As we sail into the home stretch on my laureateship, I’m pondering a difficult question regularly asked at readings: What’s the most important thing one needs to be a writer?

I agree with novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, who said in answer to that question, “Well, there’s such a thing as talent. A bit of talent.”

But what is talent? Another word for hard work? The same thing for poets as for novelists? For pen & ink artists as for sculptors? Classical composers and hip-hoppers? Could there be a “talent gene”? Is someone who dashes off a poem or a drawing more talented than someone who spends long stretches of time doing many revisions?

While a child can write a charming poem or draw an amazing picture, we don’t think of children as poets or artists. To be called a poet or artist, you have to do it well more than once; in fact, many times: You need staying power. You don’t need to be superbright or supergood, but you do need staying power.

I think talent’s a gift — a spark — that can be squashed or ignored, but never completely extinguished; it’s given randomly and passed on.

Talent

A kind of love can spread debris

along the bay beneath a tree

or on a table’s slick veneer

An artist shaping her career

can drown us deep as any sea

And isn’t rain against the quay

pale sunlight on a fleur-de-lis

the gold on any veined Vermeer

a kind of love?

Though Sylvia Franz or Emily