Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process

And we begin to understand that Innisfree is an internal place, a fictive place, a refuge that calls to him from the inside, not a place that he can physically go and visit.

And so the “thief” moment is the moment of prose—the moment I go after in my writing. I never achieve the regularity of “Tinker, tailor/ Soldier, sailor.” I’m trying to achieve melodic and rhythmic beauty in prose that is expressed here in this nice little so-called poem.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

There’s really only one audience for poetry these days: poets themselves.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

Writing free verse, it’s hard to know exactly when a line has the feel or rhythm that you want. It’s hard to describe, though you know it when you feel it. For me, it’s often about gracefulness. I want graceful lines and graceful sentences. I try to write very simply. The vocabulary is simple, the sentences tend to be quite conventional—subject, ve

Poetry privileges subjectivity. It foregrounds the interior life of the writer, who is trying to draw in a reader. And it gets readers into contact with their own subjective life.

I think I read recently that we’re not suffering from an overflow of information—we’re suffering from an overflow of insignificance.