Interview Transcript
Topic: Creative Process.
Billy Collins: Well the joy in writing poetry is being down on your hands and knees with the language. You know, if someone carves swans and animals out of soap, that person loves soap. And if you write, you love language. So writing a poem is an opportunity to get as close to the language as pretty much you can get. The other joy . . . because it is a pleasure, and I wouldn’t write. I have no mission that drives me to write poetry. It is a very hedonistic activity and I write for pleasure. I go there to get pleasure, and if possible to give pleasure.
So one of the key pleasures is – and most poets would agree with this – is starting out not knowing where you’re going and finding a way to get there. So the poem becomes not a whole expression of something you think or feel, but it becomes a journey through itself to an ending. And that ending is unforeseeable. And in fact, the ending is something that the poem is busy creating. It’s almost as if the poem is the only way to access that particular ending. I have a poem called “Questions About Angels”. And at the end of that poem an angel appears. And I didn’t know she existed before I wrote that poem. And I guess strictly speaking she didn’t. So I think that the job of that poem was to bring its own ending to being.
Do you have a creative process?
Poet; Former U.S. Poet Laureate
A poem brings itself to fruition.
November 13, 2007 | In Arts & Culture
Discuss
Stephen King on February 15, 2008, 5:14 AM
I'm a beginning writer about 2/3d the way through my first short story. While I am drawing on my life experience to develop my fiction, I am constantly amazed at where my imagination takes me. This whole process started with a single thought as an opening line. Though I had an idea where I wanted to go with my story, I had no particular plot in mind and only as the story unfolds on the page am I getting a sense of where my muse is taking me. It is actually thrilling to write what I know nothing about in terms of the final product. I still don't know how this first experiment in writing will turn out but it is a great journey.
Stephen King on February 15, 2008, 10:14 AM
I’m a beginning writer about 2/3d the way through my first short story. While I am drawing on my life experience to develop my fiction, I am constantly amazed at where my imagination takes me. This whole process started with a single thought as an opening line. Though I had an idea where I wanted to go with my story, I had no particular plot in mind and only as the story unfolds on the page am I getting a sense of where my muse is taking me. It is actually thrilling to write what I know nothing about in terms of the final product. I still don’t know how this first experiment in writing will turn out but it is a great journey.
Mary Coyote on May 23, 2008, 5:38 PM
Arianna Huffington's blog has progressed from a place where people express themselves freely to one where censorship is excessive and lifelong (the life of Huffy) bloggers are purged and all their comments are deleted. For example today, Arianna's thugs deleted this comment on the McCain-rejects-Hagee-endorsement page:
Re: "This stuff about pastors needs to stop!"
*
WRONG: this stuff about pastors involved with politics needs to stop!
30 years ago a chunk of Christian churches decided that Job One was politics. This culminated with the George W Bush administration of fundamentalists and Christian extremists destroying what it meant to be American in the world.
Rather than a light, it has been proven that religion and politics create evil. The church needs to be isolated from the corrupting influences of power.
FREEDOM FROM RELIGION IS A HUMAN RIGHT
-—————————————————————————————————*
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/22/mccain-rejects-hagee-endo_n_103143.html
P17
Mary Coyote on May 23, 2008, 9:38 PM
Arianna Huffington’s blog has progressed from a place where people express themselves freely to one where censorship is excessive and lifelong (the life of Huffy) bloggers are purged and all their comments are deleted. For example today, Arianna’s thugs deleted this comment on the McCain-rejects-Hagee-endorsement page:
Re: “This stuff about pastors needs to stop!”
WRONG: this stuff about pastors involved with politics needs to stop!
30 years ago a chunk of Christian churches decided that Job One was politics. This culminated with the George W Bush administration of fundamentalists and Christian extremists destroying what it meant to be American in the world.
Rather than a light, it has been proven that religion and politics create evil. The church needs to be isolated from the corrupting influences of power.
——————————————————————————————————-
FREEDOM FROM RELIGION IS A HUMAN RIGHT
——————————————————————————————————-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/22/mccain-rejects-hagee-endo_n_103143.html
P17
Mary Coyote on May 24, 2008, 1:51 PM
A more full criticism here:
Huffington on the Huffington Post and Its Politics
http://www.bigthink.com/media-the-press/10642
Mary Coyote on May 24, 2008, 5:51 PM
A more full criticism here:Huffington on the Huffington Post and Its Politics
http://www.bigthink.com/media-the-press/10642
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