Is writing a beautiful poem a skill that can be learned or do you have to be naturally talented?

naturally talented, but you still have to know what a poem is like, what it’s supposed to ‘be’. obviously poets like villon knew songs and poetry. i’ve published a couple of poets who had talent and wrote naturally musical poetry, but who didn’t know they were ‘writing a poem’ — and, this is more than the troglodyte things we say as teenage poets — ‘i’m not a poet, i just tell the truth’ — they actually never read poetry at all and were ‘just sayin’. When they actually started saying stuff they turned short story and really not good short story writers at all.

i only write beautiful poetry when i’m fucked and want to die myself, always from lost love and no hope. when i just say stuff like ‘oh, to be around him…’ i just write verse and it really is good verse but it doesn’t deserve — deserve — to be counted as ‘poetry’.