Are Poets Born Not Made?

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

"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:

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Good overall post, Juniper, but I'm used to Stunt claiming I said things I never said by now. ;)

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Well, the problem is that bad poets also have a read the precussors.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

But reading precussors is far from being intelectuals or understanding them. A good example on that list is Keats. He is not an intelectual.

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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."

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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".

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

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?

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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).

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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;

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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.).

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

What I see is a lot of poetry based on established form and I hardly ever see anything that's obscure.

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: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.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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.

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."

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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").

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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...

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

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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...

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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").

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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...

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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.

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.

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...

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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?

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Originally Posted by stuntpickle

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".

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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.

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.

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.

Where did you get this, Delta? Resourceful you.

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

That defines it.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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Originally Posted by 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:

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: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.)

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:

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

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

I was using intellectual as the class of person, the scholar, academic which Keats was never

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Ironically, 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.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

Indeed, there is no need to defend the canon, the establishment has already taken care of that.

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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.

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Originally Posted by paradoxical

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by miyako73

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.

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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”?

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Originally Posted by MorpheusSandman

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.

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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.

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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.”

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: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.

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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.”).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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...

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'.

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

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Originally Posted by 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

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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.

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Originally Posted by 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

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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

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

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