[jameal]

Not OP but I was struck by the sentiment. I'm sure many of us on HN approach our lives through the lens of an academic/engineering mindset. Of course that kind of approach is valid and useful. We can also approach life as artists (poets) and lean into spontaneity, playfulness and creativity. There is a kind of freedom that is unique to the latter approach. You don't have to be a professional artist to make art out of living.

[lo_zamoyski]

I'm not sure why people assume art or poetry is an anything-goes, free-for-all, opposed to the supposed rigor or rigidity of engineering.

Look at the art of the great masters. These were not acts of pure spontaneity. Music, even when improvised, leans into an acquired musical language from which the piece of composed.

And in engineering, there's experimentation, doodling, thought experiment, and a fair amount of hackery in many cases. Improvisation, too, can occur.

Poetry is a history of meter. Many poets consider free form lazy and the lowest form of poetry, as it is in keeping within the bounds of meter and maximizing within that structure that introduces a challenge and produces beautiful results.

So, the distinction isn't perhaps one between art and engineering (engineering is, technically, art), but temperaments or habit.

("Spontaneously" vomiting paint on canvas is not art. It's fraud or some act of superstition.)

[jameal]

I'm not sure why people assume that either. These are interesting points. I know very little about formal poetry, but I consider art to be expression. So what I meant is that there is an art to the way we live our lives. Many people of the modern era are very rational and technical and lean hard into a "command and control" style way of living that's very focused on future results. I think its in a way limiting, and to our detriment. So like the great masters, I try to find a balance between pure spontaneity and pure formality.