[A. E. Stallings]

One of my all-time favorite poems about poetry:

Poeta Fit, Non Nascitur (a poet is made, not born)

by Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson)

How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once `the very wish
Partook of the sublime.'
The tell me how! Don't put me off
With your `another time'!"

The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically;
And thought "There's no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally."

"And would you be a poet
Before you've been to school?
Ah, well! I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic --
A very simple rule.

"For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.

`Then, if you'd be impressive,
Remember what I say,
That abstract qualities begin
With capitals alway:
The True, the Good, the Beautiful --
Those are the things that pay!

"Next, when we are describing
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
With a sort of mental squint."

"For instance, if I wished, Sir,
Of mutton-pies to tell,
Should I say `dreams of fleecy flocks
Pent in a wheaten cell'?"
"Why, yes," the old man said: "that phrase
Would answer very well.

"Then fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word --
As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird --
Of these, `wild,' `lonely,' `weary,' `strange,'
Are much to be preferred."

"And will it do, O will it do
To take them in a lump --
As `the wild man went his weary way
To a strange and lonely pump'?"
"Nay, nay! You must not hastily
To such conclusions jump.

"Such epithets, like pepper,
Give zest to what you write;
And, if you strew them sparely,
They whet the appetite:
But if you lay them on too thick,
You spoil the matter quite!

"Last, as to the arrangement:
Your reader, you should show him,
Must take what information he
Can get, and look for no imBANNED POST
mature disclosure of the drift
And purpose of your poem.

"Therefore to test his patience --
How much he can endure --
Mention no places, names, or dates,
And evermore be sure
Throughout the poem to be found
Consistently obscure.

"First fix upon the limit
To which it shall extend:
Then fill it up with `Padding'
(Beg some of any friend)
Your great SENSATION-STANZA
You place towards the end."

"And what is a Sensation,
Grandfather, tell me, pray?
I think I never heard the word
So used before to-day:
Be kind enough to mention one
`Exempli gratia'"

And the old man, looking sadly
Across the garden-lawn,
Where here and there a dew-drop
Yet glittered in the dawn,
Said "Go to the Adelphi,
And see the `Colleen Bawn.'


"The word is due to Boucicault --
The theory is his,
Where Life becomes a Spasm,
And History a Whiz:
If that is not Sensation,
I don't know what it is,

"Now try your hand, ere Fancy
Have lost its present glow --"
"And then," his grandson added,
"We'll publish it, you know:
Green cloth -- gold-lettered at the back --
In duodecimo!"

Then proudly smiled that old man
To see the eager lad
Rush madly for his pen and ink
And for his blotting-pad --
But, when he thought of publishing,
His face grew stern and sad.

[graywyvern]

very funny...

ps. not everyone may realize that the "spasmodic" school actually existed; Bulwer-Lytton's son Owen Meredith was one.

[This message has been edited by graywyvern (edited June 09, 2001).]

[Nigel Holt]

That's the first time I've seen that particular poem - I enjoyed it very much.

On the subject, I think that ninety percent of me agrees, while the naging ten percent says that there is a predisposition somewhere in the neural fettucini towards particular arts. It may well be that our early childhood has a lot to do with that, but would Mozart or Picasso have made great poets? I'm not sure that the wiring was right for either of them to be great in any sphere except the one they gravitated to. Just a hunch.

On the subject of poems about poems, my favourite is below - not formal poetry perhaps, but excellent nonetheless.

<u>"To a Young Poet"</u>

R.S.Thomas


For the first twenty years you are still growing,
Bodily that is: as a poet, of course,
You are not born yet. It's the next ten
You cut your teeth to emerge smirking
For your brash courtship of the muse.
You will take seriously those first affairs
With young poems, but no attachments
Formed then but come to shame you,
When love has changed to a grave service
Of a cold queen.
From forty on
You learn from the sharp cuts and jags
Of poems that have come to pieces
In your crude hands how to assemble
With more skill the arbitrary parts
Of ode or sonnet, while time fosters
A new impulse to conceal your wounds
From her and from a bold public,
Given to pry.
You are old now
As years reckon, but in that slower
World of the poet you are just coming
To sad manhood, knowing the smile
On her proud face is not for you.

[robert mezey]

Perhaps J. V. Cunningham has had the last word
on this subject:

Genius is born and made. This heel who mastered
With infinite pains his trade was born a bastard.

[Terese Coe]

Lewis Carroll is utterly timeless: the last lines are the topper.

Terese

[This message has been edited by Terese Coe (edited June 11, 2001).]

[Len Krisak]

My thanks to Robert Mezey.
Having read Cunningham's "Complete"
about five times, you'd think I
would remember that one, but, no...
It's terrific.

Odd, by the way, the Thomas--speaks
of sonnet and ode, but in what?
Loose meter? Free verse?

Just a thought.