Are Poets Crazy?

[Darren White]

Darren

It's something a lot of artist experience; it seems that art in any form takes a lot of introspective time when in the process of creation. Cran talks about it as well in his statement. And for me time can actually stand still to the point where I don't know what time it is at all, sometimes even what day it is confuses me, because I can work on something right through the night into the next day.

It almost like I'm going to die before I finish what has been started I'm so obsessed with getting it done, finished. Then I workshop it; I then find there is even more to be done. Hah, I have laugh at myself. Hermit? Ha, it's more like a time traveler lost in inner space. The wandering space-cowboy riding wild Sky-Rockets or Roman Candles inside the brain that dissolves and passes through a timeless awareness.

a poet friend
RH Peat

I think that's more than an apt description. Robbie said more or less the same. I can start working in a poem, and lose all sense of time and space. Hours will pass, and if I didnt collapse into sleep, I would go on forever.
And yes, workshopping LOL. It never ends, and "time traveler lost in inner space"... I like that one!

[RHPeat]

Carole

Maybe more Jungian as in his concepts of his synchronicity thoughts along with serendipity. Being human places us within many experiences in common with each other. That "ART" itself is far more about the "WE" than the "I". Now the egos are going be angry with me because I said that.

But the haunting quality in the experience itself might be more connected to DEJA VU.... as a common intuitive experience that has happened to many of us. The expression is derived from the French, meaning "already seen." When it occurs, it seems to spark our memory of a place we have already been, a person we have already seen, or an act we have already done.

Just exactly what are we anyway — conscious star dust from billion supernovas? Do we need proof to feel it, know it, understand it? It seems when we realize the poem it is telling us where to go as much as we are telling it what to do. That the collective, creative process is actually a dialogue between artist and the art form. That the media chosen is both the means and the out come that connects with everyone, that it might be impassive in the sense that the art experience means you've been had, just by reading it or viewing it.

That brings me back to Creeley concern with poetry; That form is content and content form. That the writing explodes out of us at times in remarkable ways. The dynamics of any art form always includes the other whether we are aware of it or not. So it is always an extension of greater awareness for both artist, creator or viewer, reader, listener, and toucher. What is it that is sentient: able to perceive or feel things?

According to Carl's synchronicity: It's a significant coincidence of physical and psychological phenomena that are acausal connected. That behind all phenomena are constellations which are a process that engages equally objective manifestations, in the physical world, and subjective ones, in the psychological universe. I think that suggests it might mean that the creation of art forms bridges the gaps between our physical world and our psychological universe. That the other is allowed to merge with us through the experience of the arts in general when it is at its best. So it makes sense that the artistic is connected directly to the greater whole and not the individual at all. That we tap into that higher consciousness as the whole of humanity and feed it back through our own consciousness to others. That our artistic dialogue is actually with everyone. No one is left out.

a poet friend
RH Peat

[VonBradstein]

Okay, clickbait... we are not crazy... just checking if anyone was paying attention.

When you write poetry do you zone out into a trance-like state or can you still hold a coherent conversation?

I ask because my husband swears that while I'm writing, despite responding with the occasional grunt to a question, I am there in body but not in mind. It's almost as if the mind moves to a different state of consciousness so while I register the conversation as 'white noise', and I obviously grunt in the right places, I do not absorb the content into the memory banks.

I find that’s the case more or less with any writing. The other phenomena is time disappearing. I have got so into it at times (the rare occasion my wife is out of town and I find myself off work for a few days) where I literally do not move from my chair for ten hours and don’t even notice it had been ten hours. I once wrote 50,000 words without peeing.


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[SueC]

Von, I agree with you. Every once in a while you see a writer profiled as someone who spends days in his "den," not to be disturbed and so on. Until I became "enlightened," I thought that was crazy! Ha! Now that I am retired and can spend much more time writing, I can easily see how that happens. If I take up my laptop while watching the morning news, it is not unusual for me to still be there well into the afternoon - still in my pajamas - and it is an eerie feeling to come out of that, thinking it's still 9 a.m. when it's closer to 4:00. Good point.

[midnightpoet]

Why and how do whole verses jump into my head all at once? Being non-pedantic, I'd only say I'm glad they do. Excuse me while I zone out.

A poet is a flight of fancy
soaring over the mundane,
words on gossamer wings.

[JustRob]

Why and how do whole verses jump into my head all at once? Being non-pedantic, I'd only say I'm glad they do. Excuse me while I zone out.

Yes, the same thing happens to me occasionally, but then I'm just crazy to try writing poetry. Maybe the thread title wasn't referring to that though.

[Grizzly]

So all poets souls are connected in some way?

I think so... all poet souls, all writer souls, all reader souls, all souls in general — we're all one after all, aren't we? (given I've spent the last three months hopping from music festivals to native holy sites to meditation retreats, and the whole "all one choose love" ideology is pretty well ingrained at this point)

[Grizzly]

Do y'all ever experience, after reading a very good writer/poet, their voice sorta echoing in your skull? Your thoughts in their voice? So the way you perceive your world (for a bit) is through their lens, at least for a little while?

[clark]

Wow. You're all nutso to the nth. What a bunch of weirdos I'm hanging out with here on WF. Trances 'n hyperfoci 'n losing track of time 'n 'n 'n. Yup. You're all certifiable. I'll make a call or two, do the paperwork, and get you all into appropriate facilities where you'll be attended to before you harm yourselves or others. I'll need some addresses. You can send them to my email. Darkkin--do hurry--I'm concerned that you're going to boing! yourself out an upstairs window on your yoga ball. . .

I, unlike you crazies, am a paragon of order and rationality when I write. I put on a pot of coffee, make sure I 'm amply supplied with cigarettes, and sit down at my desk at 11:30 sharp. I write until about 7:00 am, at which time I gather up the 5000 wads of crumpled 8.5 x 11 paper strewn from one end of my study to the other, stuff the paper in the woodstove, make a huge breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, hashbrowns, toast, yogurt, fruit and (by now) my fourth pot of coffee . After eating breakfast, I read the night's work to my dog, Mooner. That usually takes 2 minutes, which is good because the reading time dovetails perfectly with his attention span. I then return to my desk and write, typically, until about 2. When the multi-coloured spots in front of my eyes turn to a constant red, I get up, gather the 3000 wads of crumpled 8.5 x 11 paper strewn from one end of my study to the other, stuff them in my bed, then crawl into the woodstove for a few hours sleep. When I awake, at 4 pm, I put the dog in the shower and read the day's production to the computer. Which beeps in appreciation now and then. This second reading usually takes one minute. At 5pm, I make a lovely dinner--perhaps steak, baked potato, a nice salad, and pie for dessert. I feed all of that to Mooner (he leaves me the salad), eat a can of Alpo, and watch a movie or two on Netflix. At about 9:30 pm my sister or brother, sometimes my neighbor, Ed, come to the house. They tidy up for me, make sure the knives and sharp objects are locked up (for some reason), give me my pills (they don't leave them in the house, for some reason), take all the wads of paper out of my bed (for some reason) and leave at about 11 pm. At 11:30 pm I sit down at my desk and. . . . . . .

Now, if you nutballs would just adopt a similar, orderly writing regimen, you too could enjoy my levels of absolutely predictable productivity, and I wouldn't have to go to all this trouble to protect you from yourselves. I mean, really. . . . . . . .

[Darren White]

LOL Clark, that cracked me up big time. Just for your information, I made a few phonecalls. Mooner asked me to. He is fed up eating your food, smoking your cigs and drinking your booze. Oh, and hearing more of your lines? He.... erm.... let's just say he didn't like it one bit.