for no particular reason... who would you say are your favorite poets? what do you look for when you do webweaves? what sparks the nugget of creativity in you?
are you trying to learn from me or destroy me? wait, fuck, am I Palpatine in this scenario?
I have no idea who my favorite poets are. I can give you some of my favorite poems, however:
Widening Circles
The Old Astronomer (basic bitch answer but we love to have her at the party)
Autobiography of Eve
now two old ladies sit peacefully knitting
since feeling is first
love
Sea Fever
I, Icarus
What do I look for when I do web weaves? I don't know. I like to joke that my brain is a storeroom and I am an orangutan librarian. Ook.
In more practical terms, I usually begin by writing down (for example) "all my heavy hopes Owl City x Anne Carson where can I put it down" in the margins of my quote file and then leave it for months until something else occurs to me that reminds me of that and then I'm off like a shot gathering all kinds of things.
This is also kind of what sparks creativity in me. I keep an ongoing file of quotes I think are beautiful or meaningful. I have pulled them from old reblogs here (see my #quotables tag), from years of twitter and journaling and blogging, from what I highlight on Kindle copies of library books, and now if I find something anywhere that I want to save it goes in there. And then when I'm actually doing a project, I go through the entire quote file looking for things that match the vibe. This is actually the hardest part, because I end up just changing the vibe of what I want to do to include EVERYTHING after a while because I love these quotes or whatever they are. So usually then I go back to the drawing board and force myself to focus on a couple key themes. In the case of my craft weave, these themes ended up being the name of the piece: fucked up devotion and terrible faith.
I also have these thoughts on the subject, and in trying to explain all of this I sort of realized that my brain just naturally works this way? Making connections, weaving webs, wondering what everything has to say about everything else and how meaning can be amplified or changed by what something appears in context with. Or, in a nutshell, "these poems make me feel similar feelings. I will put them together."
Does this answer your question?
