Poets can lead boring lives too!
I loved Julianna Baggotts’ “Q and A: Do you think it helps your poetry if you’ve had a lot of experiences and have seen the world?” My english major friends and I have had the conversation on whether or not you have to experience major suffering or upheaval to be an effective writer, and I am so glad that Baggotts and I agree that the smallest thing (veins) can be enough subject matter to write about. Of course, it is always better in theory; once I try to actually write about a pen cap for some reason it never turns out very creatively. At least the potential exists for something mundane to become fodder for writing. It’s a relief that my ideas do not have to come from suffering through death or loss; I just need to be more perceptive and observant so I can notice that “everything is talking, even the rooted irises tonguing air.” (Q and A: Where do you get your ideas? Answer #1)
Original post by kpacious
Emily T wrote:
I think that’s a really interesting question- whether or not a writer has to have had interesting or unusual experiences to have enough subject matter available to write good stuff…Because a lot of the poets we studied did have interesting lives and backgrounds that gave them powerful subject matter to draw from. But I think it is quite possible to make a great poem out of an ordinary topic. This all reminds me of one of my Intro to Creative Writing classes this week where we read “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and were given the assignment to write about any everyday object in as many ways as possible and put them all into a poem. It was really surprising some of the beautiful, insightful, and poetic things my classmates wrote about jeans, a glass of water, a blanket, etc.
Posted on 06-Dec-07 at 10:23 pm | Permalink