Inspiration, that spectacularly fickle resource, occasionally leaves me high and dry ... meaning that my beached ship is well out of the water, and has been so for long enough that the timbers are dry.
Such was the term that The London Times applied to the Russian frigate, Archipelago, after she ran aground in 1796 ... and such is the state of my being when I find myself without any impetus to write.
It's as if any and all ideas have moved out of town, and left no forwarding address. They are entirely unreachable no matter how many intriguing images I might ponder. This is when nothing clicks.
I have experienced anywhere from weeks to months to years of this familiar famine, when I wonder whether I had finally used up my ability to create. What a very scary place for this poet to find herself.
But now, having weathered many episodes of this cyclic calamity, I've learned to take it with a begrudging shrug: "If it wants to be that way, then fine!" I am a poet to my core, and I know that I will write again.
In my files, I have copious notes that lay in wait for "more," and I can almost sense those tentacles of thought which dangle and writhe just beyond the corners of my awareness, and well enough out of reach.
In due time, the softly undulating waves will return, and then my stranded vessel will rise again with the tide. Meanwhile, I tidy up my files and glean from them as best I can while in this state of drought.
It is of huge comfort to know that I am not the only writer who has ever, or will ever, endure this ... which I keep reminding myself. So, here's to aesthetic vacations! (... perhaps there's a poem in this ...)
Such was the term that The London Times applied to the Russian frigate, Archipelago, after she ran aground in 1796 ... and such is the state of my being when I find myself without any impetus to write.
It's as if any and all ideas have moved out of town, and left no forwarding address. They are entirely unreachable no matter how many intriguing images I might ponder. This is when nothing clicks.
I have experienced anywhere from weeks to months to years of this familiar famine, when I wonder whether I had finally used up my ability to create. What a very scary place for this poet to find herself.
But now, having weathered many episodes of this cyclic calamity, I've learned to take it with a begrudging shrug: "If it wants to be that way, then fine!" I am a poet to my core, and I know that I will write again.
In my files, I have copious notes that lay in wait for "more," and I can almost sense those tentacles of thought which dangle and writhe just beyond the corners of my awareness, and well enough out of reach.
In due time, the softly undulating waves will return, and then my stranded vessel will rise again with the tide. Meanwhile, I tidy up my files and glean from them as best I can while in this state of drought.
It is of huge comfort to know that I am not the only writer who has ever, or will ever, endure this ... which I keep reminding myself. So, here's to aesthetic vacations! (... perhaps there's a poem in this ...)
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