Now, have I sounded like a cultist of some sort? A yogi feeding on kumquats, grapenuts and almonds here beneath the banyan tree? Let me assure you I speak of all these things only because they have worked for me for fifty years. And I think they might work for you. The true test is in the doing.
Be pragmatic, then. If you're not happy with the way your writing has gone, you might give my method a try.
If you do, I think you might easily find a new definition for Work.
And the word is LOVE.
1973
… ON CREATIVITY
GO PANTHER-PAWED WHERE ALL THE MINED TRUTHS SLEEP
Not smash and grab, but rather find and keep;
Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep
To detonate the hidden seeds with stealth
So in your wake a weltering of wealth
Springs up unseen, ignored, and left behind
As you sneak on, pretending to be blind.
On your return along the jungle path you've made
Find all the littered stuffs where you have strayed;
The small truths and the large have surfaced there
Where you stealth-blundered wildly unaware
Or seeming so. And so these mines were mined
In easy game of pace and pounce and find;
But mostly fluid pace, not too much pounce.
Attention must be paid, but by the ounce.
Mock caring, seem aloof, ignore each mile
And metaphors like cats behind your smile
Each one wound up to purr, each one a pride,
Each one a fine gold beast you've hid inside,
Now summoned forth in harvests from the brake
Turned anteloping elephants that shake
And drum and crack the mind to awe,
To behold beauty yet perceive its flaw.
Then, flaw discovered, like fair beauty's mole,
Haste back to reckon all entire, the Whole.
This done, pretend these wits you do not keep,
Go panther-pawed where all the mined truths sleep.
WHAT I DO IS ME – FOR THAT I CAME
for Gerard Manley Hopkins
What I do is me – for that I came.
What I do is me!
For that I came into the world!
So said Gerard;
So said that gentle Manley Hopkins.
In his poetry and prose he saw the Fates that chose
Him in genetics, then set him free to find his way
Among the sly electric printings in his blood.
God thumbprints thee! he said.
Within your hour of birth
He touches hand to brow, He whorls and softly stamps
The ridges and the symbols of His soul above your eyes!
But in that selfsame hour, full born and shouting
Shocked pronouncements of one's birth,
In mirrored gaze of midwife, mother, doctor
See that Thumbprint fade and fall away in flesh
So, lost, erased, you seek a lifetime's days for it
And dig deep to find the sweet instructions there
Put by when God first circuited and printed thee to life:
"Go hence! do this! do that! do yet another thing!
This self is yours! Be it!"
And what is that?! you cry at hearthing breast,
Is there no rest? No, only journeying to be yourself.
And even as the Birthmark vanishes, in seashell ear
Now fading to a sigh, His last words send you in the world:
"Not mother, father, grandfather are you.
Be not another. Be the self I signed you in your blood.
I swarm your flesh with you. Seek that.
And, finding, be what no one else can be.
I leave you gifts of Fate most secret; find no other's Fate,
For if you do, no grave is deep enough for your despair
No country far enough to hide your loss.
I circumnavigate each cell in you
Your merest molecule is right and true.
Look there for destinies indelible and fine And rare.
Ten thousand futures share your blood each instant;
Each drop of blood a cloned electric twin of you.
In merest wound on hand read replicas of what I planned and knew
Before your birth, then hid it in your heart.
No part of you that does not snug and hold and hide
The self that you will be if faith abide.
What you do is thee. For that I gave you birth.
Be that. So be the only you that's truly you on Earth."
Dear Hopkins. Gentle Manley. Rare Gerard. Fine name.
What we do is us. Because of you. For that we came.
THE OTHER ME
I do not write
The other me
Demands emergence constantly.
But if I turn to face him much too swiftly
Then
He sidles back to where and when
He was before
I unknowingly cracked the door
And let him out.
Sometimes a fire-shout beckons him,
He reckons that I need him,
So I do. His task
To tell me who I am behind this mask.
He Phantom is, and I facade
That hides the opera he writes with God,
While I, all blind,
Wait raptureless until his mind
Steals down my arm to wrist, to hand, to fingertips
And, stealing, find Such truths as fall from tongues
And burn with sound,
And all of it from secret blood and secret soul on secret ground.
With glee
He sidles forth to write, then run and hide
All week until another try at hide-and-seek
In which I do pretend
That teasing him is not my end.
Yet tease I do and feign to look away,
Or else that secret self will hide all day.
I run and play some simple game,
A mindless leap
Which from sleep summons forth
The bright beast, lurking, whose preserves
And gaming ground? My breath,
My blood, my nerves.
But where in all that stuff does he abide?
In all my rampant seekings, where's he hide?
Behind this ear like gum,
That ear like fat?
Where does this mischief boy
Hatrack his hat?
No use. A hermit he was born
And lives, recluse.
There's nothing for it but I join his ruse, his game,
And let him run at will and make my fame.
On which I put my name and steal his stuff,
And all because I sneezed him forth With sweet creation's snuff.
Did R. B. write that poem, that line, that speech?
No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.
His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;
Say not my name.
Praise other me.