Mathematician, brain surgeon, sculptor, poet

Sometimes I miss the clarity of my youth when I was a budding mathematician. When as a sophomore at Cal Tech I published a new solution to an old number theory problem in Mathematics Magazine, the contribution to the field was insignificant but the clarity was absolute. A mathematical solution is either right or wrong. You solve the problem or you don't.

Many professions have this clarity. A brain surgeon either does the surgery correctly or not. Mathematics and brain surgery are not democratic -- not just anyone can jump on board to do the job. I learned I did not have the intelligence to become the creative pure mathematician I longed to be. Not wanting less, I left the field.

There are also areas in the arts that demand training and skill. You can't hand just anyone a block of marble and say, Make me a statue of George Washington. Most wouldn't know how to begin. Some might chip away and end up with a statue of something. Others of a man who looks nothing like George Washington. It takes skill and talent to make a statue of George Washington.

I bring all this up because we live in an age when poetry strives to become democratic. Unlike the block of marble, the blank sheet of paper invites anyone, literally anyone, to write down words in lines and verses, calling it "a poem." The poet has become everyman. Of course, most of this poetry wouldn't be "good" -- or rather, I wouldn't call it good, but I guarantee there will be others who will call it "good." The clarity in mathematics is not found in the arts, where all judgment call resemble personal opinion.

But surely there are standards in the arts. And if there are standards, then the thrust to make the literary arts especially democratic -- because, after all, we all have the tools, language, to begin -- is misleading. Poetry may not be democratic at all. Poetry may be the e-word. Elitist.

Ezra Pound thought so. He's not alone. He's also out of fashion.

I think the craft of the poet -- I'm tempted to say the true poet -- is as difficult to learn as the craft of the mathematician or brain surgeon or sculptor, and I think the democratization of poetry has done damage to the appreciation of the art form. Diaries are not novels. Self-expression is not poetry. The arts are not democratic. As circumstantial evidence I offer a fact that I consider obvious: never in the history of mankind has more bad writing been published and made available to the public. This indeed is the Age of Mediocrity in the literary arts if one looks at everything out there. (I also would say, however, that never has more competent writing been published and available. But the former greatly outnumbers the latter.)

It's elitist and politically incorrect to maintain this today. So be it.