Clever Invention v. Imagination

In a poem by Bob Hicok in The American Poetry Review (yes, I do read such things) he quotes the painter Edward Hopper (or, was it the actor Dennis Hopper?) as saying, “No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”

Finally, I find an articulation for my aversion to the “experimental” poets who, for example, write a poem by rearranging some pre-existing text, or those legendary poetry workshop leaders (I won’t mention any names of the recently dead) who give “clever” assignments such as “to write about your childhood pet without using it’s name or species, as if it were your mother” or something equally idiotic. Thus the paucity of passion & vision in so many poetry zines, such as the aforementioned.

Rather I prefer to have poems, paintings, song, sonatas, sculpture, whatever your métier, arise from the leaps of the artist’s imagination — the leaps of images – sounds – ideas of a poet writing. The Imagination, not some assignment from another who is probably struggling with her, or his, own inadequacies.

You can find me scribbling at the beach, not in classroom.