Looking forward to next weeks dialogue (bad vs evil) 😊 Alan Watts had a distinct style and perspective on concepts like bad and evil, often rooted in Eastern philosophy and his critique of Western dualistic thinking. He saw bad as natural difficulties or harm in life like sickness or setbacks not necessarily evil. Evil, he said, is often a human-made concept of absolute, intentional harm. He challenged rigid “good vs. evil” ideas, encouraging us to see life’s complexity instead of strict moral divisions.
Anticipating Jonny's thoughts on bad and evil, I have been pondering the idea of a social contract. Being bad is violating the duties we accept as members of a group. We belong to many groups, some exclusive, others nested or overlapping. The judgment of bad or evil arises from conflicting duties in different groups. The primal group is oneself. We are evil judged from a larger collective when we are dutiful within a centrist or selfish perspective at the expense of the larger collective.
Ahhhh, a social contract angle 😊 That makes me think about how “bad” and “evil” could depend on which group’s rules we’re talking about. Alan Watts might flip that on its head and ask whether those obligations are inherently valid or just constructs we’ve agreed to without really questioning them. If “bad” is breaking a group’s rules, and “evil” is harming the larger group, does that mean we’re morally bound to follow those rules even if they clash with our own deeper sense of right and wrong? That feels like it opens the door to a bigger conversation about morality itself.
It's complicated, for sure. My life has been saved two or three times by medical intervention. Good, say I as myself. However I am more than myself. Because I belong to the biosphere and my continued existence contributes to human exploitation exceeding the regenerative capacity of the earth, death looks like a solution rather than a problem. The selfish will to live at the cost of the larger collective is bad, say I. If you don't buy that, consider the cost of my continued existence to those who share in my pension fund. Because we are responsible to many groups with different interests, there is an intuitive calculus going on behind any judgment of badness or evil.
Actually, your little essays are some of my most enjoyed stops at the 'filling station of the muses.' So please pump away. I mark and add bits of reflected wisdom back into the characterizations and use the characters to answer some of your openly dropped questions. I must also say that your videos add a lot of sincerity to the essays.
Surprised so little is said about the nine, no less, muses. One is left with the impression that they were all at work at once! And, of course, the foremost midwife was Socrates with his Socratic method. It is constant questioning that leads us to discover ourselves and the roots of our decisions.
"Bad" is when you hit the curb repeatedly when parallel parking. "Evil" is when you jump the curb to mow down pedestrians. One is poor ability. The other is harmful intention.
Such a great interview. Maya C Popa is so inspiring when she talks about wonder. It really sparked something within me - AND: both articles happened to be synchronities in understand a dream I had this night (what a gift from the unconscious)
‘Bad’ is more flexible in its applications - a bad choice, a bad day, a bad blueberry etc - where there is a fairly uncontroversial binary. Evil speaks to a more fundamental irredeemable malevolence doesn’t it?
I like your take on poetry. Eases my sense of failure at not being sufficiently enraptured by poetry. I could not read a book of poetry, but then again I wouldn’t listen to a whole album of music.
Creativity is deeply personal and unique, with individuals drawing from it in different ways, some thrive through connection and collaboration, feeding off the energy of others, while others find their creative spark in solitude, where quiet allows the unconscious mind to surface. Carl Jung emphasized the importance of solitude for creativity and personal growth, believing that time alone enables deeper self-reflection and access to symbolic, archetypal material within the unconscious. This inner dialogue frees the mind from external distractions and social conditioning, fostering original ideas and greater self-understanding.
Similarly, life’s storytelling process often involves a dynamic balance between sharing one’s own narrative and listening to others. Just as creativity flourishes both through social exchange and introspective solitude, our personal stories evolve by weaving together expression and absorption.
This raises an intriguing question: could authentic storytelling truly occur without the introspective space that connects us to the unconscious depths of our experience?
Hello Johnny, maybe you would like to do "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron , you may already know of her, her book inspires, encourages to rediscover our Creative Self, you can do it by simply doing the exercises in the book or participating in a group which is of course very enlightening and more revealing of the inner shadows.
Regarding Yung and the shadow , the unconscious which was his life's work and so much more, it's only when the human being is willing and ready to go within , dive into him\herself and experience for themselves that part which is so often denied, hidden until something happens in your life that makes you stop and look, only when you have done the inner work you can really understand what Jung is talking about, you have and are experiencing it.
And it's the same for the woo woo you mention, exactly the same how many people are willing to be still and really listen to themselves, the sound that their cells make, their heart makes, their inner organs, the sound of each blade of grass? Everything a it's own frequency who is willing to be still enough and listen to it and this is only just scraping the surface, who really wants to discover the mysteries of life ? The scientists need to measure all these frequencies and yet we have the most extraordinary equipment , this body and so much more that can experience everything that scientists are discovering within ourselves, you call it woo woo until the person has the experience of it then they really can talk about it.
And most times they no longer need to talk about it because they now know.
I really like that you point the out denial in this. We don’t always realize we’re sitting there telling the same story over and over. It’s like something has to break the fourth wall of our consciousness and that absolutely comes from really sitting and taking it in, noticing what’s beyond the surface.
Thank you Kristen, love your comment, yes and love the way everyone 's comments are so different , only just started being a part of Mini Philosophy, at first noticed how people are really developed on their mental side and then thought my simplicity too has a place in all of this.
I just started reading Mini Philosophy too. I don’t have much of an outlet for thoughts and conversations like these. I’m thoroughly enjoying reading through others thoughts as well!
This philosophical poem by Julia de Burgos (1914-1953),Puerto Rican poet and a civil rights activist for women , answeres the question "Who governs my life?"
(English translations from Song of the Simple Truth: Obra Poética Completa - The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos, compiled and translated by Jack Agüeros, Curbstone Press, Willimantic, 1997, ISBN 1-880684-24-1)
To Julia de Burgos
"You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, “what will they say”.
Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
Julia de Burgos was the woman who followed difficult path in her short life and finally got the tragic death.
She was strong personality who tried to stay independent in her thoughts and deeds. As the result she was kind of "pushed out" of her social circle. Aristocratic society preferred hierarchy to anarchy, so her motto "I owe to nobody" was not welcome. When I first read her poem I was confused with it's contradiction. It is full of strong power("in me only my heart governs,""unbridled","who governs in me is me") and helplessness at the same time( "my nothing", "runaway"). While proclaiming the social protest(contradicting"You, flower of aristocracy" and "me, flower of the people"),the heroine is running from the society and from herself at the same time. P.B. Shelly left this world at 27,M. Lermontov- at 26, Julia de Burgos -at 38, A.Pushkin-at 37. They just exploded themselves by contradictions.
I still wonder,is it possible, even for strong personality, to be welcomed by society while trying to stay independent from it?
I see your perspective though I feel and am seeing when she writes, " I owe to nobody" she really doesn't feel she owes anything to the trappings of social conventions, I read a bit about her life , she just saw right through injustices, with politics , treatment of women , education etc, I feel she was fully aware of what she was doing, of herself, her thoughts, yes she was strong, courageous , when she writes "not me only my heart governs". to me that is someone is who really knows themselves, then she says " my nothing " I see that she isn't filled with all the distractions and this could seem to society as nothing , this emptiness seemingly no-one else can claim but herself, not empty , rich in knowing,
"runaway Rociante is just an old worn out horse with deeper symbolism , transforming and becoming into noble, extraordinary, this is just the way I perceive it, she saw the truth in things and she expressed it, and yes she was still human ........love her quote
Thank you Danielle for sharing your thoughts about poetry of Julia de Burgos. I saw her photo-she was awesome. Nice advocate, activist. Beautiful woman. So why-the sudden tragic death?
And question remains-
Who governs her life?
Julia first says:"ME".But then she turns to Rocinate symbolizm:
"I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God’s justice."
I am not sure about this "snorting":
What is that -she rebels against God? or,on the contrary, wants to reach the horizons of God's justice? does she obey the Destiny or challenge it?
I feel Iam always in a hybrid mode where Iam collecting and telling stories at he same time. Stories are what attracts us to other people (or not) and especially the way story is told.
Right now I am in a writing phase. I've started writing a memoir about my collection of books. I'm trying to explain why my book collection contains some of the books that it does. My target audience for this memoir is my niece who will be the person who gets my book collection when I pass. while riding I have confronted some things in my past that I buried or glossed over that I'm now dealing with a little more openly.
Your closed loop idea intersects nicely with my meditation this week on maps of being. It fits with the notion of recursion in which the subconscious provides input to the conscious mind, which generates ideas encoded in language that become new input to the subconscious. This loop is more like a spiral, since each iteration adds something. Of course there are other loops or spirals: experience and perception, emotion and memory, the give and take of relationships. Since all of the loops are connected, the mind and its constituent nodes is part of a larger network , a module in a recursive web of everything. That explains why I don't know what I think until I have read what Johnny thinks and tried to make sense of it and written it out like this.
I am writing in response to your post about your interview with Maya C. Popa.
By way of background, I have an dated literature degree (BA English, 1969) and an equally dated philosophy MA (1971 - thesis topic: The Logic of the Concept of Art). I am now 79 years old and have spend my entire adult life writing in a number of contexts: professionally as a lawyer writing affidavits, pleadings, opinions, correspondence, wills, trusts, contracts and technical articles, and personally writing poetry, short and mid-length fiction, a novel, a play. So I claim some degree of experience, if not expertise, about this topic.
I found your metaphor of an 'inspiration tank' more or less full of stories unconvincing. My own experience and my reading of poems classified as ars poetica leads me to the conclusion that the source of art – at least, literary art – is not stories, but the seeds of poems and stories that become poems/stories when nurtured through the application of craft (aka editing) with the goal of communication. I call this my 4-Cs theory of art:
Creativity – this is the mysterious starting point of literature, and, I believe, other art forms and activities other than the creation of art. Despite a lifetime of searching, I have found no one who can explain where these inspirations come from. They just pop up spontaneously in the flow of some people's consciousness, unbidden, surprising, often compelling, never forced or compellable. With me, it has been, at various times, a line, an image, a rhythm, a thought, a theme. I call these experiences 'poem/story seeds'. I don't disagree with the thesis that some people can make themselves more open to poem/story seeds. However, I don't believe that everyone has an innate ability to become a poet or fiction writer. IMHO, genetics play a large role in determining whether a person's conscious mind is populated with poem/story seeds vs for example, math seeds or physics seeds or auto mechanic-seeds (my son's conscious mind is full of pop-up ideas about how to fix cars and motorcycles, ideas that never occur to me), football seeds or, god help us, philosophy seeds.
Craft – this is the second C: the application of technique to nurture the seed. This is a very broad range of activities, some of them quite boring drudgery and others that produce the most thrilling excitement as a nascent poem/story-seed blossoms into a beautiful metaphor or enthralling image, a totally convincing bit of dialog, or a compelling action sequence. Craft requires dipping back into Creativity: confronted with a crude, hurriedly written description of a crucial bit of action, the fiction writer reimagines the scene and new, surprising details pop up to flesh it out. Sometimes the new details take the work in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Craft also looks forward to Communication, the 3rd C. In a recent conversation with my grandson, who is studying creative writing, I described Craft as the bridge between Creativity and Communication: it's the suite of techniques you use to transport your poem/story seed into the minds of your readers.
Communication – the goal of most writing is to communicate with readers. (Not all writing has a goal of communicating: consider journalling and therapeutic self-analysis: for these genres, Craft does not matter as much and Communication is irrelevant.) To communicate successfully, you need to be able to craft your work with sufficient skill that your audience will respond positively to what you have written. This last sentence is a very complex topic with infinite nuances: what is success? who is your audience? what does 'respond positively' mean? how do you want to communicate – orally, in writing, limited audience of people you know, large audience of people you don't know? if the latter, how much are you willing to pay in terms of time, energy and resources to reach a larger audience through publication? (Some people believe that publication is the ultimate goal of all writing. I disagree.)
Canonization – only a small part of what is written becomes part of the canon – the body of literature that is recognized as culturally important by the opinion-leaders of a particular time and place. The argument in my MA thesis is that 'Art' is an open-ended cultural construct that changes with time and place and that there is no 'essence' of Art, as posited by metaphysicians. I was a disappointment to the Aristotelian on my thesis committee.
Here is an ars poetica poem I wrote to capture my thinking:
Can a man have a baby?
The stopwatch on my life ticks ...
waits ...
ticks ...
waits ...
In the momentary silences that hide between the ticks,
a feeling for the shape of a value-laden thought
a poem-seed
will sometimes wriggle, unannounced, into my mind.
Its ardent quest: to fertilize an image with intent.
If I put on a social condom to prevent conception
and fill my time with all the beneficial shoulds of daily life
talk to my wife when I've nothing to say
play with my kids when it's their time to play
visit my dad when it's out of the way
I am a model husband-father-son
a family man, they say
respectable, responsible, predictable;
but I half-live when every now mechanically becomes
Looking forward to next weeks dialogue (bad vs evil) 😊 Alan Watts had a distinct style and perspective on concepts like bad and evil, often rooted in Eastern philosophy and his critique of Western dualistic thinking. He saw bad as natural difficulties or harm in life like sickness or setbacks not necessarily evil. Evil, he said, is often a human-made concept of absolute, intentional harm. He challenged rigid “good vs. evil” ideas, encouraging us to see life’s complexity instead of strict moral divisions.
Anticipating Jonny's thoughts on bad and evil, I have been pondering the idea of a social contract. Being bad is violating the duties we accept as members of a group. We belong to many groups, some exclusive, others nested or overlapping. The judgment of bad or evil arises from conflicting duties in different groups. The primal group is oneself. We are evil judged from a larger collective when we are dutiful within a centrist or selfish perspective at the expense of the larger collective.
Ahhhh, a social contract angle 😊 That makes me think about how “bad” and “evil” could depend on which group’s rules we’re talking about. Alan Watts might flip that on its head and ask whether those obligations are inherently valid or just constructs we’ve agreed to without really questioning them. If “bad” is breaking a group’s rules, and “evil” is harming the larger group, does that mean we’re morally bound to follow those rules even if they clash with our own deeper sense of right and wrong? That feels like it opens the door to a bigger conversation about morality itself.
Right. It all depends on who your friends are, and which friends you value most.
It's complicated, for sure. My life has been saved two or three times by medical intervention. Good, say I as myself. However I am more than myself. Because I belong to the biosphere and my continued existence contributes to human exploitation exceeding the regenerative capacity of the earth, death looks like a solution rather than a problem. The selfish will to live at the cost of the larger collective is bad, say I. If you don't buy that, consider the cost of my continued existence to those who share in my pension fund. Because we are responsible to many groups with different interests, there is an intuitive calculus going on behind any judgment of badness or evil.
Actually, your little essays are some of my most enjoyed stops at the 'filling station of the muses.' So please pump away. I mark and add bits of reflected wisdom back into the characterizations and use the characters to answer some of your openly dropped questions. I must also say that your videos add a lot of sincerity to the essays.
Surprised so little is said about the nine, no less, muses. One is left with the impression that they were all at work at once! And, of course, the foremost midwife was Socrates with his Socratic method. It is constant questioning that leads us to discover ourselves and the roots of our decisions.
"Bad" is when you hit the curb repeatedly when parallel parking. "Evil" is when you jump the curb to mow down pedestrians. One is poor ability. The other is harmful intention.
Absolutely love this
Such a great interview. Maya C Popa is so inspiring when she talks about wonder. It really sparked something within me - AND: both articles happened to be synchronities in understand a dream I had this night (what a gift from the unconscious)
‘Bad’ is more flexible in its applications - a bad choice, a bad day, a bad blueberry etc - where there is a fairly uncontroversial binary. Evil speaks to a more fundamental irredeemable malevolence doesn’t it?
I like your take on poetry. Eases my sense of failure at not being sufficiently enraptured by poetry. I could not read a book of poetry, but then again I wouldn’t listen to a whole album of music.
Story telling and Story listening phases
Creativity is deeply personal and unique, with individuals drawing from it in different ways, some thrive through connection and collaboration, feeding off the energy of others, while others find their creative spark in solitude, where quiet allows the unconscious mind to surface. Carl Jung emphasized the importance of solitude for creativity and personal growth, believing that time alone enables deeper self-reflection and access to symbolic, archetypal material within the unconscious. This inner dialogue frees the mind from external distractions and social conditioning, fostering original ideas and greater self-understanding.
Similarly, life’s storytelling process often involves a dynamic balance between sharing one’s own narrative and listening to others. Just as creativity flourishes both through social exchange and introspective solitude, our personal stories evolve by weaving together expression and absorption.
This raises an intriguing question: could authentic storytelling truly occur without the introspective space that connects us to the unconscious depths of our experience?
Hello Johnny, maybe you would like to do "The Artist's Way" by Julia Cameron , you may already know of her, her book inspires, encourages to rediscover our Creative Self, you can do it by simply doing the exercises in the book or participating in a group which is of course very enlightening and more revealing of the inner shadows.
Regarding Yung and the shadow , the unconscious which was his life's work and so much more, it's only when the human being is willing and ready to go within , dive into him\herself and experience for themselves that part which is so often denied, hidden until something happens in your life that makes you stop and look, only when you have done the inner work you can really understand what Jung is talking about, you have and are experiencing it.
And it's the same for the woo woo you mention, exactly the same how many people are willing to be still and really listen to themselves, the sound that their cells make, their heart makes, their inner organs, the sound of each blade of grass? Everything a it's own frequency who is willing to be still enough and listen to it and this is only just scraping the surface, who really wants to discover the mysteries of life ? The scientists need to measure all these frequencies and yet we have the most extraordinary equipment , this body and so much more that can experience everything that scientists are discovering within ourselves, you call it woo woo until the person has the experience of it then they really can talk about it.
And most times they no longer need to talk about it because they now know.
I really like that you point the out denial in this. We don’t always realize we’re sitting there telling the same story over and over. It’s like something has to break the fourth wall of our consciousness and that absolutely comes from really sitting and taking it in, noticing what’s beyond the surface.
Thank you Kristen, love your comment, yes and love the way everyone 's comments are so different , only just started being a part of Mini Philosophy, at first noticed how people are really developed on their mental side and then thought my simplicity too has a place in all of this.
I just started reading Mini Philosophy too. I don’t have much of an outlet for thoughts and conversations like these. I’m thoroughly enjoying reading through others thoughts as well!
This philosophical poem by Julia de Burgos (1914-1953),Puerto Rican poet and a civil rights activist for women , answeres the question "Who governs my life?"
(English translations from Song of the Simple Truth: Obra Poética Completa - The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos, compiled and translated by Jack Agüeros, Curbstone Press, Willimantic, 1997, ISBN 1-880684-24-1)
To Julia de Burgos
"You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, “what will they say”.
Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.
You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;
the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.
You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not me;
unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante
snorting horizons of God’s justice."
thank you Elena , liked the poem very much, and every time I read it it naturally takes me in deeper,
Thank you Danielle for starting the dialogue.
Julia de Burgos was the woman who followed difficult path in her short life and finally got the tragic death.
She was strong personality who tried to stay independent in her thoughts and deeds. As the result she was kind of "pushed out" of her social circle. Aristocratic society preferred hierarchy to anarchy, so her motto "I owe to nobody" was not welcome. When I first read her poem I was confused with it's contradiction. It is full of strong power("in me only my heart governs,""unbridled","who governs in me is me") and helplessness at the same time( "my nothing", "runaway"). While proclaiming the social protest(contradicting"You, flower of aristocracy" and "me, flower of the people"),the heroine is running from the society and from herself at the same time. P.B. Shelly left this world at 27,M. Lermontov- at 26, Julia de Burgos -at 38, A.Pushkin-at 37. They just exploded themselves by contradictions.
I still wonder,is it possible, even for strong personality, to be welcomed by society while trying to stay independent from it?
I see your perspective though I feel and am seeing when she writes, " I owe to nobody" she really doesn't feel she owes anything to the trappings of social conventions, I read a bit about her life , she just saw right through injustices, with politics , treatment of women , education etc, I feel she was fully aware of what she was doing, of herself, her thoughts, yes she was strong, courageous , when she writes "not me only my heart governs". to me that is someone is who really knows themselves, then she says " my nothing " I see that she isn't filled with all the distractions and this could seem to society as nothing , this emptiness seemingly no-one else can claim but herself, not empty , rich in knowing,
"runaway Rociante is just an old worn out horse with deeper symbolism , transforming and becoming into noble, extraordinary, this is just the way I perceive it, she saw the truth in things and she expressed it, and yes she was still human ........love her quote
I am life, I am strength , I am woman ,
she must have been awesome .....?
Just my thoughts
Thank you Danielle for sharing your thoughts about poetry of Julia de Burgos. I saw her photo-she was awesome. Nice advocate, activist. Beautiful woman. So why-the sudden tragic death?
And question remains-
Who governs her life?
Julia first says:"ME".But then she turns to Rocinate symbolizm:
"I am a runaway Rocinante snorting horizons of God’s justice."
I am not sure about this "snorting":
What is that -she rebels against God? or,on the contrary, wants to reach the horizons of God's justice? does she obey the Destiny or challenge it?
Love the term “ artistic ambrosia”!
I am both a Story Teller and a Story Teller Listner,
"To get away from the utilitarian uses of language..." Yes.
Nothing is good or bad…we call it so…
I feel Iam always in a hybrid mode where Iam collecting and telling stories at he same time. Stories are what attracts us to other people (or not) and especially the way story is told.
Right now I am in a writing phase. I've started writing a memoir about my collection of books. I'm trying to explain why my book collection contains some of the books that it does. My target audience for this memoir is my niece who will be the person who gets my book collection when I pass. while riding I have confronted some things in my past that I buried or glossed over that I'm now dealing with a little more openly.
Your closed loop idea intersects nicely with my meditation this week on maps of being. It fits with the notion of recursion in which the subconscious provides input to the conscious mind, which generates ideas encoded in language that become new input to the subconscious. This loop is more like a spiral, since each iteration adds something. Of course there are other loops or spirals: experience and perception, emotion and memory, the give and take of relationships. Since all of the loops are connected, the mind and its constituent nodes is part of a larger network , a module in a recursive web of everything. That explains why I don't know what I think until I have read what Johnny thinks and tried to make sense of it and written it out like this.
Sorry Jonny, that I spelled your name wrong. You have permission to spell me Denys.
I am writing in response to your post about your interview with Maya C. Popa.
By way of background, I have an dated literature degree (BA English, 1969) and an equally dated philosophy MA (1971 - thesis topic: The Logic of the Concept of Art). I am now 79 years old and have spend my entire adult life writing in a number of contexts: professionally as a lawyer writing affidavits, pleadings, opinions, correspondence, wills, trusts, contracts and technical articles, and personally writing poetry, short and mid-length fiction, a novel, a play. So I claim some degree of experience, if not expertise, about this topic.
I found your metaphor of an 'inspiration tank' more or less full of stories unconvincing. My own experience and my reading of poems classified as ars poetica leads me to the conclusion that the source of art – at least, literary art – is not stories, but the seeds of poems and stories that become poems/stories when nurtured through the application of craft (aka editing) with the goal of communication. I call this my 4-Cs theory of art:
Creativity – this is the mysterious starting point of literature, and, I believe, other art forms and activities other than the creation of art. Despite a lifetime of searching, I have found no one who can explain where these inspirations come from. They just pop up spontaneously in the flow of some people's consciousness, unbidden, surprising, often compelling, never forced or compellable. With me, it has been, at various times, a line, an image, a rhythm, a thought, a theme. I call these experiences 'poem/story seeds'. I don't disagree with the thesis that some people can make themselves more open to poem/story seeds. However, I don't believe that everyone has an innate ability to become a poet or fiction writer. IMHO, genetics play a large role in determining whether a person's conscious mind is populated with poem/story seeds vs for example, math seeds or physics seeds or auto mechanic-seeds (my son's conscious mind is full of pop-up ideas about how to fix cars and motorcycles, ideas that never occur to me), football seeds or, god help us, philosophy seeds.
Craft – this is the second C: the application of technique to nurture the seed. This is a very broad range of activities, some of them quite boring drudgery and others that produce the most thrilling excitement as a nascent poem/story-seed blossoms into a beautiful metaphor or enthralling image, a totally convincing bit of dialog, or a compelling action sequence. Craft requires dipping back into Creativity: confronted with a crude, hurriedly written description of a crucial bit of action, the fiction writer reimagines the scene and new, surprising details pop up to flesh it out. Sometimes the new details take the work in an entirely new and unexpected direction. Craft also looks forward to Communication, the 3rd C. In a recent conversation with my grandson, who is studying creative writing, I described Craft as the bridge between Creativity and Communication: it's the suite of techniques you use to transport your poem/story seed into the minds of your readers.
Communication – the goal of most writing is to communicate with readers. (Not all writing has a goal of communicating: consider journalling and therapeutic self-analysis: for these genres, Craft does not matter as much and Communication is irrelevant.) To communicate successfully, you need to be able to craft your work with sufficient skill that your audience will respond positively to what you have written. This last sentence is a very complex topic with infinite nuances: what is success? who is your audience? what does 'respond positively' mean? how do you want to communicate – orally, in writing, limited audience of people you know, large audience of people you don't know? if the latter, how much are you willing to pay in terms of time, energy and resources to reach a larger audience through publication? (Some people believe that publication is the ultimate goal of all writing. I disagree.)
Canonization – only a small part of what is written becomes part of the canon – the body of literature that is recognized as culturally important by the opinion-leaders of a particular time and place. The argument in my MA thesis is that 'Art' is an open-ended cultural construct that changes with time and place and that there is no 'essence' of Art, as posited by metaphysicians. I was a disappointment to the Aristotelian on my thesis committee.
Here is an ars poetica poem I wrote to capture my thinking:
Can a man have a baby?
The stopwatch on my life ticks ...
waits ...
ticks ...
waits ...
In the momentary silences that hide between the ticks,
a feeling for the shape of a value-laden thought
a poem-seed
will sometimes wriggle, unannounced, into my mind.
Its ardent quest: to fertilize an image with intent.
If I put on a social condom to prevent conception
and fill my time with all the beneficial shoulds of daily life
talk to my wife when I've nothing to say
play with my kids when it's their time to play
visit my dad when it's out of the way
I am a model husband-father-son
a family man, they say
respectable, responsible, predictable;
but I half-live when every now mechanically becomes
another second
minute
hour
day or
month
with nothing new begun.
But if I let the image and idea meet and merge
and nurture this new life toward its birth
escaping time as seen for time as flow
forgetting where I am and what I know
slipping off the leashing status quo
I am a poet for a timeless, I-less while.
My mind becomes a rich placental bed
that feeds my verse the words it needs to grow:
I feel it kick, and then it's born,
and that's as close as I,
a man
can come to giving birth.
© 2025 Paul McLaughlin