What Makes a Poet or Writer a Great Artist?

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T/ Peters English 102, Prof. Linck-Ivic March 16, 2013 What Makes a Poet or Writer a Great Artist? One of life’s greatest joys, for me, is reading the work of a great poet or writer. Immersed in beauty and emotion, I’m transported from my everyday life to that of the writer. Once in the world he or she sweeps me off to, I feel altered and elevated. I enjoy the work of gifted writers whom I find online, in poetry collections, novels, blogs, and articles I read daily. However, it is only the great poet/writer who has the power to reach me, enrich my self-understanding, and enhance my desire to connect to others. Many good poets/writers offer works of art well worth reading, but not all are truly Great. What, then, are the necessary characteristics of a great literary artist? In deciding which qualities make a writer great, it helps to ask, “What is art?” After mulling over my own answers to this question, I sought a Great Writer’s opinion on what constitutes great art. I found and was moved by the words of Leo Tolstoy, a genius whose work I’ve just read for the first time. In an essay, “What is Art?”, he defines art in ways that touch me deeply because I so relate to and agree with them. Tolstoy writes, “Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” How Tolstoy’s words excited me! Why? In class, each writer we’ve studied did just as this Russian master described. Through their art, our poets/writers shared feelings they’ve lived through so brilliantly that I felt “infected”, as if I’d ‘had’ their “experience.” Tolstoy continues, “Art is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and

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