Supplementary To The Previous Post

[poliphilo]

I've been writing poems since my late teens. There have been times in my life when I've written very few- and other times when I've written them at the rate of two or three a week. I was at my most prolific during the late 80s and early 90s. These days poems come along at the rate of one or two a year.

Poems can't be forced. They come when they want to come. I have found though that they can be elicited by prompts. One or two of my better efforts have come about because someone gave me a topic to deal with- and sometimes a topic I'd never have tackled otherwise.

T.S. Eliot said there was no such thing as a poet, there are only people who write poetry.  I think that's right. Poetry comes and goes. Just because you wrote poetry in your youth doesn't mean you'll go on writing it all your life. Eliot himself is a good example of a writer whose gift deserted him. He wrote great poems from youth through middle-age but the love poems he wrote for his wife in old age are embarrassing- and he must have known it because he held them back from publication.  Most Collected Works contain a good deal of filler.  To set yourself up as a poet and commit to turning out slim volumes on a regular basis is to ask for trouble.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

One of the things I admire about Larkin is his willingness to restrict himself to four slim vols over a lifetime (well, five if we count XX Poems). He was well aware that his poetic gifts were gradually deserting him, but saw it as a minor sadness rather than a tragedy, comparing it to going bald.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If only the great Victorians had shown similar self-awareness and self-restraint.