Are Poets Born Not Made?

[JuniperWoolf]

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.

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)

EXCEPT:

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

Maya Angelou...??

"Great poet"?!!!

Charles Bukowski...??

"Great poet"?

[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"?

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".