Where does your inspiration come from?

[Tzara]

Neo said something the other day in the 007 thread about not posting "until [he had] more consistent inspiration." That made me think about the concept of inspiration in poetry--where, in fact, do we get the ideas or emotions or whatever that ends up being shaped into a poem?

I know that quite a number of poets adhere to an idea something like "feelings swell up in me and spill out as poetry" or something like that. I've always disliked that as a general characterization of poetry as it implies a devaluing of the craft component in poems, but I suppose it fairly accurately describes the source of inspiration that many poets have. We fall in love. We fall out of love. We get dumped. Our friends don't understand us. We have family problems, school problems, work problems, drug problems. It seems as if when we're particularly emotional labile, we tend to vent in verse (as opposed, say, in fiction or essay).

I tend to write about things I've seen or read that struck me in some way. For example, the inspirations for my most recent poems have been:

• A line in someone's post on a unrelated topic that struck me as an interesting metaphor.

• Dora mentioning that she was flying to Paris and my memories of the Eiffel Tower at night.

• An article in Esquire magazine titled "Why We Cheat" that pissed me off.

• A photograph in the newspaper of an apartment house I lived in many years ago.

• How my mother looked when I visited her on Easter.

I think only the last of these is something that would be considered as something close to personal emotion, and even then it kind of confused me when a couple of the comments were phrased as if I had been speaking about my personal emotions in the poem. (I suppose I was, at least a little, but the narrative I is never me and when people react as though it is, I'm always caught a little off-base.)

So where do you all get/look for/find inspiration for poems? Are you able to write on demand (effectively force inspiration by some technique or trick) or do you have to sit forlornly around waiting for a theme to fall into your lap like a cherry blossom shed from the Tree of Inspiration?

Do you have exercises that help? Do you read certain poems/poets and try to imitate them?

Where the heck does that urge to pick up the pen (or, more likely, sit down at the keyboard) come from?

 

[Angeline]

Like you, my inspirations are various. Anything, really, can set me thinking things that somehow end up in a poem. Sometimes I write to resurrect people no longer in my life or because I feel the need to express how a particular piece of music sounds to me or because I want to paint something with words. What fascinates me is not so much that anything can inspire me as that when I am inspired what I most want to do is write a poem about it. Why poetry? I do have a rather tone-deaf singing voice and am a klutzy dancer so maybe it's just the art best suited to me. I wish I could play an instrument. I know I'd be writng music if I understood how.

 

[Neonurotic]

I suppose I used "consistent inspiration" wrongly when I stated my failure to produce the set number of poems in 007. What I really meant was "consistent desire" to write.

As for inspiration to write poetry, it's often random for me. I can listen to a song and be inspired by the feeling it gives me or reading someone's writing. Of course relationships, dreams, actions of others (my pets too) and natural surroundings also inspire. Sometimes my observations come to me as metaphors, which is weird finding eroticism from pancakes with syrup and melted butter. Mmm, butter... butter sex.

 

[Angeline]

I suppose I used "consistent inspiration" wrongly when I stated my failure to produce the set number of poems in 007. What I really meant was "consistent desire" to write.

As for inspiration to write poetry, it's often random for me. I can listen to a song and be inspired by the feeling it gives me or reading someone's writing. Of course relationships, dreams, actions of others (my pets too) and natural surroundings also inspire. Sometimes my observations come to me as metaphors, which is weird finding eroticism from pancakes with syrup and melted butter. Mmm, butter... butter sex.

And coffee. You forgot the coffee.

 

[nitenovanavium]

well, my inspiration comes from various cultures and myths. I write a lot of things about a lot of legends mostly. From things like 'jack the ripper' after reading the biography 'letters from hell'

I also write about many of the magnifiscent Celtic deities and their vices and dealing and mysteries and what not. H.P Lovecraft inspires me a lot. as well as the concept of madness in itself.

Though passion and emotion can carve their own poetry. But it tends to 'make' different poetry for me. Eg.

Dance the potent dance of fate,
you can't escape the rhythm.

But my eyes fall victim to the trance,
of something warm within them.

I spy a spectre donning sunshine,
pure beauty shakes the tempo.

As the beat increases you within it,
I pry a sweet momento.

A dance of long prosparity,
skill and vast equality,
a dance for all eternity,

libera me from hell.

(an example of an emotional write as opposed to a mythical one, which tend to always be rhythmic in rhyming couplets. Or long poetic verse.)

 

[Neonurotic]

And coffee. You forgot the coffee.

Alas, I don't live in the Pacific Northwest anymore and I am my own barista now. It's not quite the same as pretty girls smelling like espresso and chocolate. However, I do wake up and see this everyday:

 

[hmmnmm]

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[Angeline]

Alas, I don't live in the Pacific Northwest anymore and I am my own barista now. It's not quite the same as pretty girls smelling like espresso and chocolate. However, I do wake up and see this everyday:

That's pretty impressive. I don't live on the tundra anymore, myself, but I was never into the baristas like erm some people.

I write because I can't draw.

I enjoy the challenge of using words to portray what I see, hear, touch, etc, and sometimes think. I'm still trying to figure out if I even have a clear grasp of what poetry is. So everything is pretty much an exercise. Just to try and be able to use the tools to do whatever I want them to do. But of course I am never anywhere close to confident that my scratchy sketches succeed. It's more like, "it goes kinda like this" but it isn't it, yet.

So if I want to portray, say, a crowd of people on the street - first I want to be able to do that - and that itself is really hard (for me) to do - but I get really charged up with having a specific aim, eventually put at least a couple words on the page, and go from there, and often start to see other directions to go, so there comes the difficulty of staying on-message, and often end up forgetting the original idea, start to see tangents. But I like those too. End up with a scribble to set aside and maybe pluck a couple starter words from someday.

So I'm inspired by the idea of being able to use words to (poorly) mimic visuals, from realistic to abstract. I know I'm still at the stick figure stage - okay sometimes really scribbly fuzzy stick figures. And poetry offers a concentrated space as well as helpful devices in which to try and sort out those little sticks. So I guess it would be something like just seeing if I can at least somewhat accomplish something I set out to do and when that doesn't happen, try to enjoy the view wherever it ends up.

Something like that.

I need to take drawing lessons one of these days. I think I'd be good at it, but there are things about shading and perspective that seem a mystery to me now. I'd like to draw and paint more. But there is no art but writing that I feel hard wired to do correctly.

 

[bronzeage]

Personal experiences, usually bad ones. Extreme turmoil and emotion are a rich vein to mine.

Life has just been too nice for the past few years. I've never been able to grind out happy kitties and butterfly poems.

 

[hmmnmm]

My mind was jogged a few minutes ago as to why what I said was bugging me, why so much is wrong with it. I remembered back to the early forays, when I didn't really know what I was doing. And it was so helpful being around people who did know what they were doing, and were encouraging. Something about that mix seemed to create inspiration that overflowed, and there was less hesitation from worrying about whether what was written was 'good' or 'real poetry', a lot of unhindered eagerness to just try all kinds of stuff. Throw it out there, it would get varied responses, but I'd already moved on to something else, while slipping the suggestions in the back pocket.

Like TZ said in my elsewhere thread, it was the pure enjoyment of doing... I have to wonder if there are various stages: like being unaware that you're using a poetry device, and then becoming aware that what you've been doing is a device, and then becoming too conscious about the devices, at the expense of enjoyment/inspiration. And then somehow forgetting about the tools and just going back to the enjoyment - which would probably open the windows wider to inspiration. I will suppose that if there could be a way to erase knowledge/awareness of those devices and forms, the way would be open to painting those pictures, and enjoy doing so.

 

[greenmountaineer]

Pretty much random as has been suggested. However, quite a few originate at dinner with a glass of wine listening to my wife who has a keen interest in Celtic history and her family's coming to America from Ireland after the famine in the mid-nineteenth century.

For the good or bad of it, the poems I write that give me the most satisfaction, and therefore inspire me to really edit them, are those that tell a story. I remember one dinner time conversation about my wife's grandmother who as a 17 year old in 1911 quit her job one day after being hired at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in the garment district of Manhattan. She didn't like the working conditions. Three days later a disastrous fire took the lives of many workers, mostly young Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrant girls. I read somewhere that prior to 9/11 it was New York City's worst mass tragedy.

I wrote a poem about it for a Literotica challenge a couple of years ago. Although technically not a new poem, I'll post it there in case anyone may be interested in reading it.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

books - general reading
personal experiences
random thoughts
dreams
nature

I too write in place of painting or drawing, my first love. You could say I fell for poetry on the rebound.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

I draw from some of the same wells as Tristesse. Sometimes also from a book I am reading or something someone else posts here. Sometimes from sensations or images in the day that stuck. A line of cars by the park, sun on the skin, that sort of thing.

 

[butters]

from wherever it comes

could be anything at all - a line from a film, a look, a shadow, colours, emotional impact ... very often a single word.

i have phases where i don't poetry write at all, and even find trouble offering anything worthwhile in the way of comments or critique on others' writing. doesn't mean to say i stop reading, but it tends to mean i then go off and do other stuff until all of a sudden i'm ready to write again.

what i don't do is sit around folornly i move in and out of writing all the time and don't look upon the non-writing times as anything to get concerned about as it always returns as lively as ever - my subconscious has just been soaking up life in order to have something to write about. maybe.

i can write if forced to, but it removes the element of pleasure/connection with what i'm writing, making it more an exercise in words akin to completing a crossword puzzle. that feels like fake poetry to me, but it's been the case that sometimes these are received better by the readers - perhaps leaving more of me out allows more of them in, so they enjoy the whole thing better. *shrugs* i'll be beggared if i know - i wing it.

 

[corndog_]

Lingerie catalogs. For terrorists.

 

[bogusagain]

Do you have exercises that help? Do you read certain poems/poets and try to imitate them?

Where the heck does that urge to pick up the pen (or, more likely, sit down at the keyboard) come from?

I've been pretty much a poetry deadhead for a while and been free wheeling. I've been keeping an eye on Lit poetry every so often though. I've tried to pick up a pen and write but I think I'm too rational and level headed of late. I tend to write when I'm angry or frustrated or at least emotionally bubbling over something (maybe a woman). Thinking about it, I'm a cynic and cynicism is often the font of my inspiration and I like to wield words like an ice pick and I like to have victims to scalp. Trotsky was a mistake but he befriended Frida Kahlo and that made me jealous. I like words that clunk awkwardly, rather like disonant music so I like to put words into lines that really shouldn't be there and rhytms that go on too long and disjointed narratives. Maybe I'm so cynical I'm a post modernist and I don't even like post modernism.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I sometimes wonder if suffering of one kind or another is a necessary ingredient.

 

[Tzara]

Lingerie catalogs. For terrorists.

Oh, you. I hope that's just the deep fried batter talking.

I've been pretty much a poetry deadhead for a while and been free wheeling. I've been keeping an eye on Lit poetry every so often though. I've tried to pick up a pen and write but I think I'm too rational and level headed of late. I tend to write when I'm angry or frustrated or at least emotionally bubbling over something (maybe a woman). Thinking about it, I'm a cynic and cynicism is often the font of my inspiration and I like to wield words like an ice pick and I like to have victims to scalp. Trotsky was a mistake but he befriended Frida Kahlo and that made me jealous. I like words that clunk awkwardly, rather like disonant music so I like to put words into lines that really shouldn't be there and rhytms that go on too long and disjointed narratives. Maybe I'm so cynical I'm a post modernist and I don't even like post modernism.

I think most people drawn to writing poetry use emotion as inspiration or instigation. The poem serves as an outlet for the emotion in some way.

I tend to treat writing a poem as more like solving a crossword puzzle--as a kind of intellectual problem to be worked out. When I try to write from emotion, I just get sloppy (well, sloppier) poems.

Anyway, welcome back gentlemen. It's good to see you both.

 

[Tzara]

I sometimes wonder if suffering of one kind or another is a necessary ingredient.

One can't write poems from joy?

 

[coachdb18]

There are a few folks here that write like they're feeling every drop of ink as they write, everything comes across as being so personally felt and realized emotionally, that you feel it in their writing .. it could only come from feelings of being that are inately inside their writing as they write it, thoughts are simply escaping onto paper, and that depth of a story is so completely beyond question, you too become immersed in their expression of it as you are treated with its replaying.

Then there are those who seem to have never experienced an emotion, never had a feeling or known a sensation in their entire lives. Their inspiration seems to be something they were looking for, found on a rack, and purchased. Inspiration is something that for me is bubbling to the surface, requiring me to control it and get it down as it floods me, not something I have to go searching for on some beleagured quest.

Inspiration? It's why you write in the first place, because it just has to have a place to go, and that is more about what you are and what you feel most deeply, and it's what it is that cannot be contained, that which just has to come out, in a story, or a conversation, or in a hike alone on a warm day alone in the woods with your thoughts. Nothing you will ever find by 'seeking inspiration' will ever compare to just letting yourself flow in that conversation within yourself.

Just my two cents...

 

[bogusagain]

One can't write poems from joy?

Hmm Oh for long legs to knot about me and a rotund behind to stroke. If that is suffering for art, I'm sure I'm not the only one who could write poetry about the joy of suffering!

 

[Micahb2]

I was trying to answer this for myself last night in some detail. No go.
What Is is thread for the spinning wheel.

 

[corndog_]

I sometimes wonder if suffering of one kind or another is a necessary ingredient.

That is why I'm here, my dear. To inspire you.

 

[bardroses]

For myself, inspiration changes with the outlet. Prose is deliberate, an exploration of thoughts that have caught my fancy. Food is quite often about twisting expectations. But poetry, poetry is music. Notes fill my head, teasing into chords and finally reaching melody, and then I can't help but to try and give it some kind of voice through whatever corner of my ink-stained soul it reaches.

 

[bogusagain]

I thought I'd post this here because it is self evident where the inspiration come from because it is in the poem.

Anti Depressant

spring arrived laden with rain
a depression squat on Mitte
a low ceiling of leaden cloud
heavy on my shoulders

I was a lamppost against which
the dog weather cocked its leg
a drizzle of urine down my neck
and a fart of wind in my face

the gallery offered shelter
like a dentist’s waiting room offers relief
an antechamber to some botched surgery
the indifference of a cold shrug

the psychology of being tolerated
I, the uninvited guest, turned craven
the gallery assistant’s beady eye
followed me like a sniper’s sight

I was enthused over the mediocre, like
cooing over a neighbour’s ugly child
the gallery’s beautiful ice maiden
was clearly not the blighted mother

come to my studio, defrost upon my bed
I will demonstrate how line defines form
how to transpose, make permanent, a thing of beauty
how to work a nude into an ache of anticipation

shake off your bureaucratic duty
free the world of this visual dirge
liberate your body of your straitjacket attire
follow me, dancing naked, into the street

the rain spat down on Mitte
the beautiful nude remained clothed
but I evaluated her breasts and calculated her hips
now she exists naked in my imagination