When Does Poetic Inspiration Change to Calculation?

[Jassy Melson]

First, a little background about my poetic situation:

I began attempting to compose poetry in my early twenties. I have continued to compose poetry for more than forty years.

When I was in my early forties, I realized that poetic inspiration, the muse, or whatever name it is called, had left me. I continued to compose poetry, but it was without inspiration. I was left with calculation, experience, and memory in composing poetry.

It seems that most poets experience a time when inspiration deserts them. There are of course exceptions: Yeats continued to compose great poetry in his seventies. But the exception only proves the rule. For most poets there seems to be a time when the muse departs—never to return.

The question of when and why poetic inspiration departs from the poet intrigues me. I wonder how other poets feel about this, or if they have experienced it.

[Ser Nevarc]

Tennyson wrote poetry into his eighties, when he died.

But to better address your question, I'd suggest that each poet is unique. Such as you and I for instance. I don't think inspiration needs necessarily to leave any poet. You live, don't you? Use something you see--some instance of nature that captivates you for just a split second, and use that moment of understanding as a center of a poem. Write about what you experience, and you need no muse.

And remember, if you feel blocked, just lower your expectations! There's always time to revise.

[YesNo]

What I think you mean by "inspiration" is what I would call "intuition". It never leaves and is not only beneficial for poetry but for any activity one engages in. However, sometimes it seems to leave because things don't work out the way we expect and we become confused. Perhaps the best to do is to embody consciously, or try to stay aware of, whatever we experience.

[cacian]

Inspiration never runs out just like words they are always around. What runs out is ideas so be sure to find your own.
Imitations and trying to be someone else eventually dries out and your sense of what you wanted to write initially is lost in translation.

[Jassy Melson]

There's where we disagree: I think there is a time when poetic inspiration leaves the poet, and he or she is left with calculation, experience and memory. I think the amount of revision the poet does with a poem is a good indication of whether inspiration has departed. The less revision the poet performs, the more "inspired" the poet is; the more revision he or she performs, the less inspiration there is, and the more calculation, experience and memory take over. This, of course, is just my opinion, but it comes from my own experience. Those poets who say "inspiration never leaves" are I think fooling themselves.

[YesNo]

I do agree that one may not be able to come up with a poem or do something else that one has done in the past well and with ease. We all change, but the intuitive source of the change is still there working in different ways.

[stlukesguild]

There's where we disagree: I think there is a time when poetic inspiration leaves the poet, and he or she is left with calculation, experience and memory. I think the amount of revision the poet does with a poem is a good indication of whether inspiration has departed. The less revision the poet performs, the more "inspired" the poet is; the more revision he or she performs, the less inspiration there is, and the more calculation, experience and memory take over. This, of course, is just my opinion, but it comes from my own experience. Those poets who say "inspiration never leaves" are I think fooling themselves.

To make such an assertion, it would seem to me that you would need to back it up with some evidence from examples. I would agree that we have some individuals, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge who seemingly burned out or lost their inspiration. But then we have far more examples than Yeats. Goethe, Dante, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Eugenio Montale, William Blake, Pablo Neruda, Heinrich Heine, Rafael Alberti, Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Octavio Paz, Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, Robert Browning, Robert Herrick, and any number of other poets created (or are still creating) some of their most masterful works well into their life and career. The same is true of any other artistic endeavor you may wish to explore. J.S Bach's last compositions such as The Art of Fugue and A Musical Offering, Beethoven's late string quartets and 9th Symphony and Mozart's Symphonies 40 & 41, Die Zauberflöte, and Requiem all show composers at the height of their genius and inspiration. Painters? How are these for "uninspired" late offerings:













Your notion of the "inspired" work of poetry as created without effort... without revision or reworking... almost like taking dictation from some external muse is largely a Romantic fantasy. Some artists may seemingly struggle more... Beethoven immediately comes to mind... but this in no way means they are less inspired and simply calculating. Inspiration exists/occurs along the whole of the creative process.

One of my favorite quotes is by Picasso: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

[WyattGwyon]

Although I agree with what Luke says as far as it goes, I would have to back up and ask what exactly you mean by inspiration. From your words, I don't see how your "inspiration" is to be distinguished from facility or spontaneity or even pleasure in the work. Who cares if a poem is inspired as long as it is good? And if it is good in the end, who would begrudge a little calculation? But if what you mean is you feel like you have lost your edge or have run out of things to say or original and interesting ways to say them, then the phrase "a lack of inspiration" just sounds like a way to distance yourself from whatever the real problem is—blaming it on the muses.

[Jassy Melson]

There's where we disagree: I think there is a time when poetic inspiration leaves the poet, and he or she is left with calculation, experience and memory. I think the amount of revision the poet does with a poem is a good indication of whether inspiration has departed. The less revision the poet performs, the more "inspired" the poet is; the more revision he or she performs, the less inspiration there is, and the more calculation, experience and memory take over. This, of course, is just my opinion, but it comes from my own experience. Those poets who say "inspiration never leaves" are I think fooling themselves.

To make such an assertion, it would seem to me that you would need to back it up with some evidence from examples. I would agree that we have some individuals, such as Wordsworth and Coleridge who seemingly burned out or lost their inspiration. But then we have far more examples than Yeats. Goethe, Dante, Victor Hugo, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Eugenio Montale, William Blake, Pablo Neruda, Heinrich Heine, Rafael Alberti, Yves Bonnefoy, Geoffrey Hill, Octavio Paz, Chaucer, Edmund Spenser, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, Robert Browning, Robert Herrick, and any number of other poets created (or are still creating) some of their most masterful works well into their life and career. The same is true of any other artistic endeavor you may wish to explore. J.S Bach's last compositions such as The Art of Fugue and A Musical Offering, Beethoven's late string quartets and 9th Symphony and Mozart's Symphonies 40 & 41, Die Zauberflöte, and Requiem all show composers at the height of their genius and inspiration. Painters? How are these for "uninspired" late offerings:













Your notion of the "inspired" work of poetry as created without effort... without revision or reworking... almost like taking dictation from some external muse is largely a Romantic fantasy. Some artists may seemingly struggle more... Beethoven immediately comes to mind... but this in no way means they are less inspired and simply calculating. Inspiration exists/occurs along the whole of the creative process.

One of my favorite quotes is by Picasso: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

As far as backing up what I asserted, I stated that it was just my opinion, and I used myself as an example. All the poets you mentioned are exceptions to the rule, which I acknowledged exist, but only proves the rule.

Although I agree with what Luke says as far as it goes, I would have to back up and ask what exactly you mean by inspiration. From your words, I don't see how your "inspiration" is to be distinguished from facility or spontaneity or even pleasure in the work. Who cares if a poem is inspired as long as it is good? And if it is good in the end, who would begrudge a little calculation? But if what you mean is you feel like you have lost your edge or have run out of things to say or original and interesting ways to say them, then the phrase "a lack of inspiration" just sounds like a way to distance yourself from whatever the real problem is—blaming it on the muses.

I'm not blaming anything; I'm simply stating what happened to me.

[MorpheusSandman]

Your notion of the "inspired" work of poetry as created without effort... without revision or reworking... almost like taking dictation from some external muse is largely a Romantic fantasy. Some artists may seemingly struggle more... Beethoven immediately comes to mind... but this in no way means they are less inspired and simply calculating. Inspiration exists/occurs along the whole of the creative process.

One of my favorite quotes is by Picasso: "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

Indeed. Even in the poetry I've written that poured out of me naturally during the first draft, I always found that it could be bettered by revision. Even the Romantics to whom that type of mystical inspiration was such a crucial component tended to heavily revise their work--Wordsworth being perhaps the most infamous example.

As far as backing up what I asserted, I stated that it was just my opinion, and I used myself as an example. All the poets you mentioned are exceptions to the rule, which I acknowledged exist, but only proves the rule.

I think in order to prove they were exceptions you'd have to have some idea of what the statistics are on when a large sample of poets were most "inspired." I remember Helen Vendler wrote that almost no great poet since the romantics has written great poetry before their 30s, and if you think of almost all of the great poets of the 20th century, almost none of them wrote their best when they were young. Hell, Wallace Stevens didn't get going until his 50s.

[stlukesguild]

As far as backing up what I asserted, I stated that it was just my opinion, and I used myself as an example. All the poets you mentioned are exceptions to the rule, which I acknowledged exist, but only proves the rule.

If they are exceptions to the rule, you need to show the overwhelming number of poets who establish your proposed rule. Now there are a good number of poets who don't lose their muse... but rather, die young... and we can't make any assumptions about what they might have achieved one way or the other. On the other hand... beyond the list I offered, we might add Petrarch, John Ashbery, Pierre Ronsard,
Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, Henry Vaughan, Rilke, Paul Valéry, Czesław Miłosz, Boris Pasternak, Paul Éluard, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Theodore Roethke, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Galway Kinnell, Mark Strand, W. S. Merwin, Anne Carson, Yves Bonnefoy, J.L. Borges, Mahmoud Darwish, Yehuda Amichai, Richard Wilbur, Edward Hirsch...
How many names are needed before they are no longer an exception to the rule?

[Paulclem]

Inspiration may well be clearer thinking. the idea of a muse is a metaphor for what happens in your thinking, andIi think it gets better with practice.

I'm not saying theat there's no such thing as writer's block, but many writers advocate writing and continuing through the difficult period. I'm not sure if authors and poets have detailed why they had a block, but it could well be environmental, emotional or physiologically based - who knows?

But your concern is you. what stops you? For myself it is not having time for reflection through too much work or many things happening that prevent me being able to gather thoughts and have a go. I also like writing on the move, or rather whilst I'm in transit. I get ideas whilst I'm moving around. No doubt others like to sit and reflect or read to stimulate their ideas. That's why I go to cafes frequently. It's really the going there that gives me the ideas, and the sitting in the cafe is the time I can use for reflection.

I don't think the process is mysterious - though sometimes the lines just come - but they come more frequently with practice. That's what I've noticed and what writers mean when they say a writer writes.

[JBI]

Romantic and post romantic poetry is too preoccupied with the "I", and as such has a knack of focussing on the relation between poetic inspiration and the work. The truth is, most great poets are late-life poets whose styles develop. Thus is the norm with Japanese and Chinese poetry, as is the norm in most English poetry. We like to imagine verse as conceived in full form, but the truth is, it is mOre often than not the product of experience and construction. As a painter must physically put brush to canvas, so must the poet construct the wOrk.

Poets such as li bai were said to comPose masterworks on the scene, but the truth is, such talent had first to be learned through years of study. The extant that he uses allusions, mostly to the Selections of Refined Literature (wenxuan) attests to this, as the first major annotated edition would not be available for him, he must also have made extensive studies and comparison with his friends, as I doubt he would have had access to a full manuscript in scroll form (120 different rolls, note).

Therefore, the Poet most acclaimed for spontaneity is a crafter with experience.

So is true of the Chinese art of calligraphy, which too was learned from copying masters.

[stlukesguild]

Or as Pope said,

"True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance..."

[WyattGwyon]

I'm not blaming anything; I'm simply stating what happened to me.

I didn't express myself very well. What I am suggesting is that by describing what happened to you as "a loss of inspiration," it is possible you are obscuring a problem in your approach to writing or in your critical thinking that is both more mundane and easier to address. Because inspiration is such an intangible notion, chalking your difficulty up its loss tends to make the problem sound intractable and unfathomable—which may not be good for the prospects of resolving it.