To take care of today’s entry without much work, I’m posting something I wrote for New-Poetry about what a would-be poet can learn from reading other poets’ work.
The crossfire about learning how to use blank verse from Frost got me wondering what one has to learn to be a poet. What meter and what I call melodation”–rhyme, alliteration, etc. are, for many people. Lineation for everybody. I tend to think that once you learn what these things are, there’s nothing more to learn about them. The rest of using them for poetry is simply to find good words to put into them.
After thinking more, I realized that developing an awareness of the various subtleties
involved in best use of these devices would be something learnable–through exposure to poets like Frost who use the devices well. Who might make you suddenly realize what a device you underrated could do.I still like best those poets who are doing something other poets, and I, are not–those I
can steal new devices from. Such poets are very rare. Cummings, some of the early
language poets, Pound, Stein, maybe Williams for . . . unfiguration? Eliot/Pound or who?
for the jump-cut.Otherwise a major thing all poets have to learn is what cliches are. Cliches of expression, idea, subject matter, technique. Read a lot and learn to–sorry–make it new. What else is there to learn?