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Originally Posted by Philip Quinlan
I certainly agree with you, John. It may be possible--some folks say they can, and do, do it--but I can't make a poem by thinking the way David says he thinks (and it's conceivable that both claims are right for us, individually; what do any of us really know about other minds?)
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Well now wait a minute. What di I say about how I think? Just that I can't tell the difference between the mental processes going on when I "think" vs. when I "use language." That doesn't necessitate any conclusions about how I come up with poems.
Meanwhile I think I get what John means by this:
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Originally Posted by John Whitworth
One thing I don't do is THINK it. The poems have nothing to do with thinking at all. They are constructs.
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But I am not sure if I agree with it in a literal sense. I think thoughts are constructs, and I think they are constructed from the same stuff from which language is constructed. I do agree generally about trying to "think as little as possible" in the sense of trying not to intellectualize too much (despite the impression one might get from posts like this).
As for this:
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Originally Posted by John Whitworth
Also, thinking sounds active. most of what I do as a poet isn't active at all. It happens to me.
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I keep hearing people say things like this, but I just don't experience it that way. I mean bit and pieces -- lines, conceits, images, metaphors, etc. -- "come to me," but that is just a metaphor for a complex precess of association that build salience and resonance for me about said bits and pieces. When I actually write a poem, I have to work at it. It doesn't just come or happen. It is more like midwifery than surgery, to be sure, but it is active work.
But this moves away from the topic of the thread. I do agree with John that this discussion, and discussion from which we have diverged, and perhaps the other discussions in this thread, have little to do with how I write poems.
David R.