I recently discovered Brian Brodeur's blog "How a Poem Happens." Each post has a poem and a series of questions for the poet—mostly the same questions, which makes for interesting comparisons in terms of how the poets work and how they think about what they are doing. My favorite section in most of the recent ones I read is, "Do you believe in inspiration?" And my favorite answer is the one given by David Hernandez:
Inspiration is a lazy architect who gives you a blueprint with only the front door drawn, then snoozes on a hammock while you build the entire house.
Inspiration is a lazy architect who gives you a blueprint with only the front door drawn, then snoozes on a hammock while you build the entire house.
1 comment:
Hey thanks for the link Andrew. I enjoyed both the poem and Q&A. The blog is refreshingly straightforward and lucid (though some questions are more interesting than others; not sure why it's necessary to ask if it's a narrative poem). I too liked RW's response to the question on inspiration: 'I hate it when poets say that a poem "wrote itself." Or when fiction writers insist that they just sit back and let their characters take over.' Reminds me of Nabokov's reply to a similar Q&A in the 1960s: 'My characters are galley slaves.' Of course, RW then goes on to contradict his initial assertion (but then, he's a poet).
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