Education: Teaching Poets

"Poeta nascitur, non fit,"* say the poets who consider themselves naturals. But can one poet teach another how to write? In the current issue of Poetry, two successful teachers say: yes—sometimes.

The class in poetry writing, says Theodore Roethke of the University of Washington, must be a "departure . . . from the ordinary run of things in a college—for almost all thinking has been directed toward analysis, a breaking-down, whereas the metaphor is a synthesis, a building up, a creation of a new world . . .

"Some [pupils] have difficulty verbalizing about the esthetic experience. But often their gropings make for the fresh insight . . . The war on the cliché is continuous, but poetry is not written by mere avoidance of the cliche. Little theorizing about rhythm, but a constant reading aloud to hear rhythms, to get a notion of how language flows. Essentially, this is teaching by ear, by suggestion, by insinuation . . .

"But most knowledge of technique," says Roethke, "is acquired obliquely. One suggestion, one lead, after class or in the hall... is worth far more than any number of pipe-sucking, pencil-poking . . . sessions in the office." The fact is, "most teaching is visceral ... as ephemeral as the dance ... It is what is left after all the reading and thinking and reciting: the residue, the illumination."

Poet Paul Engle of the University of Iowa agrees: "You can't treat the writing of poetry as if it were a course, say, in history, where the student can gather facts and attitudes and offer a paper which is essentially 'true.' ... A poem is not a study of a problem, but a strange melting together of sound in the ear, of conception in the mind, of impulse in the nervous system, of old actions mired in the memory. The most the teacher can do is to probe the body of the poem for lesions that corrupt the working of phrase, image, rhythm, tone, theme—to verify, with his limited power, whether the poem is 'true' to itself."

By this process—"to find the good in a poem . . . and to urge the young poet to thrust his verse in that direction"—a teacher sharpens a talent already there.