Creativity and the Poetic Mind
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Overview
Creativity and the Poetic Mind mingles the voices of well-known writers such as Nikki Giovanni, Donald Hall, John Koethe, Marge Piercy, and Robert Pinsky with newer voices, and includes engaging excerpts from interviews with thirty-eight American poets. Within a sustained argument about creative states of mind, this book innovatively presents and explores the technique of "going to the place" as more reliable in writing poetry than waiting for "inspiration." It explains why poets frequently believe that talking about their own poetry may damage their creativity and why, for centuries, inspiration has seemed to come from somewhere beyond the poet. In addition, it discusses the practicality of poets' thinking that "being creative" and "writing poetry" are two separate skills: inspiration is unreliable, but experienced poets create daily.Synopsis
Featuring excerpts from interviews with 38 American poets, this text explores the technique of "going to the place" as a more reliable method of producing poetry than waiting for inspiration. The main premise is that experienced poets learn to recognize, create, and recreate creative states of mind, and that this skill of "being creative" is independent of the word-management skills involved in crafting poetry. Jean Tobin (herself a poet) teaches at the U. of Wisconsin-Sheboygan. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR