“Live Covering Death” — Image by kenne
Now that I have more time to search for a source of inspiration larger than or outside of myself, I desire to generate creative expression my combining poetry and visual art. It is not always easy to tease out the imagination in words or a visual image, but when combined one may be able to create analogous worlds. Edward Hirsch, in Transforming Vision stated that this process is similar to what Robert Frost called “counter-love, original response.”
The Most of It
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree–hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder–broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter–love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush—and that was all.
— Robert Frost
PS: I find inspiration in visual images, whether my own or that of others, from which I try to blend visual and verbal eloquence. One of the best examples of inspiration from visual art is Wallace Stevens “Man with the Blue Guitar” on Pablo Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist.”
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