Poets: Fear your Creativity’s Running Dry?

In my free-verse days, up until ‘02, more often than not I’d feel so dry I had nothing to say. I had to take a walk to generate inspiration. Plus, it bugged me that most of my poems, which tended to be “nature poems” looked alike and sounded alike — over and over only slight variations on the same theme which never seemed to advance or develop anything new beyond itself.

Looking back at the 40 or so poems I’d published, I felt embarrassed (none of them made it into my first book). With the help of Timothy Steele’s All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing,” (Great book!) I taught myself to write in meter. But blank verse wasn’t enough by itself.

In the middle of a poem I stumbled onto a “random potentials” strategy (sounds like modern physics, doesn’t it?) which “cornered” and “tracked” like the first front-wheel drive automobile I ever drove: It didn’t fishtail! I wanted to experience more of that! I bought a copy of Sue Young’s New Comprehensive American Rhyming Dictionary.

This rhyming strategy opened up a whole range of new feeling and new tactics for writing poems. Meter and Rhyme together became the twin anchor lines to a wholly new source of creativity I didn’t at all suspect might lie inside of me — and to new poems that expressed it.

What, besides desperation, turned the trick for me? More next time.

Meanwhile, are there any of you poets in cyberspace who fear your creativity is running dry? What do you do about it?

Any readers out there who feel the poets you are reading, or used to read, have run dry?

Please share your story or comments. Thank you.

Leland