Saturday, April 18, 2015

Thoughts on Creative Writing

By X. Z. Shao

If you want to be preserved in your poems, the whole spectrum of your experiences needs to be recorded. What often surfaces in your mind is usually a right stuff for a poem, whether it is trifle as an insect or a daily chore. Do not hesitate to write a poem good or bad. A bad poem is better than nothing. A good poem is a spirit distilled from fermenting of raw materials, bad poems.


A good poem is often inspired by a muse. A poet is a lyre his muse plays her tune. One hand cannot make applause. A poet has at most half the copyright over his inspired poems. Devotional poems like Rumi’s cannot be written without his “god in flesh”, actually Rumi signed his poems with the name of his god as author. A poet can also be inspired by an impersonal force, nature or Dao, rather than a muse or a god, and it creates a calm and Chan style poems which are typical of Chinese. Without interaction with a force of some sorts, a poet’s mind is locked in a prison.


Refuse to be intimidated by established poets dead or alive, ancient or modern, for they were or are troubled as you are by the same dilemmas of life, the same paralysis of inferiority, the same struggle to keep their torches alight. Each epoch presses on the hearts that are most sensitive and induces responses, therefore, all eras are right eras for poetry, all woods can be sources of flames. 

                                             2015/4/19

No comments:

Post a Comment