Are Poets Born Not Made?

[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.

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]

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.