CREATIVE INSPIRATION

Bright Blue Burning Flame

Mar 25, 2024

white smoke in black background — Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

In a recent Poet-to-Poet essay (www.poettopoet.com), Radha Marcum asked if our pilot light for poetry is out. Truthfully, my pilot light is never completely out, but it barely flickers sometimes, unable to produce heat or enlighten. This has been my situation many times in the past.

I admit that I need to feel gratified by the creative work I do. I think that might be a need shared by many (if not most) artists. The best part of that is what psychologists call internal gratification. That is the reliable, positive feedback we get from sources within us.

The opposite is external gratification, which depends on finding others who agree to give you positive feedback. It is famously unreliable.

There is a catch though: we must be open to receiving positive feedback from within, and we have to quiet or disregard negative internal “voices” that try to disrupt and frustrate our needs.

When I am 100% present—whether writing, painting, cooking, drawing, collaging, playing piano—that pilot light glows like a bright blue burning flame. Some wordplay and associations, on my way to writing a poem:

Bright Blue Burn Flame

window delphinium brook dragnet

gleam calm deforestation summer

silver island starter tongue

horse Monday breath shimmer

child rhapsody bright proposal

Where will these words take me?

In My Art Studio Lab

This week I am experimenting with supports other than paper or computer for writing poetry, and alternative mediums besides pencil or pen. In the Jan/Feb issue of Poetry, Robert Fernandez described buying a box of Super Bubble gum, and writing words on each piece. The poem then became the entire gum-and-word composition. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/161732/fire-paint-pastels-stones-fans-gum

I want to save smooth-surface seashells for this project…

I collaged visual images with unrelated fragments of lines from poems. I think I’ll keep working on this as a playful exercise to free my imagination. Plus I want to try different mediums for incorporating words into my collages.

And my daily collage project continues.

Most mornings I go to my writing desk, where I give that pilot light plenty of oxygen and space to burn bright. Some days, I burn up the paper and even the pen in my hand. Other days, my breath is shallow and my hand remains cold. Ditto when I go into my studio to paint. Paulann Petersen captures the creative flame in her poem, Why the Aging Poet Continues to Write.

My question for you is this: What in your life lights a flame within you? Please leave your thoughts in the comments or send me a note. I’d love to hear from you!

Creative Inspiration

Discussion about this post