Abilities (a warm up)

[Senna Jawa]

Which abilities are necessary, and which are useful (while not absolutely necessary) to a poet? Also, what is a relation between the personal character traits of the authors and their poetic activity? Are character traits and talents correlated? The same goes for the life style.

I used the neutral word "ability", meaning that it includes the inborn talents and the learned skills.

I hope for a free format discussion with one exception. Please,

do not write neither about yourself nor about any participants of Literotica.​

If you like to offer examples then let them be known, well recognized poets out there (outside Literotica ), who are already dead. (If you must break this rule then please create a new thread, don't do it here).

Once you voice your opinions we will have a chance to get into more specific issues, perhaps in new threads, and then the eventual discussion perhaps will be more structured.

 

[Angeline]

Funny the first writer who came to my mind is not a poet but my beloved Charles Dickens. Of course I adore how he writes: he's incredibly verbose and detail oriented to the point (for some) of crazy. But I love that way of writing. And his very hard childhood is (imo) directly related to the kinds of characters his novels feature and his unswerving focus on social justice. To me that's all quite obvious. But sorry, he's not a poet.

As you know I also adore William Butler Yeats and I think his unrequited love for one woman and his experiences in the Irish literary scene, particularly in dramatic circles color the way he wrote and the things he chose to write about. But he is also someone who I think experienced tremendous growth over the course of time and his later poems, especially for me, have a universality (if that's the right word) that's almost palpable. He's always narrative and lyrical but as he aged and kept writing the "I" in his poems becomes (to me) much more clearly everyone or anyone. I don't want to write like him, I never could even if I were to try but for me there are lessons in the way he grew and changed.

 

[bronzeage]

Ability? Ability is a vague word when it is applied to mental processes. I was once able to stand under a chin up bar, hold it firmly with each hand, throw my legs straight into the air, turn over the top of bar and land back on my feet. It was an impressive ability, but one I no longer have. All that is left is the ability to describe it.

I am thinking of a Mexican bandit, spitting through his black teeth, "We don't need no steenkin abilities."

Literacy might be necessary to some, but I am certain their are some illiterate poets who compose in their mind and have a refined memory which can bring the lines back at will. Homer is credited for the Iliad and being blind. If he actually existed, it is safe to assume he could not read or write.

Literacy and memory maybe necessary abilities for some and not for others.

There maybe many useful abilities. The ability to run through the alphabet and find every possible rhyme for a particular word should be handy. The ability to count syllables under the breath is useful as well, even though counting on the fingers and knuckles will serve just as well.

Neither of these abilities are need for open verse, so most poets will find them neither necessary or useful.

The only necessity for a poet is desire. It outweighs all abilities and overcomes all disabilities. One must want to say it aloud or write it down. One must want to share it with someone else. The want is critical. The quality is subjective and the reward has very little to do with the product.

I spent a good deal of my life as an automotive mechanic. This started so long ago, we were known as mechanics. Somewhere along the line, a public relations specialist decided the term "mechanic" was demeaning and christened us "technicians." I never liked the term.

Many people think there is some kind of regimen a person must go through to be a mechanic. They imagine trade schools full of young men dissecting cars and trucks under the supervision of a white coated instructor. This happens for some mechanics, but not most. Most mechanics learn the trade starting when they are old enough to ride a bike. It's a simple machine, but a very useful training device. The chain, the pedals, handlebars and tires all will fail and must be repaired. This is how aptitude is created and formed. The mind sees machines as systems, as a whole made of interrelated parts. This is something very difficult to do later in life. No amount of formal training can truly duplicate it.

This is often mistaken for talent, as if it were a genetic anomaly, such as above average eyesight or hearing. Aptitude makes the task look easy to the untrained eye. Aptitude or talent, without desire, are not not sufficient.

The critical element in all creative work is desire. There are many talented people in the world who have notebooks filled with hundreds of stillborn poems and drawings. Every one is an excellent start, but the finish is no where in sight.

In the end, after the work is done, ability, aptitude and talent are a very small part of the product.

 

[Liar]

A useful ability is to be a hoarder. To have an affinity for snapping up and remembering little tricks of the trade, as one reads and listens to other text and speech.

To build what ye olde greeks called a large copia, a library of useful facts, ideas, words, phrases, metaphors, tropes and so on that can be easily accessed, used, tweaked, combined and re-invented in new context as new texts are created.

They say great artists steal. Which is half true. Great artists steal and get away with it.

 

[Tzara]

Which abilities are necessary... to a poet?

Observation, though I would prefer to cite some of the Asian poets here as prime examples of observation, and I don't know them well enough to do that intelligently. So just go look at some collection of haiku or Du Fu or something. Those guys looked at things.

Something close to my feelings about poetry is about the sound of the words. I think this is more a Western value than a universal one, but how a poem sounds, regardless of its content, is important to me.

I've used this before, but for example, the first lines of Eliot's The Waste Land:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.​

Just the sound of those lines are to me beautiful, regardless of content. A major part of what poetry is for me is how it sounds, read aloud.

One of the reasons I am really unhappy I am restricted to English.

My fault, I know. I hope to fix that in the future.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Ability? Ability is a vague word when it is applied to mental processes. I was once able to stand under a chin up bar, hold it firmly with each hand, throw my legs straight into the air, turn over the top of bar and land back on my feet. It was an impressive ability, but one I no longer have. All that is left is the ability to describe it.

I am thinking of a Mexican bandit, spitting through his black teeth, "We don't need no steenkin abilities."

Literacy might be necessary to some, but I am certain their are some illiterate poets who compose in their mind and have a refined memory which can bring the lines back at will. Homer is credited for the Iliad and being blind. If he actually existed, it is safe to assume he could not read or write.

Literacy and memory maybe necessary abilities for some and not for others.

There maybe many useful abilities. The ability to run through the alphabet and find every possible rhyme for a particular word should be handy. The ability to count syllables under the breath is useful as well, even though counting on the fingers and knuckles will serve just as well.

Neither of these abilities are need for open verse, so most poets will find them neither necessary or useful.

The only necessity for a poet is desire. It outweighs all abilities and overcomes all disabilities. One must want to say it aloud or write it down. One must want to share it with someone else. The want is critical. The quality is subjective and the reward has very little to do with the product.

I spent a good deal of my life as an automotive mechanic. This started so long ago, we were known as mechanics. Somewhere along the line, a public relations specialist decided the term "mechanic" was demeaning and christened us "technicians." I never liked the term.

Many people think there is some kind of regimen a person must go through to be a mechanic. They imagine trade schools full of young men dissecting cars and trucks under the supervision of a white coated instructor. This happens for some mechanics, but not most. Most mechanics learn the trade starting when they are old enough to ride a bike. It's a simple machine, but a very useful training device. The chain, the pedals, handlebars and tires all will fail and must be repaired. This is how aptitude is created and formed. The mind sees machines as systems, as a whole made of interrelated parts. This is something very difficult to do later in life. No amount of formal training can truly duplicate it.

This is often mistaken for talent, as if it were a genetic anomaly, such as above average eyesight or hearing. Aptitude makes the task look easy to the untrained eye. Aptitude or talent, without desire, are not not sufficient.

The critical element in all creative work is desire. There are many talented people in the world who have notebooks filled with hundreds of stillborn poems and drawings. Every one is an excellent start, but the finish is no where in sight.

In the end, after the work is done, ability, aptitude and talent are a very small part of the product.

I can identify strongly with this. I like your distinction between 'mechanic' and 'technician'. I generally label myself as a 'programmer', rather than a 'software engineer'.
A lot of programmers do go to school and get degrees in computer science. A good number also had some other formal education and came across programming somewhere along the way, finding they had some affinity for it. Such was my case. A little bit of coursework, more from on the job experiences such as books, talking with others, experimenting and so forth.

 

[bronzeage]

I can identify strongly with this. I like your distinction between 'mechanic' and 'technician'. I generally label myself as a 'programmer', rather than a 'software engineer'.
A lot of programmers do go to school and get degrees in computer science. A good number also had some other formal education and came across programming somewhere along the way, finding they had some affinity for it. Such was my case. A little bit of coursework, more from on the job experiences such as books, talking with others, experimenting and so forth.

I don't want to minimize the value of formal education. The things I learned in class were very valuable and I was able to make a lot of money at my trade. It is a hard business in which to make a living. I wish it were possible to do the same with writing. I some people do it, so it cannot be impossible.

I am suspicious of threads such as these. It starts as an attempt to identify poetic ability, but is more likely an attempt to identify those who write, but lack the ability.

 

[butters]

i personally think the one crucial ability for the poet is the ability to get out what's inside... whether that means burrowing one's way up to the light, or drilling down into the core. if the poet can't do that, what cannot be expressed will eat away at them, and anything resembling a poem is lost to the world.

every other ability is useful; like any skillset, the more one has at one's fingertips, the easier (i'm supposing) it is to free those words. the abilities are our tools. honesty's a good one - and that's not to say the poem has to be factually true, only that it has to be its own truth, its own reality. if it's approached in an honest, ego-less fashion, if the write is more about the poem than the poet, then truth is more readily mined.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Great Stravinsky and his saying

They say great artists steal.

"They" are the great Igor Stravinsky. I guess this is the price of popularity, that the copies are not what the original is, that they can't give the original its justice.

Which is half true. Great artists steal and get away with it.

Actually, be logical. Even your fractional version provides the full truth. Indeed, if these artists are great then it means that they have gotten away with stealing.

The actual Stravinski's saying is more like:

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.​

hey!

 

[Senna Jawa]

I beg to differ

i personally think the one crucial ability for the poet is the ability to get out what's inside... whether that means burrowing one's way up to the light, or drilling down into the core. if the poet can't do that, what cannot be expressed will eat away at them, and anything resembling a poem is lost to the world.

I don't think that poets get out what's inside them, that that's what poetry is about. That would be horribly boring.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Typos corrected

That would be horribly boring.

I am sure, chipbutty, that you meant it in the opposite direction:

poets have the ability to put inside the readers what is outside there, in the world.​

 

[Senna Jawa]

yes

A useful ability is to be a hoarder.

Yes, I am of the same opinion. I even passed here and in the other places an advice I got a long time ago from a poetry instructor--I took just one poetry course in my life--it'd be nice to take more. I am sure that he himself got it still from someone else. He insisted that students keep a small pocket notebook (no, not inside their swimming trunks) and a pencil (no, no again). This way one is ready to record their phrases which come occasionally to mind, and which would be lost otherwise. On occasions I followed this advice, always to a great advantage. I wish I'd do it consistently.

These days other tools, perhaps electronic, can be more useful, easier to handle. Do make suggestions (mp3?) in a new thread. I always wanted to have a convenient recording pocket device.

 

[butters]

I don't think that poets get out what's inside them, that that's what poetry is about. That would be horribly boring.

I am sure, chipbutty, that you meant it in the opposite direction:

poets have the ability to put inside the readers what is outside there, in the world.​

i don't see that as incredibly limiting, SJ - what is inside, whether that's experience, emotion, all the material we've ever absorbed and processed and tucked away (all that stuff from the great wide world and beyond), visions, imagination, considerations ... yes, i meant what i said. we can gather all of this from everywhere externally, but over a lifetime this 'stuff' becomes a part of us - we process it internally. what we then do with it can make or break us... of course, if we only ever thought mundane thoughts, lived mundane lives (actually or vicariously), never entertained flights of fancy, then poetry would indeed be pretty boring. and some say mine is. fortunately, most i've had responses from don't hold that opinion.

 

[Senna Jawa]

what is inside, whether that's experience, emotion, all the material we've ever absorbed and processed and tucked away (all that stuff from the great wide world and beyond), visions, imagination, considerations ... yes, i meant what i said. we can gather all of this from everywhere externally, but over a lifetime this 'stuff' becomes a part of us - we process it internally.

Oh, you mean that inside an author is what was outside. Great, we don't have any disagreement. Man is but a particle of the Nature.

 

[EroticOrogeny]

Yes, I am of the same opinion. I even passed here and in the other places an advice I got a long time ago from a poetry instructor--I took just one poetry course in my life--it'd be nice to take more. I am sure that he himself got it still from someone else. He insisted that students keep a small pocket notebook (no, not inside their swimming trunks) and a pencil (no, no again). This way one is ready to record their phrases which come occasionally to mind, and which would be lost otherwise. On occasions I followed this advice, always to a great advantage. I wish I'd do it consistently.

These days other tools, perhaps electronic, can be more useful, easier to handle. Do make suggestions (mp3?) in a new thread. I always wanted to have a convenient recording pocket device.

I've done the small notebook and pencil from time to time and not sure why I don't do so consistently. And having a dictaphone or some such device could be quite handy, especially when driving. I've seen meeting secretaries work that way, rather than trying to get it all down on paper while still being a part of the meeting.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Chapter I (the warm up stage is over

I have a cold, thus I will restrict myself to a special bouquet of abilities:

1. A feel of Nature
2. Sensory sensitivity
3. Visual memory
4. Musical and sound memory
5. Smell and touch alertness, associations and memory
6. Alertness to and feel for movement, changes and dynamism
7. A feel for climate

This chapter addresses abilities which are not exactly humanistic. Animals have them too, perhaps to a greater extent. I could write more about these abilities but prefer to leave you more freedom. The question is how important this abilities are to a poet, how necessary?

 

[Angeline]

I have a cold, thus I will restrict myself to a special bouquet of abilities:

1. A feel of Nature
2. Sensory sensitivity
3. Visual memory
4. Musical and sound memory
5. Smell and touch alertness, associations and memory
6. Alertness to and feel for movement, changes and dynamism
7. A feel for climate

This chapter addresses abilities which are not exactly humanistic. Animals have them too, perhaps to a greater extent. I could write more about these abilities but prefer to leave you more freedom. The question is how important this abilities are to a poet, how necessary?

I think they're important like background music which influences but doesn't overwhelm. The degree to which they help has to do with learning to let one or more of them work in a poem but not make a poem about them.

 

[twelveoone]

1. Openness
2. Research
3. sub of #2 Reading Poetry
4. sub of #3 Psychology, Linguistics, Theory
5. Listening
6. Magic tricks
7. Questioning everything

 

[twelveoone]

8. The ability to laugh, you'll need it, if you start taking it too serious
9. The ability to lie (worked for Frost, Eliot, et al)
10. MAJOR the ability to realize you are not right (again meaning more than one thing here), at least part of the time.


11. PATTERN RECOGNITION & alterations of patterns

 

[butters]

I have a cold, thus I will restrict myself to a special bouquet of abilities:

1. A feel of Nature
2. Sensory sensitivity
3. Visual memory
4. Musical and sound memory
5. Smell and touch alertness, associations and memory
6. Alertness to and feel for movement, changes and dynamism
7. A feel for climate

This chapter addresses abilities which are not exactly humanistic. Animals have them too, perhaps to a greater extent. I could write more about these abilities but prefer to leave you more freedom. The question is how important this abilities are to a poet, how necessary?

to be able to feel ... in all manner of ways, to feel the music in a thought, an idea, to see the beauty in the darkest image if drawn pure and true, to feel the giving and the taking in the writing and the reading... feeling is very, very important.

1. Openness
2. Research
3. sub of #2 Reading Poetry
4. sub of #3 Psychology, Linguistics, Theory
5. Listening
6. Magic tricks
7. Questioning everything

these strike me as integral, though i have not sat down and given them thought before with the exception of no.3 subset of 2. magic tricks - oh boy, i loves me a magician who can make me believe in magic

8. The ability to laugh, you'll need it, if you start taking it too serious
9. The ability to lie (worked for Frost, Eliot, et al)
10. MAJOR the ability to realize you are not right (again meaning more than one thing here), at least part of the time.


11. PATTERN RECOGNITION & alterations of patterns

i'm starting to see a pattern, here, twelveoh. *points at smilies in a row* go on, ask me 'what comes next?' !!

 

[Senna Jawa]

a special bouquet of abilities:

1. A feel of Nature
2. Sensory sensitivity
3. Visual memory
4. Musical and sound memory
5. Smell and touch alertness, associations and memory
6. Alertness to and feel for movement, changes and dynamism
7. A feel for climate

This chapter addresses abilities which are not exactly humanistic. Animals have them too, perhaps to a greater extent. I could write more about these abilities but prefer to leave you more freedom. The question is how important this abilities are to a poet, how necessary?

This is a very-very essential spectrum of abilities, the most important for a poet. For writing outstanding poetry they are nearly necessary. For the very best poetry they are absolutely necessary. It follows that you should make sure to develop these abilities, or at least skillfully pretend in your poems that you have them.

Let me explain why this is so. It's not about adding an entry to a biological textbook. The listed abilities provide an author with the very best language of poetry. We want to move our readers, but in a poetic way. Describing an illness of a relative may move readers but not necessarily in an artistic way. Poetry is about the man being a particle of the Nature. Thus it is Nature which provides poets with the language in which we can induce feelings in the readers artistically. The whole poetry is a huge juxtaposition of the Nature and the man. The listed abilities allow an author to pass this juxtaposition to readers. Without such abilities you are doomed to a lower poetic orbit. At least half of a truly great poem must deal with the Nature. Other poems - by comparison - feel somewhat strained, clever, paperish, phiphiphilosophical, etc.

In Chapter 2 (there are several of them) I'll describe the complementary abilities, which may help a lot but cannot replace those above. We are atavistic creatures and nothing will change it, not in a long time (I hope!).

 

[twelveoone]

[*]Visual memory
The question is how important this abilities are to a poet, how necessary?

Crosses Milton of his list, Homer maybe, although not sure about Homer, I think he just needed glasses in the days before optometrists.

 

[twelveoone]

i'm starting to see a pattern, here, twelveoh. *points at smilies in a row* go on, ask me 'what comes next?' !!

slaps hand on head, how could I forget

12. A sense of AWE in what some of your contemporaries can do, of what you can learn from them.
That coupled with an ability to roll your eyes heavenward will do wonders.

Now how about it SJ, can you point to one, just one comment, that you may have left, that said something to the effect of "wow, this is pretty good" or "I wish I would have thought of it" ?
If you will do so, I will get out of your hair, assuming you have hair.

BTW as a correction of a mistake I once said years ago, about rhyme not being important in Chinese poetry. It was a mistake, because in Mandarin it does not Rhyme, in the language in which it was written it did.

So Tzara, if you like sound, and if you can find someone who does speak the language, you would like...maybe. It does help if the reader is attractive, but then you are only half paying attention.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Chapter II (Nature affected by man)

I've described in Chapter I the primary Nature, where a man is but one of the many species: plants, trees, insects, animals, ... Furthermore, a man is an insignificant element compared to cosmos, oceans, jungles, prairies, major rivers and lakes, tall mountains, ... All this gives a poet distance and a sense of proportions.

But there is also secondary, man made Nature, which is more and more important in the modern life. It starts with the crop fields, domesticated animals (how different from the wild animals!), parks, gardens and orchards. They are still not too far removed from the original Nature. Even one-family farm homes in old days were not that different from the caves and holes in ground.

More characteristic for humans activity are cities, streets, buildings, architecture, factories, office buildings, restaurants, bars, libraries, highways, railroads, bridges, gas stations, train stations, airports, and all kind of vehicles: ships, bikes, cars, airplanes, ... Also smaller items like musical instruments, clothes, dishes, tools, ...This kind of environment still has a connection to the primary Nature but weakened. There is still the Moon in the sky and a few stars, which have survived pollution, there is still climate, rains, clouds, four seasons, the daily rhythm. Furthermore, cities, highways, buildings ... remind us of Nature in many ways. They have their own life, their own rhythm, sounds, smells. All army buildings and barracks have the same smell, all chemistry departments their own, etc.

All this, like the primary Nature, is still a material for poets to built their juxtaposition, to present unspoken metaphors. Once again, the poet's goal is not to end up with a wikipedia entry on some engineering tools. It's about using the language of poetry. Thus many new abilities are useful to a poet, like for instance knowledge of architecture and once again visual memory. However, these abilities are not necessary--it's enough to have some of them. One poet can be knowledgeable about the farm work, another about vehicles, or music & the bar scene, ... It's important to have the observation skills, and an intimate knowledge of the topic of the poem. Once again, it's not what's inside a poet, that counts, but the outside. A poet has to be sensitive to the things around them rather than dwell on their own inside.

In short, a poet has to understand the language of poetry.

Some additional clarifications are necessary but they belong to next chapters.

 

[Senna Jawa]

Chapter I+II

Together the two chapters form a Part, which can be called Senses, where senses include all physical feelings like for instance trembling, changes of rhythm, texture, etc. The poetry language is the language of senses.