Inspiration and Creativity
I usually write fairly late at night, after reading, putting work in the past for a few hours at least, etc. The other night, I was abnormally tired and did my pre-sleep prep. I was about to turn in, but I decided to fight the tiredness and sit at the desk and write, no matter how briefly. So I picked up a couple of poems that I have been working on and began my writing. Afterwards, I was giving some thought to the idea of creativity, probably sparked by my recently finished reading of Richard Holmes's magnificent biography Coleridge: Early Visions, 1772-1804
.
At times writing, I seek only what I can describe as an incantatory attitude. By this, I only use "incantatory" as an approximation. I think of certain poets as incantatory: Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas among others. The Greek poets George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis probably also fall into that same category. I could also associate it with certain types of music: Clint Mansell's soundtrack for The Fountain, Hans Zimmer's composition Time for Inception, Philip Glass's Metamorphosis compositions for solo piano, or Bach's suites for solo cello. It's a mood more than anything else, and it is focused on sound and not, at least initially, on meaning. The idea also veers towards Surrealism, though less of the Dali kind and more of the Magritte kind (frankly, Magritte's Surrealism is about the only painting Surrealism I care for).
What's all this about? Some poems I write as an act of will. I have the subject. I know I want to write it, so I tackle it. Others are inspirational from a scene or image or something. They have a direct causation. Others, however, come from the sounds of words and are secondarily about meaning. These also tend to be more "automatic" in the sense that they are written by letting the mind unlock, reveal, and write unedited...and then I edit and rewrite to hone.
Many other forms of inspiration abound, I'm sure, but these are the three that tend to be with me...and they produce quite different poems.
.At times writing, I seek only what I can describe as an incantatory attitude. By this, I only use "incantatory" as an approximation. I think of certain poets as incantatory: Hart Crane, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dylan Thomas among others. The Greek poets George Seferis and Odysseus Elytis probably also fall into that same category. I could also associate it with certain types of music: Clint Mansell's soundtrack for The Fountain, Hans Zimmer's composition Time for Inception, Philip Glass's Metamorphosis compositions for solo piano, or Bach's suites for solo cello. It's a mood more than anything else, and it is focused on sound and not, at least initially, on meaning. The idea also veers towards Surrealism, though less of the Dali kind and more of the Magritte kind (frankly, Magritte's Surrealism is about the only painting Surrealism I care for).
What's all this about? Some poems I write as an act of will. I have the subject. I know I want to write it, so I tackle it. Others are inspirational from a scene or image or something. They have a direct causation. Others, however, come from the sounds of words and are secondarily about meaning. These also tend to be more "automatic" in the sense that they are written by letting the mind unlock, reveal, and write unedited...and then I edit and rewrite to hone.
Many other forms of inspiration abound, I'm sure, but these are the three that tend to be with me...and they produce quite different poems.
No comments have been added yet.
