On creativity
November 7th 2011 00:24
The following two quotes come from Steve Turner's book, Imagine, which I'm reading for the second or third time. (Re-reading books is something I'm doing more and more of: if they were good in the first place, why not run through them again?)
Both appear on page 55 of the book; the first is from playwright Arthur Miller and the second from poet and musician Don Paterson.
For myself, it has never been possible to generate the energy to write and complete a play if I know in advance everything it signifies and all it will contain. The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos cryinmg for order, for meaning, and that meaning, must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished. To speak, therefore, of a play as though it were the objective work of a propagandist is an almost bilogical kind of nonsense, provided, of course, that it is a play, which is to say a work of art.
from the introduction to Arthur Miller Plays: One, published by Methuen in 1988
I don't think poets get ideas for poems, they get words; that's their gift, and they forget it at their peril. What usually happens (to me) is that I get this phrase in my head that I can't leave alone; sometimes it's original, sometimes a cliche or some bit of received language I've discovered something new in it; it constantly surprises me when I think about it and that's completely essential - if it doesn't surprise me, I can't expect it to surprise the reader, which is the whole point of the exercise.
from "The Dilemma of the Peot [sic]" in How Poets Work, edited by Tony Curtis, published by Brigend 1996
Both appear on page 55 of the book; the first is from playwright Arthur Miller and the second from poet and musician Don Paterson.
from the introduction to Arthur Miller Plays: One, published by Methuen in 1988
I don't think poets get ideas for poems, they get words; that's their gift, and they forget it at their peril. What usually happens (to me) is that I get this phrase in my head that I can't leave alone; sometimes it's original, sometimes a cliche or some bit of received language I've discovered something new in it; it constantly surprises me when I think about it and that's completely essential - if it doesn't surprise me, I can't expect it to surprise the reader, which is the whole point of the exercise.
from "The Dilemma of the Peot [sic]" in How Poets Work, edited by Tony Curtis, published by Brigend 1996
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Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
I know exactly what you mean.
Comment by Mike Crowl
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