LET ME KNOW: Where do you get your inspiration?
Where do you get your inspiration?
Poet W.D. Snodgrass, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1960, tells us how he found the answer to that question, the whole question of what to write about.
“You ought to write about what you really do care about…,” Snodgrass said. In Part 23 of a series of videos about his life, Snodgrass talks about getting over writer’s block, psychotherapy, the breakdown of his marriage and his love for his daughter. It’s a very instructive talk. Watch his video, and many others, at People’s Archive. Sample his work… read his poem, “Sitting Outside”. His newest book is Not for Specialists: New and Selected Poems.
Snodgrass introduced “confessional poetry,” one of the strongest and most influential threads in American poetry — and in West Virginia poetry. I think of many poets I know, and also of many of the poems in Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry, 1950-1999 and Wild Sweet Notes II. Snodgrass, by the way, was born in Wilkinsburg, Pa.
What do you care about? That’s the stuff poetry’s made of. Is it a person? Is it music? The world on your morning walk? Some loss you experienced? Some success? The city? The country? Where do you get your inspiration? Please add your thoughts in the “leave a reply” box below.
