How To Be A Poet
Posted: June 29th, 2010, 3:35 pm
young man sez to me, sez, "Litnrod, how do you get to be a high-falootin', fancy-schmancy poet like yew?"
After I was done looking all crazy at him for a few minutes
I wondered what to say to the young fool?
Should I give him the obvious answer? Write a lotta poems?
or
The practical answer? "Fergit aboutit. Be an orthodontist."
I could tell him to fall in love. We're all poets when we're in love.
The last place to learn to be a poet is in school. Schools ruin more poets than they perfect. What can anybody possibly teach you about music or poetry? Oh, they can teach you the notes and the words and the structures but not the poetry.
The poet must design a machine that works
for no other reason but that it works
like a melody works and you don't know why
what makes it stick in your iPod and play over and over?
Homer was the first known poet and the Stevie Wonder of his time. He was the blind man who saw it all and told it in his songs which were sung throughout the land. A poet needs to be blind because the blind man doesn't care about how things look, he cares about how things feel. Poets need to look where only the blind can see, into the heart's secret rooms that don't show up on the blueprint or the echo cardiogram.
the poet's vegetable ancestors are the orchid and the venus fly-trap
parasites and predators poised atop the food chain but as animals we share a more humble spot just above the kitchen help, just below the butler.
When I was a young writer, I scoffed at poetry. It was frivolous and arbitrary I thought. Of course I was the one who was frivolous and arbitrary. Poets are different from everyday writers as frogs are from tadpoles. Before you can be a poet you have to grow legs and lose your tail, learn to use your lungs. Every sentence must be a song recumbent in its rhythms. You've lived in two worlds now, are there more? The poet is the universal amphibian moving from atmosphere to atmosphere, tasting, sampling, comparing with his moist tongue.
What turns a frog into a poet is the same thing that turns a frog into a prince, the kiss of a woman. Any woman will do for poets, she doesn't have to be a princess, but models and dancers are nice.
Whitman pretty well wrote the job description for American poets in Song of the Answerer. He sounds like a Marine recruiter looking for a few good men. Democracy was in robust flower and cocaine was only just invented then. He described the loneliness and the poverty and the perils and humble rewards. He warned how rare they were. But being a poet is not a job, it's a calling. You either hear it in your head or you don't.
But the kid had asked me what it took to be a poet, so I figured I owed him an answer. What is the poet if not a teacher? While my better sense told me to take pity on the lad and discourage him, instead I said, "The first thing you must do is abandon your better sense." I didn't want to burden his attention span by describing the zen mechanics behind this axiom. Keep it simple. We start with a batter of heartbreak and elation, the two basic food groups for poets. It makes a bitter gruel but when sweetened by the music of the language it can taste as good as hard-tack or even shoe leather. By itself it's almost tasteless like tofu but you put it with other things like a broth of tears and intentions or a stew of anger and thighs. Poets live on this stuff. He made an asparagus face.
I wasn't sure if I was making myself clear, so I continued, "Look at it this way: poetry is physics without the math, taxidermy without killing the animal first, x-rays without radiation." I still wasn't making sense to him. I grabbed him by the shoulders. "Poetry is taking the world by the shoulders and shaking it." I shook him. He looked at me like I was a video game that had skipped two levels. I laughed when I saw my pedagogical mistake. "You see, I told you that nobody could teach you how to be a poet."
After I was done looking all crazy at him for a few minutes
I wondered what to say to the young fool?
Should I give him the obvious answer? Write a lotta poems?
or
The practical answer? "Fergit aboutit. Be an orthodontist."
I could tell him to fall in love. We're all poets when we're in love.
The last place to learn to be a poet is in school. Schools ruin more poets than they perfect. What can anybody possibly teach you about music or poetry? Oh, they can teach you the notes and the words and the structures but not the poetry.
The poet must design a machine that works
for no other reason but that it works
like a melody works and you don't know why
what makes it stick in your iPod and play over and over?
Homer was the first known poet and the Stevie Wonder of his time. He was the blind man who saw it all and told it in his songs which were sung throughout the land. A poet needs to be blind because the blind man doesn't care about how things look, he cares about how things feel. Poets need to look where only the blind can see, into the heart's secret rooms that don't show up on the blueprint or the echo cardiogram.
the poet's vegetable ancestors are the orchid and the venus fly-trap
parasites and predators poised atop the food chain but as animals we share a more humble spot just above the kitchen help, just below the butler.
When I was a young writer, I scoffed at poetry. It was frivolous and arbitrary I thought. Of course I was the one who was frivolous and arbitrary. Poets are different from everyday writers as frogs are from tadpoles. Before you can be a poet you have to grow legs and lose your tail, learn to use your lungs. Every sentence must be a song recumbent in its rhythms. You've lived in two worlds now, are there more? The poet is the universal amphibian moving from atmosphere to atmosphere, tasting, sampling, comparing with his moist tongue.
What turns a frog into a poet is the same thing that turns a frog into a prince, the kiss of a woman. Any woman will do for poets, she doesn't have to be a princess, but models and dancers are nice.
Whitman pretty well wrote the job description for American poets in Song of the Answerer. He sounds like a Marine recruiter looking for a few good men. Democracy was in robust flower and cocaine was only just invented then. He described the loneliness and the poverty and the perils and humble rewards. He warned how rare they were. But being a poet is not a job, it's a calling. You either hear it in your head or you don't.
But the kid had asked me what it took to be a poet, so I figured I owed him an answer. What is the poet if not a teacher? While my better sense told me to take pity on the lad and discourage him, instead I said, "The first thing you must do is abandon your better sense." I didn't want to burden his attention span by describing the zen mechanics behind this axiom. Keep it simple. We start with a batter of heartbreak and elation, the two basic food groups for poets. It makes a bitter gruel but when sweetened by the music of the language it can taste as good as hard-tack or even shoe leather. By itself it's almost tasteless like tofu but you put it with other things like a broth of tears and intentions or a stew of anger and thighs. Poets live on this stuff. He made an asparagus face.
I wasn't sure if I was making myself clear, so I continued, "Look at it this way: poetry is physics without the math, taxidermy without killing the animal first, x-rays without radiation." I still wasn't making sense to him. I grabbed him by the shoulders. "Poetry is taking the world by the shoulders and shaking it." I shook him. He looked at me like I was a video game that had skipped two levels. I laughed when I saw my pedagogical mistake. "You see, I told you that nobody could teach you how to be a poet."
