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Throwing stones in glass houses
What comes to mind when I mention the following names?
William Blake.
John Clare.
Robert Burns.
Walt Whitman.
Emily Dickinson.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Jorge Luis Borges.
If you answered that they are all brilliant and famous self-taught poets, you would be correct.
To even suggest those who did not study poetry are unable to become great poets shows impressive ignorance.
If you were to include similar self-taught famous writers who also won Nobel Prizes in Literature, the list would grow substantially.
If one were to take that further and claim to be the gate-holder of what should be considered real poetry... well.
Something about throwing stones in glass houses comes to mind.
I certainly learned something
I certainly learned something from this, today. I did not realize that Borges was self-taught; I presumed that, being a Librarian, he had studied formally. I really love his Poetry and I presumed he had done some formal preparation prior to writing it.
J-Called
Cheers
Thank you for your comment. It Mamés me recall one of my favourite quotes by Maimonides and resonates deeply with me and my own philosophy of life long learning “May there never develop in me the notion that my education is complete but give me the strength and leisure and zeal continually to enlarge my knowledge."
Alliswend bin ich nicht, doch vie list mir bewußt.
That is a very interesting
That is a very interesting quote. And I think that drive to enlarge one's knowledge is what poets diverse in the historical eras in which they lived, and their chosen subjects, advised that poetry was most valid when preparation for it has been accomplished. I think Callimachus, John Milton (especially him), Alexander Pope and our late contemporary, J. V. Cunningham would agree tbe poet must be prepared to carry out the vocation, and that is tbe enlargement of knowledge of which Maimonides spoke.
J-Called