How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories.
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.
I would come to understand there is no poem separable from its source. I began to see that poems are not just an individual florescence. They are also a vast root system growing down into ideas and understandings. Almost unbidden, they tap into the history and evolution of art and language.
Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself.
I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.
I think what gets a poem going is an initiating line. Sometimes a first line will occur, and it goes nowhere; but other times - and this, I think, is a sense you develop - I can tell that the line wants to continue.
Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.
I always write lyrics first and the rhythm and the melody come from the lyrics. It always comes from the lyrics: words have rhythm and words have melody.
What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.