Re Annette's question as to how to turn on that "spark" needed for writing,
sometimes buried thoughts or images (that "spark" of inspiration) will float
up from the subconscious when you turn your conscious thoughts to something
else--do some other kind of work and don't even think about the subject you
were trying so hard to pursue earlier. (We all know how this works when
we're trying to think of a name we can't recall. That name comes
eventually--but only when we stop trying to think of it and do something
else.)

Sometimes, too, motion can start the flow of the mental processes needed for
writing or any other task that requires inspiration. Have you tried
walking, turning on water, or getting into water, Annette? These work for
me. With poetry, too, sometimes the necessity to adhere to a particular
form brings out surprising lines and images. I discovered this when I wrote
a sestina. I had to choose six words, each of which then had to be used at
the end of one line in six stanzas containing six lines each; and these six
ending words had to occur in each successive stanza in a different, but
carefully prescribed, order. The same six words also had to be used in the
middle and at the end of a final three-line "envoi." What comes out of an
exercise like this can be quite surprising. Below is a sestina I consider
one of the best I've ever encountered. The only way this varies from the
usual sestina is that the ending envoi, which is usually three lines long,
is truncated in this poem so that it's only a single line. That seems quite
appropriate considering the theme of the poem, death. "Wesli Court," I just
found out (ain't the Internet wonderful?!), is the pseudonymn of Lewis
Turco, who has written a couple of books about poetry, including a couple of
top-of-the-line books on form in poetry. He's also written a number of
formal poems (i.e., poems that follow a form of one type or another):


THE OBSESSION


Last night I dreamed my father died again,
a decade and a year after he dreamed
of death himself, pitched forward into night.
His world of waking flickered out and died--
an image on a screen. He is the father
now of fitful dreams that last and last.

I dreamed again my father died at last.
He stood before me in his flesh again.
I greeted him. I said, "How are you father?"
But he looked frailer than last time I'd dreamed
we were together, older than when he'd died--
I saw upon his face the look of night.

I dreamed my father died again last night.
He stood before a mirror. He looked his last
into the glass and kissed it. He saw he'd died.
I put my arms about him once again
to help support him as he fell. I dreamed
I held the final heartburst of my father.

I died again last night: I dreamed my father
kissed himself in glass, kissed me goodnight
in doing so. But what was it I dreamed
in fact? An injury that seems to last
without abatement, opening again
and yet again in dream? Who was it died

again last night? I dreamed my father died,
but it was not he--it was not my father,
only an image flickering again
upon the screen of dream out of the night.
How long can this cold image of him last?
Whose is it, his or mine? Who dreams he dreamed?

My father died. Again last night I dreamed
I felt his struggling heart still as he died
beneath my failing hands. And when at last
he weighed me down, then I laid down my father,
covered him with silence and with night.
I could not bear it should he come again--

I died again last night, my father dreamed.


--Wesli Court


When I first copied this poem, I made a typo. I typed the 4th line in the
5th stanza as, " . . . upon the scream of dream out of the night." Then I
realized that Court had constructed that line so that the reader is bound,
because of the proximity of the word "dream," to hear "scream" as well as
the word that's actually in the line--"screen"! And how about that ending
for the first stanza: "He is the father/now of fitful dreams that last and
last"? Doesn't that one resonate forever?

I wish I could write as well as Wesli Court!

Best to all--
Marjorie (Carlsbad, CA)
mailto:marjorierosenfeld@...

-----Original Message-----
From: anetro11@... [mailto:anetro11@...]
Sent: Sunday, March 11, 2001 12:35 PM
To: minciu_sodas_en@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [minciu_sodas_en] note to minciu


Hi,
I am on the trail of "brainstorming", or to be more graphic, "savant
thought". First there is the discipline of mentally working ideas out, then
the work of writing, and then something else, which is - that quick idea
that
changes everything. The order is probably not important.
There is possibly a genetic component to thinking called "savant". We
all have it, yet it is buried in convention and learning. I, for one, must
learn to trust the "savant" since I believe it is there and will spring into
consciouness when much of the work is done, when one is relaxed, or when
one's mind is a blank. Work, however structured with thought, is rather
hopeless without that spark. That spark saves the day every time. As an
example, I wrote a poem named "Dust". It was nice and well constructed, yet
similar to other poems with the theme of dust to dust. What saved it was
one
line, "I put feathers in hats like my grandmother."
Since the thought and working disciplines are in place for me, how do I
touch that "brainstorm" or "spark" or "savant"?
My best, Annette


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