Can the Writing of Poetry Be Taught?

[ahlam1399]

In our egalitarian and democratic societies we very much hope and want all good things to be available to all people if they have a mind to have them. Indeed, in the world of personal development you can achieve whatever you believe (paraphrasing one of its leading prophets, Napoleon Hill); and we know that poetry is a good thing, so can everybody, if they are taught sufficiently well, be a poet? A large part of my early career was spent on the assumption that it could be done. I was a secondary school English teacher for 15 years, taught thousands of students, and wrote several successful texts on just how to do it. But to return to my central query: they ought to be able to be taught to write poetry, but can it be done? Can they be taught to be poets? Lord Chesterfield said, "I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself whatever he pleases, except a great poet," which quite unequivocally denies the possibility that a poet can be made, although this is not to say that a poet is born.

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