a question for poets

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:20 pm

What makes you more creative happiness or pain?

tom.d.stiller · Post by **tom.d.stiller** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 8:26 am

Neither.

When in happiness or in pain
I indulge in happiness
or in pain.
It's only later
when happiness and pain are gone
that creativity enters
the house of my mind
and transforms the nights
of happiness or of pain
I have lived through.

tom

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » Sat Mar 05, 2005 3:16 pm

the same for me tom, but I am more creative in painful, stressful problematic situations.
there is a spanish saying "los árboles no dejan ver el bosque" ......

LaurieAK · Post by **LaurieAK** » Sun Mar 06, 2005 3:03 am

Sandra~

Interesting question.

I agree with Tom about being beyond 'that' moment (of pain or joy) as the time for gathering words. Or just being open to what comes.

For me there is a personal place of detachment I need to achieve before considering writing about anything, good or bad. It is a shifting of focus.

I do think if I had to choose one as more ripe than the other it would be "pain." It is more revealing to me about myself and therefore more potent than happiness tends to be.

L

Don G · Post by **Don G** » Mon Mar 07, 2005 12:02 am

I would say that pain tends more often to bring creative ideas for me but I have gone through times of happiness and bliss that have given me way more poems, ideas, stories in one time than any one painfull period.

Jonnie Falafel · Post by **Jonnie Falafel** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 6:08 pm

Was it Wordsworth who described poetry as "emotion recalled in tranquility"?

Sandra · Post by **Sandra** » Tue Mar 08, 2005 8:38 pm

I have asked this question in three forums (including this) and most of them agree with the idea of sadness being more creative