Poet asks a poet - What Do You Do When The Words Don't Come?

Naomi Woodis put up a facebook status that said "what do you do when the words don't come" and a bunch of replies followed - "table tennis! yoga! running! take your notebook and go for a walk! absinthe!"

Poet Nick Feild made a great point

"I think forcing yourself to sit and stare at a bit of paper is a good way to go a bit Black Swan. Also I find free writing really helpful, forget about form and structure and even making sense for a bit and just pour some stuff out and then see what you've got, it's quite cathartic."

we all want to write words with the weight of as many dimensions as possible and we want to write the words that almost can't be said in any other order.

Those moments of brilliance for most of us are few and far between but many of us are living for them!

now here's how poet/writer/singer/nutter Salena Godden answered the question.

masturbation...followed by hysterical laughter...then go to the nearest pub...have a beer or a glass of wine...flirt with the bar man...maybe he won't notice you much as he is wiping glasses...write about it...the polished glasses...you read a newspaper...flicking through the pictures mostly...war and war and tits...watch the sky...that's more like it...write about the lilac light of a february afternoon...then get a warm sense of gratitude...think what a lucky person you are...order soup...enjoy eating too much butter on thick chunky bread...salt...yes...another beer...wine...why not...flirt with the owner...look at the surface of the oak...wonder to yourself... are my friends with normal (working) hours finished working yet? must be soon its dusk...text 'i am in my pub, fancy supper?'...then await replies...order another beer...maybe flirt with the bar staff a bit more...or write about them all...laugh to yourself...how amusing your little story is about the old man in the corner of the pub...he has a nose like a beetroot...the street lights are orange now...its dark outside...rush hour has picked up...the city is changing tempo...vibrating differently...its not afternoon anymore...a new crowd starts to come in...they twitter..they bring cold air inside...they phone each other from across the pub... maybe your friends will come meet you...or maybe not...it doesn't matter now either way..."because the thing you were stuck writing...the block was not a block...you just needed a man with a nose like a beetroot"...and what a wonderful life it is...when we don't write about it but live inside it...

"BEAUTY WILL SAVE THE WORLD!"

Dostoevsky is everywhere I turn these days. I got into an argument recently about how the "show don't tell" philosophy that's endoctinated so many young creative writers isn't a rule to live by. Dostoevsky's poetry for example was full of telling images and statements which didn't discredit or undermine him as a great creative thinker or a poet. However, someone like Dostoevsky was great in a pragmatic sense too, this gave him authenticity and we as readers are always sceptical of obscure writers and poets.

I'd like to quote this from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Beauty Will Save The World.

"One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?

There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.

Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.

In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.

But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.

And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?"