Roger Federer claims that when he played the Mens final at Wimbledon,
he found it incredibly easy, standing god-like outside himself.

In an email to this list several years ago, Peter Riley claimed that
JH Prynne used to gather his mateirials and 'go for it' like any
runner. I assume this was similiar getting into the zone.

Tracy Kidder in "The Soul Of A New Machine" mentions that hardware
designers when faced with a particular problem would sometimes enter
this zone of "no thought" and the idea/solution would "just come". See
also an article in Granta about computer engineers. I have also faced
this point where a solution would just appear as I wrote without
apparent conscious thought on my part. Sometimes after a period of
immense concentration, sometimes when I've been preoccupied with
something else, the (algorithmic) idea would pop into my head. I have
seen programmers write long screeds of text and have it compile first
time, the solution coming into being as they wrote. I have done
similiar.

I think there's a parallel here: the algorithmn, the idea for the poem
(I don't think there's a parallel term in poetry); the text of the
program, the text of the poem. In both areas, the subconscious seems
to have it's own agenda and allows us to speak in novel ways, if we
let it. The conscious seems to be prey to all kinds of immediate
pressures and information which the subconscious filters for us in
ways which produce entertainment and new works. More importantly, in
ways that we can't control (if only we let it).

I have sometimes worked on long, big, knotty poems, only to have
smaller ones "pop-out" - and they are often the better poem.

I can pinpoint lines in my poems where none or little thought has gone
into the writing. The fourth line of the first verse of the last poem
I posted here, for example. I thought vaguely of the ideas/words but
the words only came out at the point of a pen. It was then that
"being" came into being on the page. The act of writing produced the
words, and I'm not surprised that spookiness surrounds the act.

Note that the words that these aren't words that come into the mind.
They are words that come from the act of writing.

The zombie that controls us when we drive a car. The conscious mind is
always a split second behind.

Sometimes I think that I have to remove thought before I write poetry.
Let the zombie take control. Jack Spicer, can you hear me?

Stress from career and relationships can interfere with all of these,
and I have suffered in this respect and I have sympathy with those of
you who have.

Roger

--
http://www.badstep.net