creative insight...
A list of key elements, though not exhaustive, that will allow the creative process – Any one of them could be the way. Turn away from them, and the work – no matter the medium – will not find its true end.
in the self
unforced
yield
as a vessel
no think
all things
These elements, I believe, are both method and identity. Move away from them, and you will create, so to speak. You’ll have a poem, story, song, painting … but it will only be a fraction of what it could be.
The creative artist must allow the self to be overwhelmed. Without that, I don't think success is possible. You have to lose the “I” to be able to find the “I”. When I’m in this state, the poetry finds me.
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Three quotations from Jane Hirshfield’s Nine Gates:
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When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer – say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them….Mozart (trans. Edward Holmes)
You will write if you will write without thinking of the result in terms of a result, but think of the writing in terms of discovery, which is to say that creation must take place between the pen and the paper, not before in a thought or afterwards in a recasting. Yes, before in a thought, but not in careful thinking. It will come if it is there and if you will let it come, and if you have anything you will get a sudden creative recognition….Gertrude Stein
The artist is a receptacle of emotions come from no matter where; from the sky, the earth, a piece of paper, a passing figure, a cobweb. This is why one must not discriminate between things. There is no rank among them. One must tae one’s good where one finds it….Pablo Picasso (trans. Brewster Ghiselin)
Hirshfield uses a poem by Wang Wei (trans. Tenshin Reb Anderson) to synthesize these ideas. This is an amazing piece, but I think I prefer Nelson Foster’s translation because of the directness and ease of the words in the second half of the poem. Here’s Foster’s take:
My Retreat at Mt. Chung-nan
In midlife, I’ve come to cherish the Way;
For late life, I’ve built a home near Chung-nan.
I head out there alone anytime the urge strikes.
It’s glorious the things an empty self sees!
I walk the stream to its very source,
Sit and watch the clouds rise….
If by chance I meet an old woodsman,
We talk and laugh – no rush to get home!
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A rule to live by: It’s glorious the things an empty self sees.
Yes.
2 comments:
This is quite a provocative post, Sam. I'm surprised no one's commented on it.
I'm especially taken by Picasso's comment that one must not discriminate between things. Perhaps that's why I fell so head over heels in love with poetry as a child. Because I was equally in love with the clouds in the sky regardless of whatever meaningless or meaningful shape they might take as I was in the ant's arduous journey beneath my feet. I loved the spider despite the moths she caught in her web and the mosquito sucking blood from my leg. And I first heard/felt/saw that love in Frost's poetry. His were the first poems I read and knew and lived and loved. Only one other poet stands out in my childhood plunge, and that's ee cummings, and in that case, a very specific poem which spoke such volumes to me at such a young age that I swear, I still hear that poem echoing inside me:
maggie & millie & molly & may
. . . e. e. cummings
maggie and millie and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and
millie befriended a stranded star
who's rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea.
As small as the world, as large as alone. Ah. I can't even tell you what rereading that line does to me even now.
I was just about to blog about writing a poem in my head while running today and how I liked the feeling of that poem alive in my head while I was lost in my body, in my body yet completely outside of it when I came here and read your post. I may snag this comment out of this comment box and use portions of it in my blog post.
Have you ever written a poem in your head and just let it live there? Never committed it to paper? Sometimes, I think those are the best, the truest poems of all.
Thanks for this post, Sam. I have to go out into the sun and whack weeds and think about losing myself in order to allow a poem to find me.
The cummings' poem is a marvel. The line that gets me is "it's always ourselves we find in the sea"
Of course, we do have to look.
As to your idea of what draws us to poetry in the first place, I agree. To the creative self, meaningless and meaningful are the same.
Writing the poem in the head and letting it stay there is probably the perfect way, Laurel. Interesting notion. In some respects, moving the poem from no thought to idea (and here some of us make the mistake of moving on to the editer that lives in our bodies) to paper takes away. --in the same sense that translation is approximate but not exact-- and can never be exact. The poem in my head is always better than the poem on paper.
The poem that got away--
Thanks for the comment.
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