Are Poets Born Not Made?

[miyako73]

Can I chime in my 2 cents?

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

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

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

Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias

BY FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA

1. Cogida and Death

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

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

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

2. The Spilled Blood

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

I will not see it!

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

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

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

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

3. The Laid Out Body

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

4. Absent Soul

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Delta40]

Is It not the Thing (Dorothy Porter)

After Byron

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

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

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

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

[miyako73]

Where did you get this, Delta? Resourceful you.

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

That defines it.

[Calidore]

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

[JuniperWoolf]

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

[stlukesguild]

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

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

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

Blasphemy!! I say!! Blasphemy!!

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



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

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

[miyako73]

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

[JCamilo]

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

[ShadowsCool]

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

[Calidore]

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

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

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

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

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

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

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

Blasphemy!! I say!! Blasphemy!!

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

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

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

[stlukesguild]

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

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

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

[Delta40]

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

[MorpheusSandman]

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

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.

The truth is there is not so many writers who are so critical to be able to analyse or understand what is art. Shakespeare probally would be unable to explain Shakespeare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I will admit that most of the names you mentioned are not familiar to me, and while it is not fair to dismiss work that one has not read, I imagine that I would find most of these poets -- who are respected in academia -- dull and unappealing.

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

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

Very subtle references, miyako. “Writing to express” is very 1800s and the confessional school of 20th century poetry. How about being a bit more modern where what’s affected, contrived, and conscious is “in”?

[JCamilo]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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