about "intellectual" since the latter got more attention.

This is not to side with Stunt. Morpheus, you have the passion for argument, but your logical reasoning skill is either lacking or non-existent. I have been pointing your misreadings again and again. Fallacies turn readers off. That you speak English and know the topic is not enough in an argument. You have to know logic. How can you communicate if your understanding of things is fallacious? There's still time. Read.

[MorpheusSandman]

your logical reasoning skill is either lacking or non-existent. I have been pointing your misreadings again and again. :frown2:

What about all of YOUR misreadings? Those don't count?

I have asked you countless times in this thread to clarify what you mean by "born" VS "made," and you have repeatedly declined, even when it came to Mutatis asking and stlukes asking. Nobody has been able to get a straight answer from you. The MOST we got was your spiel about emotions, sensibilities, etc. at which point I assumed that's what you meant by "made" since, afterall, that IS what the thread was about.

Plus, I truly wonder how much better my "reasoning skills" need to be when one debate is over a misunderstanding about the usage of a word and I point out that the way I was using it is listed in multiple dictionaries, and that we (me and J, then me and stunt) were just using it in different ways. Now you're just clinging onto to stunt's vacuous accusations about my (non-existent) fallacies and supposed lack of knowledge regarding logic, all of which have been predicated on gross misreadings of what I was saying. If there's anyone you should accuse of misreading, it's stunt. I could point out at least 10 examples in this thread alone.

[stuntpickle]

Welcome to language. That happens sometimes. I'm sure you'll learn to accept it some day.

Don't pretend to instruct me in language, ignoramus.




If you want to have fun with root words, the root words of "intuitive" comes from "intueri" which means "to look at, to consider." "Intellect" comes from "intellectus" which means "discernment, understanding." I wonder how someone "understands" something without "considering" that something? Likewise, did you know that intuition and tuition share the same root word of "tueri" which means "too look at, watch over." Do you want to claim that intuition and tuition have the same meaning like intellect and intellectual because they share a root word?

The above is an example of another straw man argument. I was not claiming that words adhere to their original derivations or to this or that latinate root. You're arguing against a claim no one is making due to your perennial problem of conveniently misconstruing what others say. This is the same thing that you're doing to Miyako, and it's not simply I who am recognizing it. You're also again guilty of equivocation.

First, there can be no debate on simply a subject. Resolved: intellectual.....? That's a rhetorical vacuum that none can approach. Resolved: "intellectual" means X, however, can be a point of contention.

Sophomoric mistake #1:

You misunderstand that we can simply be arguing over a word like "intellectual" or "intellect." The truth is the problem we're having relates directly to both words because they concern the same idea. Let's go ahead and dismantle your elementary school error by listing the primary definition MW offers:

a : of or relating to the intellect or its use

This is a common rhetorical flourish employed by all dictionaries: of, relating to, pertaining to X, which is appropriate when a word is the adjectival form derived from a noun.

The first sign of a second-rate mind is when someone pretends that a rudimentary reference can wholly adjudicate a disagreement. This is what happens when 4th graders disagree: one of them looks up a word in the dictionary and says "See, I told you." I can already anticipate your second-rate obfuscator's mind: You're about to say "But you cited the dictionary first." Of course, but I used it in the appropriate fashion.

You see, you clearly demonstrate that you don't know how to use a dictionary when you completely ignore the essence of a word in favor of some secondary meaning. You also demonstrate that you're fairly ignorant of the biggest problem with language: namely, that words can only be defined with other words. This is essentially the big problem with language first proposed in the 20th Century, and for someone who pretends to understands linguistics and semiotics, this is friggin hilarious. If you're trying to get at the essence of a word, and all you can do is hang a bunch of other words one the word the one in question is derived from, you don't succeed in making the meaning any clearer.

The apparent difficulty in understanding the meaning of the word "intellectual" is understanding the word "intellect". There's no way around this, and that you can't understand this demonstrates your idiocy.

Sophomoric mistake #2 (fallacy of equivocation, one of your favorites, it seems)

When I called "intellect" the root word, I did so as a courtesy to you since that's what you called it.

Consider:


That "intellectual" has the root word "intellect" does not mean that the two are identical.

Then there followed a discussion about the centrality of "intellect," and then you switched this, for no reason, to a discussion of "intellectus", which ironically still contains the same problem despite all your infantile attempts to hide it.

So we have the following fallacious argument:

1. Stunt says the root word "intellect" is central to the meaning of "intellectual".
2. I demonstrated how antique roots do not mean precisely the same thing as their modern byproducts by examining the word "intellectus" (which was, itself, a false obscuring of the facts).
Therefore, stunt is wrong.

Again and again you make the SAME errors of thought. Perhaps you should try learning from your mistakes some time.

Sophomoric mistake #3

You pick the least likely candidate for intellectual revisionism: John Keats.

Consider:

Negative Capability

It can sometimes be hard to understand how someone can ‘know’ something through emotion. In our society the word ‘know’ is so strongly associated with the words reason, rationality and logic that is hard to imagine being able to know something in any other way. Sure, we can know things through language and through perception, but those are basically just two different kinds of input – in the end it’s our reason working on what we perceive or what is communicated to us through language that makes us know something.

Indeed, from a typically Western atheistic-scientific perspective, emotion and faith are actually often dismissed as ‘ways of knowing’ and are perhaps more often thought of as ‘ways of believing’ or better still, ways of coming to a belief.

However, this way of thinking does not have to be the case and, throughout history, there have been examples of people who have tried to downplay the importance of reason and emphasise how important emotion is in really knowing something, in really coming to the truth. Keats, one of the English Romantic poets of the 19th Century, believed this and, although this is a bit of a simplification, he called direct, non-rational, emotional access to the truth ‘Negative Capability’.

http://mrhoyestokwebsite.com/WOKs/Emotion/Useful%20Information/Negative%20Capabilty.htm

Negative capability is the state of creative opposition that enables one to transcend any intellectual or social constraints.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_capability

Negative Capability

A term used many times on this website...

'The concept of Negative Capability is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.'

http://www.keatsian.co.uk/negative-capability.htm

The hilarity of your idiotic assessment of Keats is that you miss that the biggest charge leveled against him is one of ANTI-intellectualism. When your hero Richard Dawkins set out to discuss anti-intellectualism, he chose Keats as his historical target.

I can think of not a single poet who would more viciously resist the categorization as an "intellectual" than Keats. His whole friggin ethos was about the rejection of the intellect. He is the poster child for emotion in the intellect vs. emotion debate.

You seem to think J is sort of conceding the argument to you, but I think you're grossly misinterpreting his actions. Of course, I can't read J's mind, but I think he realizes that you're generally clueless about the subject and that discussing it with you further is futile. I mean, had you chosen someone else--ANYONE ELSE--we might be able to take you seriously. But you chose friggin Keats--the guy who kept insisting on a rejection of the intellect in favor of emotion! This is your "intellectual".

You're just embarrassing yourself.

[miyako73]

Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

"I have asked you countless times in this thread to clarify what you mean by "born" VS "made," and you have repeatedly declined, even when it came to Mutatis asking and stlukes asking. Nobody has been able to get a straight answer from you."

I'm curious. Can you paste your and your friends' statements that "asked to clarify born vs. made" and mine that "repeatedly declined"? Maybe my speed-reading did not catch them.

Let me give you a hint. Anything about art or literature, as far as reception is concerned, cannot be generalized. Why? Because it involves perception. Everyone has its own perception. Have you noticed my usage of I, me, and myself in this thread?

Initially, this thread aimed to elicit different perceptions, but, unfortunately, you wanted to dominate. Hence, this thread has become a space for your verbal diarrhea.

[MorpheusSandman]

The truth is the problem we're having relates directly to both words because they concern the same idea.No, they concern a similar idea, not the same idea.


you clearly demonstrate that you don't know how to use a dictionary when you completely ignore the essence of a wordOooh, the “essence” of a word! That sounds exciting… and delicious! I didn’t know words were these mystical things that had an “essence.” I thought they were signs that referred to things, and sometimes they were signs that referred to multiple things. I thought they were things that evolved due to usage, sometimes dropping meanings, sometimes picking up meanings, sometimes still closely associated with its roots, sometimes branching off to be quite different from its roots. Silly me. I’ve been missing “the essence” of intellectual… is the essence something like the creamy center of a candy bar?


in favor of some secondary meaning. ”Secondary meaning?” Now we’re RANKING meanings? Your meaning is an admiral, mine’s a captain, yours wins!


that words can only be defined with other words.Yes, and the words MW uses to define intellectual are clear and unambiguous. I'll repeat them for you:

a : given to study, reflection, and speculation
b : engaged in activity requiring the creative use of the intellect <intellectual playwrights>

Who’s obfuscating now?


If you're trying to get at the essence of a word,I’m NOT trying to get to any essence! Neither are dictionaries. Dictionaries are just documentarians of usage that attempt to define words intensionally with as little ambiguity is possible. One thing a dictionary can’t do is extensionally define something (which is how we first learn words) by pointing to something and going “THAT.”


The apparent difficulty in understanding the meaning of the word "intellectual" is understanding the word "intellect".The only “difficulty” is in your befuddled mind. That’s the only difficulty. JCamilo and I understand each other. We accepted we were using different definitions and moved on. Now you’re coming in trying to play dictator of meaning, trying to pretend that “intellectual” must be understood by understanding its root word “intellect,” but this is blatantly, egregiously, outrageously false. Sometimes root words help to clarify a word, and sometimes they don’t. Hence understanding the common definitions of “tuition” doesn’t help at all in understanding “intuition”.


1. Stunt says the root word "intellect" is central to the meaning of "intellectual".
2. I demonstrated how antique roots do not mean precisely the same thing as their modern byproducts by examining the word "intellectus" (which was, itself, a false obscuring of the facts).
Therefore, stunt is wrong.I like how you conveniently label the two roots as “antique” VS “modern,” but there is a continuity, not a discrete split. One way certain words grow far away from their roots is because their compounds build up different associations over time. So the same way that “intuition” and “tuition” can start out meaning very similar things, but one comes to mean something completely different than its root, is proof of how such events occur. While “intellectual” is not AS FAR away from “intellect” as “intuition” and “tuition,” the idea that the associations have grown away from the root is undeniably. They still both have a similar meaning of learning, but one refers to a certain faculty of learning, the other refers to people who have learned, or even those that engage in “study, reflection, and speculation.”


Consider:

[I]Negative CapabilityThose were some nice links, but it seems to me that many are extrapolating far beyond Keats’ one and only usage of the term, which is simply:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.That Negative Capability is a potent argument against “fact and reason,” and in favor of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts” is undeniable, but the way in which Keats REACHED this theory was entirely intellectual. “Several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement…” Gee, does that not sound like an intellectual process he’s describing? Does it not sound like the product of someone who is “given to study, reflection, and speculation?” That Keats is arguing for anti-reason and anti-fact does not mean he is being an anti-intellectual as he is doing so, as his entire formulation, the entire process that allowed for that formulation, was entirely an intellectual endeavor, one achieved by his reading and reflecting on Shakespeare, his “disquisition” with Dilke, his reading and disagreement with Coleridge. All of these circling around “the life of the mind,” all of them from “a smart person who enjoys study and thought.”

Again, that you are equating an intellectual with someone who has to consciously theorize about everything, like a Coleridge, is your own usage. That JCamilo was using it to simply denote “academics, scholars” was his. That, for me, it’s defined by people who are “given to study, reflection, and speculation” and who “enjoys study and thought” is mine that I do not limit to people who feel it necessary to develop everything into some formal, academic theory.


your hero Richard Dawkins set out to discuss anti-intellectualism, he chose Keats as his historical target.He’s not my hero, and all this tells me is that he had his own definition of intellectualism.


His whole friggin ethos was about the rejection of the intellect.Yes, and he did so while being quite intellectual about it! Gotta love the irony! Much like his statement that: "If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all" even though poetry did not come so easy to him and he suffered more than one failure and setback, even giving up on certain works, and worked very hard and diligently at refining his aesthetic, style, and thematic material.


You seem to think J is sort of conceding the argument to you, but I think you're grossly misinterpreting his actions. Would you please listen to yourself? “(I) think J conceded the argument to me”? I quoted him exactly, and I happen to agree: I don’t think there was an argument to concede because we didn’t even really disagree. We were merely using two different definitions of the same word, and once that difference was cleared up, there was no disagreement. There’s nothing to concede, nobody won, nobody lost. Good grief.

[stuntpickle]

Oooh, the “essence” of a word! That sounds exciting… and delicious! I didn’t know words were these mystical things that had an “essence.” I thought they were signs that referred to things, and sometimes they were signs that referred to multiple things. I thought they were things that evolved due to usage, sometimes dropping meanings, sometimes picking up meanings, sometimes still closely associated with its roots, sometimes branching off to be quite different from its roots. Silly me. I’ve been missing “the essence” of intellectual… is the essence something like the creamy center of a candy bar?

The essence of a word is a metaphor--something that is likely to be difficult for a literalist goon with a Cliff Notes understanding of literature. I find it hilarious that some moron who pretends to be an expert in linguistics always resorts to a literal interpretation and quoting from the dictionary.


”Secondary meaning?” Now we’re RANKING meanings? Your meaning is an admiral, mine’s a captain, yours wins!

A wonderful demonstration that you have no clue. I wonder what all those organizational letters and numbers mean. Perhaps you should try actually reading all the documentation in the front of a dictionary that can help explain to you how it is organized.




Who’s obfuscating now?

You, as usual.



The only “difficulty” is in your befuddled mind. That’s the only difficulty. JCamilo and I understand each other. We accepted we were using different definitions and moved on. Now you’re coming in trying to play dictator of meaning, trying to pretend that “intellectual” must be understood by understanding its root word “intellect,” but this is blatantly, egregiously, outrageously false. Sometimes root words help to clarify a word, and sometimes they don’t. Hence understanding the common definitions of “tuition” doesn’t help at all in understanding “intuition”.

Let me rephrase it for you. I suspect J is trying to avoid your obvious ignorance.


Again, that you are equating an intellectual with someone who has to consciously theorize about everything, like a Coleridge, is your own usage. That JCamilo was using it to simply denote “academics, scholars” was his. That, for me, it’s defined by people who are “given to study, reflection, and speculation” and who “enjoys study and thought” is mine that I do not limit to people who feel it necessary to develop everything into some formal, academic theory.

Yeah, I'm equating the two things because they are equatable. There's an historical conversation about intellectualism in the 18th and 19th Centuries that I wouldn't expect a poker player reading Semiotics in 30 Minutes in between hands to understand. And Keats was a MAJOR component in that discussion. The problem here is you're some uneducated dolt ignorant of the fact that "intellectual" is precisely the wrong word to use in this context.


Yes, and he did so while being quite intellectual about it! Gotta love the irony!

It isn't irony, but a contradiction, two things dullards often mistake.


Would you please listen to yourself? “(I) think J conceded the argument to me”? I quoted him exactly, and I happen to agree: I don’t think there was an argument to concede because we didn’t even really disagree.


I think J was simply being nice. I think J realizes that anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the subject would realize how inappropriate the comment is.

You also flatly accused J of bringing up the word intellectual in the first place. This is simply more evidence of your intellectual dishonesty. You're a narcissist who has to obscure all of literature just so he can be right. I hope you know more about poker than you do literature.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm curious. Can you paste your and your friends' statements that "asked to clarify born vs. made" and mine that "repeatedly declined"?

You on Page 4: "born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two."

Several responses:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1142693&postcount=105
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1142717&postcount=107
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1142662&postcount=102

You didn't answer any of them that I saw.

You on Page 10: "I also don't write at my whim. Without my mood, I can't think of apt words to use. Without my sensitivity, I am blind to the images in my head. Without my emotions, my metaphors are stale. My writing skill may not be natural or inborn, but my mood, sensitivity, and emotions are."

Several replies:

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1143268&postcount=164
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1143273&postcount=168
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1143570&postcount=196
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1143882&postcount=212

You replied to Mutatis once, then stopped. You never replied to my simple question, and you seemingly ignored Stlukes.

Finally, many pages later you say: "I believe there are two kinds of artists or writers, the ones with talents and the ones with skills. Talent is inborn while skill is acquired. Both talent and skill can improve to near perfection and they can also decline or diminish into oblivion.

The best analogy I think:

Born - talent - already a pencil - sharpen
Made - skill - still a wood and a graphite - made into a pencil - sharpen

The made writers have to do more effort and learning than the born ones to better their craft. But then again, over-sharpening a pencil make its tip thinner and break. That's the dilemma. "

Which seems to be what most of us were saying from the beginning of the thread, so it's a little frustrating that you only finally decided to mention this on Page 17. But even here, how does one separate "talent" and "skill," what is "inborn" from what is "learned"?

[miyako73]

Morpheus, you failed again.

Read what I wrote. Those are my opinions, perceptions, and views.

Ex.

"born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two."


If I want to make that a general statement, I would have written it as:

"born poets fvck readers awake, made poets fvck readers asleep. Boredom is what separates the two."

Misreading again. Aren't you all-in yet?


By the way, I'm still waiting for your response to my last post. I am not writing in French. Understand my question. I see two fallacies involved already besides argument by verbosity.

[stuntpickle]

Which seems to be what most of us were saying from the beginning of the thread, so it's a little frustrating that you only finally decided to mention this on Page 17. But even here, how does one separate "talent" and "skill," what is "inborn" from what is "learned"?

There's no contradiction in what she's saying. You're just making poor assumptions in order to pretend otherwise. Your accusation was that Miyako was clearly stating that all one needed was emotions to write poetry. I have already demanded you cite where she said this. You have failed to do so. You are again guilty of fallacious reasoning.


Any further response without citing where Miyako stated that all anyone needed were emotions to write poetry, is evidence of your dishonesty.

[miyako73]

By the way, Mutatis' question was already answered by my very view he questioned. I did not resort to the fallacy of silence nor my not answering him should be construed as declining or ignoring.

Originally Posted by miyako73

The question is simple: Are poets born or made?

I wonder why there are talks about beer, intellectuals, Monty Python, etc.

My answer: born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two.

Mutatis responded:

And how do you distinguish between the two? By what you like?


Had he asked, "how do we distinguish between the two?"

I would have answered with a question, "Isn't that what this thread is all about?"

The problem in most threads here: you are more concerned with shaming or rebutting others but not sharing your opinions.

In a healthy dialectics, more opinions are needed for a sound synthesis.

[stuntpickle]

That Negative Capability is a potent argument against “fact and reason,” and in favor of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts” is undeniable, but the way in which Keats REACHED this theory was entirely intellectual. “Several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement…”


Keats is describing a revelation, not an intellectualization.

[MorpheusSandman]

The essence of a word is a metaphor—For what? Ok, you’ve got the tenor (word) and vehicle (essence), so what’s the ground?


I wonder what all those organizational letters and numbers mean.My point wasn’t about what they mean, but rather that you’re trying to denigrate my usage because it’s “secondary,” as if your “primary” trumps mine in rank. I don’t know how much lower an argument can sink.


I suspect J is trying to avoid your obvious ignorance.Or, instead of trying to interpret his words, you could just read what he wrote:

1. “I told you we do not have much disagreement”
2. “I found the use of the world intellectual confusing... But as I said, I can see what you want to mean and there is no need for wasting time with vocabulary discussions, considering in the end we are not claiming poets are born writing poetry.”

So, accuse me of “misreading” but I take this to mean that JCamilo doesn’t feel as if we’re disagreeing (I get this from where he says “we do not have much disagreement,” but maybe I’m misreading) and that, even though he found my usage of the word confusing, he knows what I meant, and since we agree on the issue, there’s no reason to “waste time” with vocabulary discussions.

So, I’m curious where you see the subtle meaning of “I’m avoiding your obvious ignorance” in those quotes.


I'm equating the two things because they are equatable.Yes, under one definition of the word.


The problem here is you're some uneducated dolt ignorant of the fact that "intellectual" is precisely the wrong word to use in this context.Yes, again, I’m “uneducated” because I’m using a word in the way as it’s defined in multiple dictionaries. I do wish you could listen to yourself. But, just to appease you, what is “precisely the right word” to use in this context given my meaning?


It isn't irony, but a contradiction, two things dullards often mistake. Again, I can't help but notice how you completely sidestep the main point for something completely tangential.


You also flatly accused J of bringing up the word intellectual in the first place. I had to go back and find out what you were referring to, but you (and he) were correct that I was wrong about that. I thought I apologized to him, but maybe not.

Anyway, that "accusation" wasn't even the gist of that post. It was mostly in response to you claiming J was right for saying something I had said long before him.


Keats is describing a revelation, not an intellectualization.:lol: How would you distinguish one from the other? You make it sound like God came down from the heavens and told Keats this, that this "revelation" didn't happen within the confines of his thinking, pondering brain.

[stuntpickle]

Look, Morpheus, you have the power to end this conversation right now. Just say that when you used the words "anti-intellectual" and "intellectual" in regards to this discussion in general, and Keats in particular, you chose unfortunate terms with obvious connotative baggage that wasn't at all helpful in discussing the subject.

If you want to discuss how "smart", "clever" or "_______" Keats was, I have no problem. But your biggest obstacle in calling Keats an intellectual is Keats, himself. You simply can't get around this. This isn't my pet peeve or my particular attempt to frustrate you, it is a gross mischaracterization that you can only accomplish by completely ignoring the connotation and the historical context of the word.


How would you distinguish one from the other? You make it sound like God came down from the heavens and told Keats this, that this "revelation" didn't happen within the confines of his thinking, pondering brain.

So you're unfamiliar with "epiphany?" I think we can gather that Keats was struck "at once" with this idea since he tells us that much. No one is saying Keats couldn't think. Are you f'n serious? Are you suggesting that thinking and pondering make someone an intellectual? So then would we all be intellectuals? Dude, this is absurd.

[miyako73]

Mental sado-masochists get off from being insulted and called names though they deserve them. I guess time to exit for me.

[MorpheusSandman]

Read what I wrote. Those are my opinions, perceptions, and views.So what in the world does that have to do with people asking you questions and you not responding to them? Further, how in the world could we ever have a discussion in a thread where you introduce two terms, and then define them by what affect they have on you?


By the way, I'm still waiting for your response to my last post... Understand my question. What post? What question? What are you referring to?


By the way, Mutatis' question was already answered by my very view he questioned.Obviously Mutatis was asking about the more generalized "you," and both myself and ShadowsCool did the same thing. ShadowsCool said it most succinctly: "How can one know one from the other? It's such a personal issue."

The point being, that if all that distinguishes "made" poets from "born" poets is how one reacts to them then they are completely useless terms in conversation because everyone will have different tastes. When you start a thread with a title like this, I'm guessing most people think you already have an idea of what "made" vs "born" poets are that everyone can agree on some actual distinction, rather than just personal taste.

I mean, let's put it this way: you say: "born poets fvck me up awake, made poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two." What if I then say: "Made poets fvck me up awake, bprn poets fvck me up asleep. Boredom is what separates the two." I've just stated the reverse of your statement, and we haven't gotten an inch close to figuring out what the difference between a "born" and a "made" poet is.


you are more concerned with shaming or rebutting others but not sharing your opinions.Again, this arbitrary distinction: so I can't share my opinions while rebutting others? You do know that "dialectics" means taking opposing views and working towards a resolution, correct? So how is that to happen if everyone just opinion vomits and nobody actually engages with others' opinions?


Just say that when you used the words "anti-intellectual" and "intellectual" in regards to this discussion in general, and Keats in particular, you chose unfortunate terms with obvious connotative baggage that wasn't at all helpful in discussing the subject.I'll agree with that.


it is a gross mischaracterization that you can only accomplish by completely ignoring the connotation and the historical context of the word.And it's perfectly fine to ignore those connotations and historical contexts as long as one is clarifying that they're doing so and using a definition that is perfectly applicable (and I will admit it's my fault for not doing so from the get-go, but you should credit me for doing so once the misunderstanding arose).


I think we can gather that Keats was struck "at once" with this idea since he tells us that much.It was an idea that struck "at once" after a lot of other very intellectual pursuits, all of which had to happen for the epiphany to have occurred. I seem to remember reading that General Relativity struck Einstein similarly, but it probably helped that he had thought about the subject beforehand.


Are you suggesting that thinking and pondering make someone an intellectual? So then would we all be intellectuals? No, and I'm glad you FINALLY mentioned this. This is the distinction I tried to make with JCamilo back when we started. Here's precisely what I said: "I did state that "intellectual" needs to be distinguished from just 'everyday learning" (I'd add thinking) and "academic" and that I think it resides somewhere in the middle. Again, most "everyday learners(/thinkers)" do not come up with something like "Negative Capability," which is the product of much reading and reflection. But because it was done outside of the academy, it couldn't be said to be "academic" either, so "intellectual," to me, seems the right way to describe it."

So, no, I do not think everyone that "thinks and ponders" is an intellectual. Rather, I tried to argue that my usage was for those that think and ponder a great deal on certain abstract subjects, aesthetic theories being one of them. Keats did this. He clearly thought more--longer, deeper, broader--on the subject of poetry than do most, and it lead him to come up with several theories that still resonate today. To me, that's THE mark of an intellectual: think a lot on a subject, come up with concepts that continue to resonate... or at least show some thoughtful engagement with the various intellectual theories and ideas at the time.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

:lol: This has to be the most long-winded and complicated semantic argument ever.

[miyako73]

Shadowcool answered it already. "How can one know one from the other? It's such a personal issue."


Dialectics:

Thesis vs antithesis = synthesis


Apples are red - thesis
There are green apples - antithesis
There are green apples and red apples - synthesis


Simply saying you are wrong is not an antithesis. You have to have a thesis that is anti.


:lol: This has to be the most long-winded and complicated semantic argument ever.

You are right, Hon. :) I'll just flirt.

[MorpheusSandman]

Shadowcool answered it already. "How can one know one from the other? It's such a personal issue."Did you miss my point about how defining such terms completely subjectively makes them useless in social conversation?


Dialectics:

Thesis vs antithesis = synthesis


Apples are red - thesis
There are green apples - antithesis
There are green and red apples - synthesisWatch this:

Born poets are good - thesis
Made poets are good - antithesis
There are good born and made poets - synthesis

There, I just solved this thread. What do I win?


You are right, Hon. :) I'll just flirt.I don't know about you and Stunt, but I'm ready for a three-way so we can relieve all of this sexual tension. :)

[miyako73]

Born poets are good - thesis
Made poets are good - antithesis
There are good born and made poets - synthesis

There, I just solved this thread. What do I win?

Your logic is really faulty. what's the clear opposing relation of the second to the first? Nothing.