Are Poets Born Not Made?

[hallaig]

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

[stuntpickle]

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

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

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

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

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

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

[hallaig]

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

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

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

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

[stuntpickle]

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

Hence the claim that understanding art or his precussors is trait of all the best poets is false.

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

I have no problem if you want to use the word intellectual for every product of our minds or a replacement for intelligence. I see it as pointless, as obvious this make no relevant distinction between all forms of thinking, when intellectual can and is used with a more specific form. But I do find strange you use "innate intellectualism', mixing one word related to instinct and another to reason... Innate is something which is born with the individual...

I think the distinction I've been trying to make is between intellectual and academic/critic, but another distinction would have to be drawn between intellectual and just "everyday thinker" or "every product of our minds" as well. I see an intellectual as being someone more in between those extremes. Someone who spends more time thinking on intellectual, theoretical subjects (even if they're aesthetics and poetry), but perhaps does not solely make their living at it in a formal setting. Wikipedia says of an intellectual that:

An intellectual is a person who primarily uses intelligence in either a professional or an individual capacity. As a substantive or adjective, it refers to the work product of such persons, to the so-called "life of the mind" generally, or to an aspect of something where learning, erudition, and informed and critical thinking are the focus...

"Intellectual" can denote three types of people:

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

1. a person involved in, and with, abstract, erudite ideas and theories;
2. a person whose profession (e.g. philosophy, literary criticism, sociology, law, political analysis, theoretical science, etc.) solely involves the production and dissemination of ideas;[1]
3. a person of notable cultural and artistic expertise whose knowledge grants him or her intellectual authority in public discourse

I think one reason it's tempting to consider most of the great poets as intellectuals is that poetry, being the art of language and form, is an inherently intellectual pursuit. You can not utilize language without having learned language, and you can not utilize form without having learned form. But, what's more, one can't use either if they have no thoughts, nothing the least bit intellectual, to write about in the first place. I don't think it would be difficult to fit most of the great poets into one (or more) of the three categories listed above.

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

Yes and Negative Capability is exactly what I say: poets do not need to understand all to access their poetic capacity. That is what Keats says and he even goes onwards to say Coleridge need to explain and rationalize all that exists.

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

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

Again, Study as something naturally and daily is like kicking out all teachers, pedagogy, schools of the map. Experience is something that happens naturally everyday.

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

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

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

Pretty funny, but the best part was the "Aramaic, b!tch!" someone in the crowd screamed!

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

[Delta40]

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

[miyako73]

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

A Lament for the Dead Pets of Our Childhood

[MorpheusSandman]

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

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

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

It's not confessional as it's miles away from, eg, Sylvia Plath. Expressive? Eh, I guess it would depend on how you want to define the term. But modern? Well, in the sense that it's contemporary, yes, but in the sense that it resembles recent aesthetics, I'd say not. Stallings is not one to use as an exemplar of modernistic tendencies. Try Ashbery.

Anyway, I was only joking with that last comment. But it is true that modernism tended towards detachment and depersonalization more akin to the metaphysical poets as opposed to the Romantics. The Confessional school was, in one respect, romanticism pushed to an extreme, and I think there's been an uneasy tension ever since between those extremes of extremely personal poetry and extremely impersonal poetry. That you prefer the personal is fine, but don't assume that it's innately better or more modern than that which is "affected, contrived, and conscious." Your entire poetic freedom was earned by people like Pound and Eliot who were very much these things. That Eliot provided scholarly notes to his revolutionary The Waste Land was proof that he wanted the reader to be consciously aware of his "borrowings" and "affectations". Or, to quote Clive James:

the whole of English poetry’s technical heritage was present in Eliot’s work, and never more so than when it seemed free in form.

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

We have certain people on these forums that have clearly "decided they are geniuses," or "more likely" have just "took the new liberties more and more for granted."

[Delta40]

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

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

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

[MorpheusSandman]

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

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

[miyako73]

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

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

Another one by Stallings:

Fear of Happiness

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

[Silas Thorne]

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

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

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

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

[paradoxical]

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

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

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

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

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Hershey's is ****ing awesome.