My Creative Adventure

Transcription

1 My Creative Adventure II My creative adventure is really my life as a writer. As such, my adventure began in New Orleans when I was a small child only ten years of age. I must have already felt even earlier that although I loved books and especially poetry, there was something mysterious about the process and only the elite were elected to be poets. So my first composition at age ten was prose. I wrote a Thanksgiving piece for my seventh-grade English class and I still remember how it began "Picture to yourself a band of pilgrims." In the next few years, however, I was busy trying to write poetry. We were living in the same house where my father moved us within two weeks after we came to New Orleans. Many mornings I would rise early and sit on the side steps writing. At school I scribbled poetry in my composition book and at home in the night when I was not reading to myself or my grandmother, I was trying to write. Home, school and New Orleans furnished a wonderful environment that made me want to write. Music and books at home my mother or my sister playing the piano continually, my father's books and the trees that I watched through the bedroom windows all provided invaluable stimuli. I thought New Orleans must be the most beautiful city in the world and not having seen the world, I still think so. My teachers were also encouraging and I especially remember my high school English teachers enlightening us as to the greatness of poetry, American and English Literature and memorizing pieces that I spoke at school, church, and special programs. When I showed my father my first efforts at writing poetry, he gave me a date book to keep them and said I should keep all my poems together. He warned my mother not to get excited about having a poet in the family since it was probably just a puberty urge. However, when I came home from my first year away at Northwestern and I had nearly filled that book with three hundred poems, I asked my father if he still thought it was a puberty urge. He laughed and said that I would probably be writing poetry for the rest of my life. Through the years, I have met many writers, professionals and amateurs, famous and

2 obscure, but I am sure my desire and determination to be a serious writer received early nurturing from my parents and early teachers in New Orleans. What does an English teacher do for a young adolescent who not only expresses a desire, but seems compelled to write a few lines of doggerel every day? Well, first, she can encourage such a youngster. (I say "she" because my high school English teachers were all women and for two years in college I had women literature professors once away at Northwestern and Iowa, my teachers were men.) Yet my composition teachers all urged me to write. I heard them read poetry aloud as I heard my mother read aloud at home first. Of course, I learned to revel in poetry in the same manner. Poetry should be savored orally in class. Students should also learn rhythms and images as they learn meanings. I believe a poet thinks in figurative language and symbolic terms, at least one sees these initially. Ideas come later, but concepts are first and we conceive in pictures and feel the rhythms intuitively. Learning different kinds of rhythms, whether patterns of the line or emotional meanings of words, must be part of the English lesson. I mastered many things unconsciously and automatically before I became conscious and self-conscious. Once this happened I was more inhibited and I wrote less, whether better I cannot say. Although I lea.ned some scansion and versification at home in New Orleans, I really grasped English prosody and forms of poetry from my teacher, Professor E. B. Hungerford, at Northwestern. Yet, it was not necessary for me to reacquaint myself with the differences between iamb, trochee, anapest, and spondee as well as their sound, meaning, and effect upon a line of verse, particularly mine. It was not until I graduated from Northwestern and was writing on the Federal Writers' Project that I found my voice as a poet. For in those two years immediately following college, I discovered my own forms and began writing some of my best poems, "For My People," "We Have Been Believers," and "Southern Song." It is one thing in college to study the creative process by reading Aristotle's Poetics or Brewster Ghiselin's The Creative Process, but quite another to discover for myself the kind of thinking that makes a poem or the way to organize any imaginative writing. 12

3 13 Students are taught, but they must also discover what they are constantly told about the relation of thinking to writing. It is here that the teacher is only a guide. The teacher's basic job is to inspire the student to think. The English composition professor must instruct the student on how to think to understand what creative thinking is all about. What is creativity? I think it is originality, talent, innate ability to make something distinctively of artistic worth and individually different, the God-given ingredient in artistic production; that which is neither taught, bought, nor conveyed from one person to another. These aspects or factors are: (1) the creative personality, (2) the creative process, and (3) the creative product. These factors are all interactive; [ASo. r dash better here?] acting upon or reacting from the thing created, the person creating, and the method of creation. We are, therefore, involved with both nature and art, the fire of imagination and the craftsman who hammers out the creation on the forge of his own intuitive self or his own intelligence, as well as the thing in itself which is being created. Perhaps, if it were possible to blend all these into one composite whole we might have demonstrated creativity. There is, however, something involved here which is intangible and ephemeral. Despite all our vocabularies, it defies definition, description, or adequate distinguishing from the tangible which is explicable, and involves no special mystique or mystery. Creativity cannot be considered inspiration, conception, organization or realization of the artistic thing expressed, but it partakes of all of these. And yet, it involves a power defying all three. Creativity is, in fact, that special power to blend all three and also transform human experience and chaotic phenomena into a work of art which we call creativity. Who, then, are poets? They are the creative personalities who seem especially endowed with what Samuel Coleridge calls the esemplastic power; [A or dash better?] that power to transform or change the shape of raw experience into a work of art. This work of art is a whole, new creation partaking of beauty, truth, and affecting both our emotions and sensibilities. Poets, however, are no different from their fellow creatures in physical or mental attributes. They have the same physical apparatus for seeing, hearing, and feeling. Furthermore,

4 they use a common language. According to Coleridge, they share fancy and primary imagination yet, do not share the secondary imagination. So, they share quality, but not quantity. For in their capacity to evoke the recurring image, poets are more sensitive and intense. They see the same daffodils, the same waterfall, the same lark on the wing, the same red clover bloom as the poet, yet non-poetic people would not make a poem. These conventional individuals do not suffer the same quantity of intensity in the recurring image; William Wordsworth would often refer to this state as being "recollected in tranquillity." Therefore, poets are makers. To make, create or fabricate are the poets' special concern. Like nature, poets are creators, cooperating with the creative energies of the universe and using the total personalities to accomplish this fact. Moreover, everything poets are go into the creation of poems. What makers see, hear, think, and believe are a part of what poets or makers create. Can it be otherwise? The integrity or the wholeness of the poets' personalities are in some measure a part of what they spawn or bring to birth. The poem is part of the self out of which it has come. They cannot be inimical or strangers to each other. Poems are more than the handiwork of poets, they are an imprint of selves seen in the style, language, image, music, and meaning. The philosophy of the poet is, therefore, in the poem. The ear of the poet catches the rhythmic music in the sounds of the world around him. The eye of the poet grasps the beauty of the natural landscape without and within them. What they perceive or what they conceive is all the same, and this is what is in the poem. The poet, then, should be a sensitive instrument for the sounding and testing of raw sensory experience. Yet, they must be more than a creature of sensuous experience. They become a creature of mental activity, as well. They are busy transferring the image or the concept to the written or spoken word, the series of images and concepts into expressed thoughts, the figurations and configurations of ideas into meaningful metaphors and similes that comprise this figurative and poetic language. Poets are jugglers of words, dreamers with spoken dreams, fire-makers who blow the sparks into flame with their magic bellows. Every day of their life, poets are becoming a 14

5 personalities [AU: Missing some words here?] sensitive to this task and destiny. Actions, thoughts, observations, and dreams are the raw experiences that go into the laboratory for this selective process and creative function. Accordingly, the poet's personality should be developed into a well-honed, finely tuned sensitive instrument on which they play the music of their universe and transform dross into gold, silken thread into shimmering cloth, sounds of hummingbird's wings into melodies, and harmonies to be sung in celestial choirs. The poem is really no greater than the poet's personality; for it is their expression and creation, although sometimes the poem seems the sumtotal of the poet's potential. Only then, it expresses more than the poet has thus realized either consciously or unconsciously with themselves. When poets suddenly rise to the heights of their time and personalities, they may sometimes lift us beyond ourselves and our mundane world into a society of the sublime and noumenal universe. Thus, poets, like prophets and priests, serve a social function and enhance our day with the luster and brightness of their own creative spirit. They may, perchance, open the door to the future and give us one brief ecstatic glimpse into a secret and sacred place. How do we make a poem? What happens when the poet creates a work of art? The creative process begins in creative thinking. Creative thinking begins as all thinking, either from the thing perceived outside the physical self or conceived within the physical self. Perceptive and aperceptive thinking, or perceptive and conceptual thinking, mark the beginning of any creative thought, idea, or venture. The daydream may also lead to creative thinking which in its highest expression and development leads on to new knowledge and invention. William Wordsworth demonstrates the creative process from the romanticist's point of view with his poem, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," both in this particular literary piece and in his preface to the lyrical ballads. Because this is a personal, subjective, emotional, simple and natural approach, it works well with the lyric: I wandered lonely as a cloud

6 16 That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils, Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them dance; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed and gazed but little thought What wealth to me the show had brought. (Wordsworth, 311)1 [AU: Placement of note number OK here? Or should itcgo aiter thetoll6wing When he saw them they caused a rush of spontaneous emotion and he looked on them, drinking in their beauty, color, movement, and massed effort, and then he went home thinking-ale:a r[a-15-:-"altttle -or'slittle?-)-erf what an impression they had made on him nor how often they would recur in his memory: For oft when on my couch I lie

7 17 In vacant or in pensive mood They flash upon the inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude And then my heart with pleasure fills And dances with the daffodils. The same spontaneous emotion recurs as when he first saw them and this emotion, image, meaning, movement, and beauty all re-occur. They are "recollected," as he says, "in tranquillity." How do I make a poem? Sometimes, in the same way. Yet, perhaps I am thinking about a subject I have seen or read in a history book or someone has told me a story about a person, a folk-story, or I am walking and I suddenly think of a line: What am I bid for this face? Or What is the price of her face? Or What will you pay for my face? Or How much am I bid for this girl? I may not use all or any of these lines but I know exactly what I want to do, write a poem about a young slave girl, only seven years old, put on the auction block and sold. In ten years, she would be famous for her poetry imitating Alexander Pope and in 1773, she would be publishing the first book by a black person in America, two hundred years ago before the Declaration of Independence. I am deliberately planning a poem, perhaps a set of poems, lyrics, free narrative verse or dramatic monologue? What will I do? An occasional poem? Is it the same? Almost always my

8 18 poetry comes out of my thinking, sometimes out of my feelings as well. It begins with a mere color, a sound, a place, an idea, and it grows. Sometimes this creative process goes on unconsciously in the mind of the poet until the whole poem takes shape there: initial idea, development, and share of fo: m and complete resolution. Then, the poet struggles to bring it forth as the mother in travail brings forth her child. Nothing must go wrong in that birth process or the child comes out wrong, ill-formed, and damaged. The poem, too, must come out whole and as it was conceived, and if it is truly as the poet would have it, then the reader will experience a similar emotion and satisfaction every time they read that poem. We do not always think the same things about a poem nor feel the same, yet if in the aesthetic reaction to that poem, the total personality responds in some way to that poem, then the poet has truly succeeded. This is creativity. Throughout the ages, various poets have offered their theories about this thing, creativity. In prehistoric man, all the arts of music, painting, and tale-telling existed. Tribes of people developed their own artistic culture following a natural and simple process of creativity. In ancient Africa, India, China, Persia, Greece, Rome and in the great Mayan cultures of South America, Mexico, and Central America, people were creative, and there are evidences of this creativity today. Throughout these countries, we find their ancient carvings, sculptures, musicians, and poets preserved in stone and marble, in pyramids and tombs of their great kings, their written hieroglyphics or cuneiform or language in characters still unknown to the Western world. We, also, have evidence of this creativity in the recorded literature of the ages. Consider the stories of Aurelius and his golden ass, of Aesop and his fables, in Plato's Phadrus an explanation of this very creative process, Aristotle's theories of tragedy and classical form, and in the Old Testament or Hebrew history stories of the prophets, and the priests with their visions and smoke-filled altars over which they prophesied, the beginning of theories of inspiration in all of these are records of the creativity of humanity. Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo and German musician Beethoven move us with

9 19 their masterpieces every time we see and hear them. These men created their art from definite creative ideas. They were purposely planned from conception through organization and development to the realization. The greatness of the works depended first upon the greatness of their conception. The power of the artist varies with their ability to bring the art they have conceived into reality. Music, painting, architecture, poetry, and drama must all have great conceptions to arrive at great realizations or creations. The artist, moreover, must have tremendous power and artistic stamina to see his works through to their logical conclusions or realizations. Genius, then, is the greatest degree of creativity expressed in the human mind Every artist is clearly not a genius. Every person works within the scope of their own creativity. They learn and develop a craft that becomes automatic, yet has nothing to do with their artistic creativity. Their creative talent challenges them constantly to find methods and processes suitable to develop their creative ideas and emotions and to bring the conceptualizations they are capable of expressing into fulfillment. Creative thinking is, of course, the key to creative writing, and all teaching must be creative and conducive to this highest kind of thinking. Once poets have learned to think and write in images, rhythms as well as with meaning, they crave an audience. For many years, Harriet Monroe's magazine, Poetry, printed in the back cover Walt Whitman's admonition, "To have great poets, there must be great audiences too." And so creative writers generally crave to see their work in print. Of course, there are those few like Emily Dickinson who is presumed to have had no such yearning, but those are special cases whom I have never met.2 From the time I was sixteen until the present I have been meeting other poets and like them I sought to publish. Oddly enough, I have not published a great deal of poetry not nearly as much as I have written because I had some notion instilled in me early about printing only the very best and not being satisfied easily. With short stories my agony has been even greater and Jubilee took half a lifetime. When I teach creative writing I do only two things: teach the business of thinking and

10 20 reading, and insist that writers practice their craft and art by writing. Nothing succeeds like success and the only way to learn is by doing. I do encourage an imitation of the masters; read the best, but write what you know and imitate what you like and think is best. Professors E. B. Hungerford, Stephen Vincent Benet, Paul Engle, and Norman Holmes Pearson were some of my teachers in three great universities, and they all were practicing writers. Verlin Casill and Vance Bourjaily were professional fiction writers and they taught me how to write fiction. Anybody who tells you that writing is easy is trying to fool you. I know a lot of people who think anybody can write. I do not believe that either, at least not well anyway. My creative adventure has taken a lifetime and perhaps, I have yet to learn all my lessons. Each day brings a new problem, and every day has something new to teach me in my great escapade. Each age may produce many painters, dramatists, poets, musicians, yet only one great master may emerge. This, too, is a question of genius, destiny of creative personality, and the sources brought to bear upon that creativity, for it is not a matter of craft, training, or education at all. In the antebellum United States, black slaves brought their creative proclivities and predilections from Africa to the New World. Here they were stripped of their language and culture, nevertheless, they made music which consisted of black songs that still stir the world with their pathos, poignancy, and artistic purity. Folk music such as the spirituals form a collective expression of faith culture. John Lovell, author of Black Song, says that the spirituals were hammered out of the creativity of black slaves on a forge of suffering and with a flame of beauty, religious faith and truth together with their indomitable will and integrity. This is creativity. All artistic creation and productivity must, therefore, be understood as developing in this same way. Individuals and groups develop creative talent and express their creativity in this manner. All the creative energies of the creative personality strive toward a universal and, therefore, immortal expression of beauty and truth. All of this creative expression is, therefore, derived from the integrity or wholeness of the

11 creating personality as these creative energies or forces are brought to bear on the raw materials of human experience and chaotic physical phenomena. They are transformed, according to William Blake, in the fires of Los, hammered into shape on a forge of esemplastic power and driven with a flaming touch of creative fire, and then in shining raiment and blazing with gems of beauty. These creations come forth to delight and instruct us, to entertain and give pleasure to all those fortunate enough to behold these works of art. Creativity is a gift that cannot be taught or bought. It is part of the divine itself, power to create and to transform. Yet, every person is born with their own spark of this divinity. For the creative artist, this is creativity.?i Notes I. William Wordsworth, The Poetical Works of Wordsworth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, The idea that Emily Dickeneon did not wish to be published is a myth; she was discouraged from publishing by her male mentor, Thomas Higginson. [AU: I have reversed the order of these notes to be consistent with the order of citations in the essay.]