02-05-2013, 06:27 PM
I'm not sure that I agree with everything that Benthejack has written, although on a non poetry related aside there is a sub discussion going into the whole where did everything come from then that, i would say amen to. (I'm not sure if you intended to preach it...go get them tiger...there is nothing new under the sun).
As a cider maker i can really relate to Todd's analogy. I think that there is such a thing as a natural gift or inbuilt ability within all of us for various things in life. But equally it is possible to be trained and to become skilled in something outside of your natural inclinations.
Sorry but i will have to put this into a frame work of something i know in order to answer; I have a naturally good palate for flavour profiling that i discovered by accident. Within this natural ability i still had to fine hone my skill. Equally my particular palate has areas of strength and others of weakness. (my particular thing is to work on the raw cider and be able to visualise what the finished article will turn out like…the next stage is to be able to bright blend the cider once it has been blended and filtered to adjust for the sweetness / acidity balance…i'm not so good at this stage. my daughter on the other hand …who hates alcohol - i think she might have been switched at birth - can taste any change in the degree of sweetness / acidity balance).
I used to do flavour profiling training with the staff to train up a team, to asses new product development and QC issues. it took months to work through the course using blind sampling and get everyone trained to be able to pick out the key note flavours and then to standardise the notation of this into a common text. Even after all this work some people just didn't have any "feel" for it. They could not seem to learn how to go quiet and listen to their taste perceptions. I think all of this equates to my understanding of the process of working with poetry. Within this forum we have some master craft word blenders who can root out the finer nuances of a poem and pick out any off notes. We have others who have some skills in the last stage of word blending, the final balance of word placement and grammar. Perhaps we have a few with the equivalent of a Michelin star or two.
I just want to be able to improve my craft and to do that i agree with what Todd said about tasting the work of others and working alongside then as an apprentice would in a kitchen.
As a cider maker i can really relate to Todd's analogy. I think that there is such a thing as a natural gift or inbuilt ability within all of us for various things in life. But equally it is possible to be trained and to become skilled in something outside of your natural inclinations.
Sorry but i will have to put this into a frame work of something i know in order to answer; I have a naturally good palate for flavour profiling that i discovered by accident. Within this natural ability i still had to fine hone my skill. Equally my particular palate has areas of strength and others of weakness. (my particular thing is to work on the raw cider and be able to visualise what the finished article will turn out like…the next stage is to be able to bright blend the cider once it has been blended and filtered to adjust for the sweetness / acidity balance…i'm not so good at this stage. my daughter on the other hand …who hates alcohol - i think she might have been switched at birth - can taste any change in the degree of sweetness / acidity balance).
I used to do flavour profiling training with the staff to train up a team, to asses new product development and QC issues. it took months to work through the course using blind sampling and get everyone trained to be able to pick out the key note flavours and then to standardise the notation of this into a common text. Even after all this work some people just didn't have any "feel" for it. They could not seem to learn how to go quiet and listen to their taste perceptions. I think all of this equates to my understanding of the process of working with poetry. Within this forum we have some master craft word blenders who can root out the finer nuances of a poem and pick out any off notes. We have others who have some skills in the last stage of word blending, the final balance of word placement and grammar. Perhaps we have a few with the equivalent of a Michelin star or two.
I just want to be able to improve my craft and to do that i agree with what Todd said about tasting the work of others and working alongside then as an apprentice would in a kitchen.