One thing that has helped me alot

Agent Cooper · Sep 8, 2014

This was recently. I figured since every poem is a transfer of emotions, every line and word should be written from the emotion. The emotion then produces the impulse of the words. If I get the emotion and desire the words, the words just come. I only know what they mean in the same way the reader knows what they mean, from the feeling they produce and the sensing of the overtones. It is sort of an inner knowledge, that maybe can't be articulated in any other way than by this specific sequence of words of the poem. This emotion should then carry the words from the beginning to the end of the poem. I do nothing to the poem if I don't have the emotion.

I used to produce lots of low quality words and lines because I would go in and out of the emotion. I also edited without having the emotion. It would be disastrous. If I edit I do the same as writing, having the emotion guides what gets taken out or added in. By ignoring this I both spent alot of time and ruined a poem I posted here awhile ago.

So the emotion is the guiding force of the poem as it is written down. If I take that out there is nothing guiding the words. This was my problem in the past. There would be glimpses in the poem followed by clumsiness.

This doesn't make certain if the poem will be good or bad - I mean I still produce low quality poems - just that there atleast is an emotion the reader can feel by reading it. That will make it worthwhile for both of us.

I was doing this method all along, just not steadfastly because I didn't realize and articulate it.

Do you think I am right about this?

What else could I add to my method?

William Haskins · Sep 8, 2014

you have realized the power of one part of wordsworth's comment in the preface to lyrical ballads:

I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings;

but the second part is equally crucial:

it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.

so the raw emotion, the initial emotion needs to be processed through deliberate contemplation and come out the other end as refined emotion (my term).

in an earlier paragraph, wordsworth tackles this in a slightly wordier, but more pointed, way:

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, Poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. For our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connexion with each other, that the understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.

so, yes. emotion can and should be the wellspring; but it should be enhanced by the capacity for higher deliberation.

Agent Cooper · Sep 8, 2014

William Haskins said:
you have realized the power of one part of wordsworth's comment in the preface to lyrical ballads:

but the second part is equally crucial:

so the raw emotion, the initial emotion needs to be processed through deliberate contemplation and come out the other end as refined emotion (my term).

in an earlier paragraph, wordsworth tackles this in a slightly wordier, but more pointed, way:
so, yes. emotion can and should be the wellspring; but it should be enhanced by the capacity for higher deliberation.

Wow this is great stuff. Thank you!

One thing that has helped me alot

Agent Cooper

William Haskins

poet

Agent Cooper