I don’t know that you get any better—I’m not even sure what “better” means—maybe just different. If you try to make this poem the best poem it can be, the experience might stretch your possibilities a little more, that’s all. I’d never discourage the urge to perfect an individual painting, story, poem, symphony, etc. I might just balance desire for the perfect artwork with the recognition your work might not end there and perhaps shouldn’t. That’d be wasting what you’d achieved, it seems to me. You’re right it can’t ALL be practice, nor can we expect to get better and better and better into infinity. One masterpiece would sure be enough for me. You’re certainly not going to write a second masterpiece if you don’t write the first.

Maybe I’m just looking to take some pressure off myself. Speaking personally, I can’t work when trying to write the omega. To be an effective process for me it has to be a true process, with the act and not the outcome foremost. In that sense, I am an engineer looking for another—if not a strictly better—way. —D

According to Petroski, the biggest difference between poems and pencils is the motive of the maker. Artists seek self-expression in the abstract. An engineer’s job is to solve an existing problem.

…and wondered, what if the greatest similiarity between poems and pencils is the motive of the maker? Artists seek to satisfy an unending need to create and shed light, say it better with words or paint…An engineer seeks to satisfy a need to continuously improve, do it better and more efficiently. Both seek to feed a need.

I work with many engineers and technologits, and I only feel kindred to three or four at the most. But, I admire their insistence on “process.” And, while most are great at solving a problem that is defined, those who are my friends often turn to me to figure out if there is a problem and what it might be. We’re creative in different ways.

I agree that artists and engineers may have more in common than they know. Both, as you say (so poetically, I might add) “seek to feed a need.” And some of their solutions can be equally elegant.

One of my friends says that he can answer questions people ask him, but he never knows what questions to ask himself. Some engineers, I imagine, feel that way sometimes, but some must answer questions we didn’t know existed. And that’s what some poets do too, unlock in us what we didn’t know was there. —D

My personal response to the essential questions you pose here is: e) all of the above. Like the plethora of poetry that has been produced from so many varied intentions, the visual arts world is a motley crew of outsiders and insiders, pragmatists and idealists, trouble makers and law abiding citizens, believers and nonbelievers, loners and joiners. The art world in which I live and work is a sheltered and familiar enclave within a complex web of multifarious neighborhoods, cultures and practices. What may be true for me and my tribe may not be true for those folks down the road. From where I sit, there is no universal donor or unified field theory for a world abuzz with people making, creating, manifesting.

That constant hum of fecundity reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s immortal reference to that background buzz in her elegant (albeit overused) short poem:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

I’m all about the revery.

I’d forgotten that Emily Dickinson poem. Thanks for reminding me of it, and also of how impish she could be. I get tired of those pictures of her as the hyperserious Belle of Amherst. I just have a feeling that she laughed much more than we know.

But thank you for your compliments on this post. I aspire to write essays that are both ranging and thoughtful—or at least bring up a couple of books not everyone might have encountered. —D