Creativity can come from the collision of unrelated things. A poem can be a container to hold these collisions. Sometimes, the combination of ideas is rational. When I wrote “Window to the Bay,” I combined dead vegetable matter and a patient’s necrotic toe into the same poem. The rational mind can see that death connects these two ideas. But often, the combination of ideas is surprising or unexpected.
A poem I wrote for another class began as a semi-logical discussion of the side effects of chemotherapy. It morphed into a poem about the stress of being a physician, in sonnet form. I struggled for a long time with this poem.
Waltz of the Flowering Trees
Then, one morning, while I was still in that liminal time between sleeping and waking, the image of my childhood ballet class came up. It made no sense at all, but I put it into the physician stress poem, and it worked. You can read “Fertilizer: A Sonnet” here.
When I began writing a poem about flowering trees, I didn’t know that I would end up writing about my grandparents (“Smoke Trees and Mountain Ash”). I unearthed a memory of having my picture taken with a flowering tree when I visited my grandmother for Easter.
Overwhelm the Rational Mind
Sometimes surprises come up if I distract and overwhelm my logical brain with lots of details.
For example, my poem “Persephone” combined a Greek myth, dream imagery, and bits of knowledge about chemistry and Latin nomenclature. A lot to juggle, but the poem was surprising and weird.
Some of the harmony achieved by combining dissimilar themes comes from having a container to put the ideas into, like a poetic form. Sometimes I just toss everything on the page and let the form figure itself out. It takes a bit of confidence and curiosity.
And it takes discernment. Sometimes these experiments don’t make successful poems. but they’re always fun, and I always learn something.
(Note: This post is a revision of “Art in Boxes,” which first appeared on April 13. 2019.)
