Arlene Corwin Poetry

      Creative Process

Discuss and grope,

Grope and discuss:

Is it God or is it us,

Nature’s biogenesis the mystery of cycles,

Wrench of will the magic drop?

In any case,

The thing we face we can’t control:

Grace – where the body plays key role.

What is creation?

Is it always something new?

Is there ever repetition?

Is ‘new’ spontaneity – there on Monday, not on Tuesday?

Schumann’s mad, and still he writes.

Beethoven fights filled with curses.

Can’t rehearse – yet he rehearses.

Schubert writes, his flat half-frozen.

Can he help that he is ‘chosen’?

Genius forms despite itself;

Keeps the paper on the shelf,

Pencil present, fingers ready.

Even blind, with nerves unsteady

Strapping paintbrush to the wrist,

Memorizing palette sequence,

Using power’s dispensary

In mists of expectation.

Write, dance, paint, sing – what you will,

They don’t keep still, except inside,

For in the cyclone spiral-eye

Creation starts its spiral ride

From vacuum to a world outside.

Using worry, debt, depression,

Fused to their inverted states.

Writing, playing, painting is the ruse

To bring about those states.

Lying to shake off the cold;

Aspirin, coffee – anything’s allowed

That gets a hold on energy and focus.

Just to be there is a way to “Open Sesame!”

And though it is passivity,

At least passivity is presence.

Creativity needs presence, presence creativity.

Pardon the tautology,

But letting thinking flow

Is equal to what mankind knows,

What ancients knew eons ago.

 Trite goes to trite, deep goes to deep,

Wise like the wise, the sleepy sleep:

.We all have influence somewhere

On circles scarcely sensed.

You never know who’ll be the one.

The real law gets all things done.

Read, look, touch, smell, feel, listen:

Let in every oscillation.

You don’t know what word, what hush,

Which syllable will start the gush

Of art-filled spontaneity.

Everything is beauty

And a specimen of truth.

Secret is to see and use it,

Take it from the arcane sooth

To modern idiom and youth.

Inner order is the feature

Folding vision into creature;

Hidden secrets always there:

Rhythms not always transparent –

Inner order has its rhythm.

Skill belongs to those

Who, like the clogged up hose,

Wait for that drop to flow

Then flood, forcing new veins.

Tainted motives last awhile,

Purity runs the whole mile.

There’s a bank, the past before you –

Take that store to use and store.

We all start out a little fake, take

And work and wind up ‘true’. Work and wait.

Cyclic, shifting time is fate.

There is a product in the end

That says ‘I am’. And

Since you never step into

The same effluvial direction twice,

The product is as artist was:

A slice of now-ness,

Spliced with interweaving strands

Of overlapping chunks of texture,

Form and color: language wands

Of elegant expressiveness,

Personal

And universal.