Thursday, December 11, 2008

The genesis of a poem


What is it? Where does it come from? Why do we write poems? I don't know how I write ,it just comes over me, like a mood or a hunger and I have to satisfy it.Ted Hughes-a great thinker- goes further, he puts it as 'a facility for expressing that complicated process in which we locate, and attempt to heal, affliction-whether our own or that of others whose feeling we can share.' He sums it up perhaps in one more line. 'The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case the voice of pain..'
The resulting poem then is the physical treatment by which the poet attempts to reconcile that pain within the world.
My old Pal Dylan Thomas says similarly that a poem is a process that begins with an image based on the emotions which then breeds conflicting images within an intelectual framework until the contradictions are resolved in 'that momentary peace which is a poem. ' Cool.

4 comments:

apprentice said...

Nice musing mister. For most of us it's a bit like playing footie, you know you'll never play in the Champions' League, but even getting a foot to a rebound off the gable end can feel good.

I like the photo too.

Ah my word verification was "nonsi" I suspect that's what I'm saying too!

Totalfeckineejit said...

Thanks for dropping by apprentice. Nice soccer analogy, I still hope of playing In the champions league by the way, but being 107 with two decidedly dodgy knees I fear I may have left it a bit too late ;)

Liz said...

Major nod to photo...great stuff.

Re: footsie, a total ball-coward I am,, even tried football on the beach once but still ran a mile when the ball came towards me...

Totalfeckineejit said...

Hey Liz, glad you like da photo.Soccer aint so hard just keep yer eye on the ball and swing yer leg!