Sunday Morning Musing: A Poet's Advice to Students

 

EE Cummings portrait ~ by Fabrizio Cassetta on Fine Art America

'A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.' 

On individuality, voice, and the real feat of feeling in poetry, there is much to mull over here in this advice (posted below) from one of my favourite poets, EE Cummings. 

I'm particularly struck by his surmise that when we use words like other people 'we are not poets.' In being a poet as he sees it (feels it), it is essential to be an individual too ('nobody-but-yourself') and to have a distinct voice of one's own, one that is imbued with feeling. Of course his poetry is a demonstration of this, an unique eureka of originality with an individual style so grand it could almost stand alone as a genre. In his manipulated syntax and grammar Cummings found a style that readily expressed modes and depths of feeling like none before, eliciting a 'feeling first' reaction in the reader. In fact, to wholly interpret an EE Cummings poem, it is necessary to feel it first - to probe at it with the antennae of the subconscious and sensory self, not that of the logical analytical mind. Logic impedes it, feeling frees it.

Language is a medium full of possibilities Cummings' poetry proves. Much like the human brain, we only use a small percentage of its capability, leaving its vast potential mostly untapped. To write poetry is to tap in to some of it, but here Cummings urges us to tap more. To go beyond. To not settle for the norm. His poetry pushed the boundaries of language to open up a whole new realm of discourse: one of feeling first. He succeeded (most dazzlingly) in finding an individual and authentic voice, unparallelled in the poetry canon. 

If you're not familiar with his work, I urge you to have a look. You will be amazed, puzzled and dazed. And more liberated to push the boundaries of your own voice into the wonderful colourful domain of Individual. 

*(You can read a selection of ee cummings poems: here)

 

To individuality and authenticity!

~ Siobhán 

Sunday Morning Musing: A Writer Is A World

Well that's it isn't it?! I love this quote. I marvel at this quote. I marvel at this world. I marvel at the worlds in us, the worlds in words. But I don't know about the word 'trapped'. I'd like to think of it more as: 'a writer is a world contained in a person'. Yes, contained. Or maybe 'brimming' or 'bubbling.' How about you? 

Join me over on Pinterest -  http://www.pinterest.com/siobhanbsb/on-writing-writers/ - for more writerly gems. 

~Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Bukowski Wisdom

'There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep. it will make you stride like a tiger...'

I love this line especially from Bukowski's declaration. 'There is no losing in writing...' There isn't. It is beneficial, it is all becoming. Even if you are never published, never famous, writing will still be there, will still re-make you and bring the world into clearer focus. It is a gift, a privilege, a power. It will make you 'stride like a tiger' down the terrain of life (yes.) And although I've never thought about it before, the idea of toes 'laughing' as we sleep is just fantastic. Fingers thrum, heart bebops, brain flicker-flashes when you're on a roll, so why wouldn't toes be laughing too!

For more of Bukowski's tough-guy hard-earned writerly wisdom, click on his name in the Labels below this post. He has a lot to say on the craft and separating the real writers from the just-a-notion ones. All straight-up to-the-point talk. And all of it tried, tested and true. 

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: In Love With Language

 'A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.' 

~  WH Auden

Agree! So in love with language that words stop and start you, that a phrase can stun you and keep you in reverie for days, that the learning and using of language is a privilege, a magic trick, that language is a kind of love, words stars in the blank page of existence. 

In keeping with Auden's point, below are the acclaimed 100 most beautiful words from the English language - to fall passionately in love with. Give or take a few (we all have our own personal favourites) I agree with the list. (But there are so many more that could be added!)

I definitely swoon over all those 'e' words anyway: 'ebullience,' 'effervescent' (actually sounds like it's bubbling doesn't it?!), 'ephemeral' (ahhh), 'evanescent'. (I'd add to those 'elusive'.) Oh and 'gossamer'! 'Halcyon'! 'Mellifluous' (sigh). Just look at those lovely 'l' words, lithe and languorous on the lips. Not to mention 'quintessential'. And the sparkle of 'serendipity'.  But why not end it with 'zenith' or 'zany'? Not to forget 'xylophone'! Ah so many words! I think there could be many more hundreds of words to add to this to make the ultimate list. Not to mention other languages. (French is one that every single word is a singsong delight.) 

Is your favourite word here? If not, do share - fling a word, a star of brightness, into the cyber void! I'd love to hear something ping in this silence of the blogosphere, in which I have many followers, but so few commentators.

Dedicated to all of us in love with language - poets, writers, logophiles, lovers, linguists, readers, raconteurs.

 

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: The Creative Mind

 

Yes, this is exactly what it feels like! 

Especially when inspiration strikes and all kinds of ideas are let loose in the mind and there you are reeling, rapturously trying to take stock of them all. Phew. 

(This could also explain why I always have about 8 different tabs open while I'm on the computer and constantly flicking back and forth between them. I couldn't do it any other way. It's not sore on my CPU, so my thinking is that it couldn't possibly be sore on my computer's...) 

So many ideas, so little time! We creatives are always being goaded by stimuli, so much so that our own CPUs are I imagine, awash with colour all of the time, flashing and flickering with the promise and possibility of new ventures and where they might lead. Sensory overload happens at times (just try getting to sleep when it does, a few nights I felt like my head would physically burst!), but as long as it is vented, expressed, manifested, head explosions won't happen. Heart ones though, metaphorical, are most likely.  And when they happen, honestly, there's no better feeling.

Creative minds everywhere, I salute you. Here's to unending colour and vitality!

~ Siobhán  

Interesting Further Reading on the Creative Mind:

18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently  ~ Huffington Post

The Importance of Daydreaming ~ Time Magazine

Sunday Morning Musing: Heart Over Head

"If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing." ~Marc Chagall

Artists give good advice. I agree wholeheartedly here with Chagall. One look over his paintings and you can see they came from love, an innate love not only for what he was painting, but for life itself, and love.

The same applies to writing too, of course. If you don't love your subject, it will fall flat in front of you. The head is fine for fixing and editing and analysing, but the creation point, the will to create, the motivation, the spark of inspiration, must come from the heart, the site of feeling. 

Science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury has echoed the same sentiment:  

“Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.” He then goes on to instruct us budding writers: "...And out of that love, remake a world.” 

Ambition won't do it, talent alone won't do it. Only love - love for what you do, pure passion, innate investment  - will. As Bukowski too, puts it - write only if 'the sun inside you is burning your gut' to do it. 

Yes.

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Write in the Moment

 

Walt Whitman portrait by Fabrizio Cassetta

'The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment - to put things down without deliberation - without worrying about their style - without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote - wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.'    ~ Walt Whitman

True, true, true! Seize the magic of the moment. Go with the intoxicating flow. You know Whitman really practiced what he preached when you read his poetry - it's full of energy, passion, verve and enthusiasm. The words seem to sing off the page in a high exultant voice. I don't think any other voice in literature comes close to outdoing Whitman in this regard. His voice is unique and daring. True and honest and heart-filled, marked by the moment of emotion in which his words were first created. 

So here's to letting ourselves live in the moment - and writing in it! 

~Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Night-Time Volts

Now here's an invention we could use! 

Night-time is the best time for creativity. Especially those fuzzy moments just before sleep, when the receptors of the brain are relaxed and ideas seem to flow quickly and easily. 

Did you know that 4am is supposed to be the optimal time for creative thinking? It's when the mind is at its most open and uninhibited. If you've been privy to such wee hours inspiration then you'll know exactly how it is. Like striking gold after digging in a muddy river for weeks, or suddenly turning to Technicolor when all you've had is black and white, from 2D flat words to 3D dynamics. There's a current in those wee hours that is available for us to tap into - a problem-solving, eye-opening, idea-generating volt. Tune into it, either accidentally or deliberately, and the mechanical side of creating vanishes. It's all energy and flow, exclamations and Eurekas!

It's all great when you're riding this flow of ideas, but then there are the times I've been hit by a few zinger lines and too tired to reach for the pen and paper, muttering sleepily, 'it's okay, I'll remember this in the morning...' But of course, I never do. They're fleeting, these night-time lines, and need to be caught immediately on paper or they float off to die a death in some ghost-yard of the mind, never to surface again.

That's why one of these contraptions would come in extremely handy. You never know, they might even invent an App for it yet...

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Writing as Communication

'All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation - it is the Self escaping into the open.'  ~ E.B. White

In spoken communication, there is a lot of static. A lot of half-meant words, a lot of chewed-up sentiments, a lot of noise. When we communicate by talking, we can put on any emotion, any front, any self, change our colours like a chameleon to match our conversation partners. It is easy to disguise ourselves in the spoken word. But writing is different. 

Writing is a way of telling the truth. Truth that is bent in telling is not so easy malleable in writing. And that goes for truth of self.  When we write, we can't be anyone but ourselves. We fictionalise,  invent characters sure, but at the core, it is us, -'communication by revelation' EB White calls it. The written word is the key that opens the cages our true selves may be confined to. We are free to be ourselves on the page. 

And on the page, the Self, like any free spirit, likes nothing better than to soar. 

~ Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: 1001 Things

 

Writing preserves. Writing keeps intact. Writing cherishes. Everything put in verse is always there, immortal. 

As Salman Rushdie points out, this is one of the real motivations of writing. And definitely one of its greatest rewards too.

~Siobhán

Sunday Morning Musing: Spooky Outcomes

'A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.' ~ Frank Kafka 

Keeping with the Hallowe'en sentiment just passed, here's Kafka on how not writing can lead to monstrous results. 

And he's right. I am thinking most especially of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, ha. (It's on TV tonight funnily enough...) His writer's block sure manifested itself in monstrous ways! No, when it comes to myself I know I morph into a ghoulish creature when I haven't been writing for a while: cranky, grumpy, bite-your-head-off, woe-is-me-existentialist, despairful, fright-night-every-night. What definitely feels like bordering on insanity (my mind for certain feels like it's tied up in a strait-jacket).  Nothing feels right.

Because it's writing what keeps us writers sane, keeps us right. What was it Bukowski said along the same lines about writing keeping him from madness? 'You either get it down on paper or you jump off a bridge.' It was life or death to him. As for any serious writer.

What makes it even scarier is the psychological truth that presides within it. We all write for different reasons, but most inherently, we write due to a compelling force within us propelling us to do it. A force for expression, communication, illumination. George Orwell called it a 'devil'. At times it even feels like a supernatural force so strong it is. To try to ignore something as powerful as that would be to invite dire consequences. 

Maybe it's the same for every profession you feel in your bones to do and for some reason (doubt, fear, practical obstacles) you don't. Isn't it the things we really want to do and don't that haunt us all our lives? Yes, they are the real ghosts, keeping us miserable with their endless keening.

So thank you Kafka for this scary prediction (definitely the most scared I've been all week!)    And writers, let's also heed Mary Shelley's warning in her tale of creative woe lest we create our very own Frankensteins! 

Keep writing!

~ Siobhán

Frankenstein - i.e. the zombie-like brain-dead monster writers become when they don't write.