In a message dated 12/8/00 7:18:09 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<< For me,
creative activity (as opposed to the writing I do in
my professional life) is more *listening* to something
faint and subtle than wilfully generating product, and
when I can't hear anything I *really* can't hear
anything, and I know it. And to "make something up"
to fill in the silence seems an insult to the creative
endeavour, which for me is definitely about "telling
the truth" at a level that runs below the surface
frazzle of the conscious mind. I can't always do it,
but I know when I have and when I haven't, and work I
produce that doesn't tell the truth at this level
always ends up being discarded. Not to mention
filling me with self-loathing >>
I'm not certain one shouldn't suspect (mistrust) the poems
one "hears inside" oneself as much as the poems
one "invents willfully." I do endorse the discarding. I get
the sense sometimes that poems are being published
without discernment, willy-nilly, throw it up against the wall
(of cyberspace or print media) and see if it sticks. Writer's
block may be a bad thing...but writer's reticence
isn't.
Finnegan
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