I have to make appointments to answer email that requires me to react at
a level where I sound like I've thought about it.

Alison, based on Adam Phillips' article, asks if inspiration is rubbish.
I know it's not rubbish, but I don't know what it is.  I'm somewhat
aware of Phillips' work as of several years ago, and found it valuable.
He is apparently a major psychoanalyst and writer on psychoanalytic
topics.  I am one of those self-deluded Opiate of the Masses (great pun
there) types, but I'm also of how contradictorily I view this question.
One contradiction is that most "creative work" is sweat, no
quill-behind-the-ear or ruffled shirt B.S.  First-thought-best-thought
may indicate some form of "inspiration," but the revisions after the
first thought often feel like watch making or auto body work to pound
the original impulse into some sort of presentable shape.  I would like
to know, for example, what Allen Ginsberg did after that (so he claims)
amphetamine-whammed weekend when he wrote the (first draft of) Kaddish.
At some moments hearing about "inspiration" makes me think of one of
those Castiglione "sprezzatura" routines ("Ah, I was just the
transparent eyeball, it came from...my Muse!"), the idea poets just sit
there while great thoughts hit them found its proper level in an Ernie
Kovacs character, the effete Percy Dovetonsils.

If inspiration were the whole issue, then everyone who ever had a
thought--grand or dismal--would be the equal of everyone else because I
am convinced for no reason by personal arrogance that all gifts of
inspiration are equal.  What isn't equal is whether people recognize
them, transform them, know how to USE them.  Is that knowledge of what
is and isn't authentic writing a form of inspiration?  I gather such
knowledge may be acquired or received outside an MFA program,
ha-ha-not-funny.  I suppose everyone has those moments.  I have, I guess
all of you have: the "divine inspiration" thing where the writing is
just handed to you almost intact and all you need do is transcribe it
and work on the grammar just a bit.

What fires me up...my family.  Real or imagined.  I used to write
incessantly about my kids when they were real little and before I knew
that writing was work, not quill-behind-the-ear self-expression.  The
last time I wrote about one of the kids was just before my younger had a
procedure done in Baltimore at the end of January.  I have written a
great deal about my ex.  My parents are major players.  I will know I
have conquered the last of my reticence and morals when I write
describing the true manner of my father's death and I learned it at age
51 in 1995.  

Oh--opiates of the masses.  I avoid religious poetry because I can't do
it as well as Donne, Herbert, or Hopkins.  I don't want to write like
Franz Wright.  I gather Judith Wright (no relation:-) was very well
thought of in Australia (of course she is unobtainable Stateside), and
Mary Karr has surprised me by feeling like my multi-leveled kid sister,
not just someone who publishes in The New Yorker.  Rage, drunkenness,
and Catholicism are an awesome combination but only if you can write
like an angel, alas.

Ken
-----------------------------
Ken Wolman
Miercom
www.mier.com
609-490-0200, ext. *8-14 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alison Croggon
> Sent: Saturday, March 11, 2006 9:34 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Inspiration
> 
> Long piece in the Grauniad about artistic inspiration, with comments
with
> people from Steve Reich to Andrew Motion -
> 
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1728929,00.html
> 
> So, what inspires you? Or is it all rubbish?
> 
> Best