lorenzo/islander:
Of course we are allowed to partake of the dinner table, whoever does not allow another brother to partake, should be ashamed.
i will forbid a good friend to partake of a feast, or beg him at least to be discriminating in choosing which food to eat, when i know beforehand that some of the food, spoiled as they are, may cause botulism.
Practice makes perfect, the beginner poets can one day be great poets, and besides, in my personal point of view, there is so much 'juice' and 'internal dialogue' that is expressed in the poems of many a lover-poets, hating-poets, sad-poets, happy-poets (the whole echelon, hehe).
a lifetime of practice could not make a poet out of a non-poet. it may improve one's grammar and add to one's vocabulary, but it won't change his sensibilities or his quality of work.
I used to talk to a good friend of mine, who was an English Lit. major, i was the non-traditional student (in the sense) to the class due to my background & strength in the Biological Sciences & History. In fact, another classmate I had , John, was a physics major. The both of us were the only two men to take that class and incidentally the two of us were the only non-english lit majors taking the class (we were taking it as an elective requirement). There was an assignment where our professor wanted us to analyze a classic poem; and then to write a poem and read to the class. The secondary assignment was for us, after reading and reciting the poem in class, to explain and identify the figurative languages used, the meaning and our own personal story that was used to write the poem (or an experience involved).
your class went through the usual process of poetry appreciation by letting you experience the process of creating poetry, which any self-respecting creative writing teacher ought to do. if one of you became a poet in the real sense of the word (not just an interested one who loves to compose lines that sound poetic), then your teacher deserved all the accolades for opening those previously hidden springs and letting the creative waters pour forth. as he was able to encourage the likes of you to pay attention to poetry, then he had not taught in vain.
Sitting in the classroom listening to the students, many of whom were great orators, great linguists, some of them were beginners (there were underclassmen also taking this course), i developed a love, an interest for poetry. Doesn't have to be a master poet, can be a beginner poet, can even be a 'bad poet', but a poet none-theless. The appreciation on my part is not so much on the writing style; as there are multiple styles in poetry, but more so on the message being expressed. The raw emotional feelings , sensations that are expressed reminds us of old burns, recent burns, old passions, recent passions, and even for some---a sense of longing that one has never experienced.
So that said, let the poets (masters, intermediate, beginners, and even the 'not so good') share their thoughts. Let them.
they should. their works may even end up in hallmark cards. but confound it, let the passage of years put them in the pantheon of poets. it is not for them to call themselves poets.
There is beauty and humanism in poetry. Besides, many of the now-famous, now-accepted poets were once unaccepted and shunned during their own times.
as most poets were, and are. sometimes, the opposite even happens. compared to his wife elizabeth barrett browning, robert browning was considered a minor poet during the victorian period of his lifetime. it was only in the 1960s that his works were taken more seriously, which turned out to be consistently sinewy. it's his wife now who is deemed as the "lesser god". as i've said earlier, people can write poetry or what passes off as poetry all they can, but rarely would a real poet rise from among them.
Arthur Rimbaud , a French poet, best expounds on this:
A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men: the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed—and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and, if demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen!as in everything else, some do fall by the wayside, poets or not. but there will always be others who will pick up from where someone had left off. rimbaud himself, a prodigy, wrote all of his best poetry in less than five years while others took a lifetime. he had what it took to be a poet that some should not pretend to have.
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