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April 13, 2004
I am an engineer. I am a poet. This is a combination that seems to surprise people.
In “Poetry is my other Beat” (an entry in her blog “The Poetic Life”, editor and poet Elizabeth Lund has written about the duality that dwells in most poets: since poets are not quite as in demand as orangutan trainers, even the most renowned and prolific producers of verse derive most of their income from something else. Usually, teaching is the thing that pays for the Pop Tarts and paper towels, but it’s far from the only full-time practice that sustains poets today.
Journalism, as in Ms. Lund’s case, may be the next largest other/primary job among poets after teaching. But I’ve also met bankers, historians, musicians, graphic artists, computer programmers, museum clerks, and postal workers who are “professional” poets – people who regularly write and submit poems to magazines and earn such remuneration as poets earn. Yet even among these varied literary artists, I typically am greeted with a gasp or with widening-eyes when I describe myself as an engineer. I have never gotten used to this reaction; no one who truly understands what engineering is, should be surprised at an engineer dabbling in – or seriously pursuing – poetry.
What is engineering? Well, the American Society for Engineering Education says it’s “the art of applying scientific and mathematical principles, experience, judgment, and common sense to make things that benefit people.”
That’s right: “The art.” People who work closely with engineers are often surprised at the creativity required to be really good at engineering. Think about it: a successful engineer describes and solves problems by looking at the same things other people have looked at, armed with only the same tools other people have brought to bear, seeing something no one else has seen and doing something with those tools no one else has done.
If I substitute “words” for “tools”, have I described a poet?
OK, so maybe spend engineers collectively don’t spend enough time becoming versed (so to speak) in the tools of language so they can solve art’s burning questions. But just as being a poet doesn’t dictate ineptitude with tools, being an engineer does not dictate ineptitude with language. The engineer can even call upon “scientific and mathematical principles” as tools in creating works of art. The lines below are from a poem of mine called “Another Kind of Education”, which talks a little about how I became a poet and an engineer at the same time; the intrepid technologist will detect some fundamental physics principles peeking out from between the letters (non-engineers can follow the links…):
Regardless of the quality of my “physics poem” (which goes on to include references to dynamics, heat transfer, and vector multiplication), my point here is that all experience, if accepted openly, contributes to art. Who’s to say science has less to contribute than any other essential aspect of life on Earth?
At the end of her entry, Ms. Lund describes the fear that we poets-who-do-other-things-to-pay-the-bills all have:
“Part of me dreads the next time I start interviewing poets for a story and people who don’t know my background speak to me v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, as if I am deeply deficient. Some may even repeat themselves, as if that will somehow help me understand.”
On behalf of all technologists who produce literary art: Trust us that we know the difference between a villanelle and a villain, and we will trust that you can tell a crescent wrench from a crescent roll.
David Vincenti
Advisor, Center for the Performing Arts at DeBaun Auditorium
www.debaun.org; www.davidvincenti.com
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