[Yves S L]

So the house style is not to explicitly refer to other people's comments. Rightio.

I interpret composing with eyes closed as an exercise in what is commonly called "working memory" and it is useful insofar as an increase in mental bandwith can easily be applied to eyes open composition. Be able to manipulate large amounts of information mentally is known as usefl in fields as different as chess and muscial composition, so no reason why it would not have an application to poetry. Nevertheless, for me a preliminary exercise would be expanding working memory in relation to sensory perception, so being able to hold the sensory details of something as simple as sitting in the garden.

The talk of inspiration reminds me of what I heard a music teacher say recently: Mozart wrote his masterpieces because he was getting paid. Talk about seperating those that are amateur from those that are not, to me, has a basis in the history of artists having to feed their children. More generally, I interpret talk of inspiration as depending on subconscious processes not made explicit. There was a phase when I could write ten poems a day.