In a message dated 12/11/00 7:01:20 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.
>
> but Alison didn't actually say she was listening to what she 'heard inside
> herself' (& in putting those marks up I guess I creatively misquote too).
> but instead said she was '*listening* to something
> > faint and subtle,' perhaps a very different thing. Having read some of
> >her peotry, I would say she knows what such listening can be. For me, it
> >involves listening to the language itself, hoping to allow it some say in
> >the necessarily collaborative act that writing can be...
>
Douglas,
My quotes were for emphasis tho I can see that it could look like
misquoting. & I may have read into Kona's (not Alison's) post
to some extent. That part about "'telling the truth' at a level
that runs below the surface frazzle of the conscious mind"
made me think more of an internal listening, rather than external
listening.
In the main the point I wanted to make was: Should we
trust or value so called "inspiration" any more than "willful creation"?
Though I know certain poets are predisposed to one mode
of creation or the other, I think the product of either creative
mode should be looked at and weighed equally. James Dickey
had a good line that went somthing like: The poet's job isn't
to tell the truth; the poet must make the truth. That being
said, some poets, particularly those who lean naturally toward
autobiographical telling, often resist this notion.
Finnegan
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