ABSTRACT
What makes up the specific talent of the poet? What skills are shown, or acquired on the way to expertise? There is the musical sense of making rhythm and rhyme, consonance and dissonance in conscious or unconscious patterns. There is the interest in inner probing of the self. There is the need to see life more deeply than most, and if so, to tell about it in formal patterns of language. The poet can make an image that relates metaphorically to what is being discussed so that the thing itself breaks open and is illuminated through the choices or analogies that the writer has made. The poet often stubbornly insists on these metaphors, which at first may seem strange but then become commonplace to the observers. Ultimately, although the Impetus for writing may stem from emotion, the poet is inspired by language and its implications. As Nobel laureate for poetry Joseph Brodsky said, “If there is any deity to me, it’s language” (Plimpton, 1988, p. 399).
