“The poet disappears behind his own voice, a voice which is his because it is the voice of language, the voice of no one and of all. Whatever name we give this voice - inspiration, the unconscious, chance, accident, revelation - it is always the voice of otherness.” Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire.

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I don't understand inspiration, but I know it is real. A consequence of relinquishing my understanding of this process is that it removed every ounce of arrogance. How can I be proud of something I had nothing to do with except to be available? This knowledge helps me to walk humbly and to review the end result as a miracle that I have had the privilege to participate in.

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After this, of course, the real work begins, but the muse is ever present.

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Inspiration is like being struck by lightning. Lightning cannot be controlled, and when it strikes, it strikes without warning, making the sensitive writer into an oblivious lightning rod walking in the rain during a roaring thunderstorm. When lightning strikes he knows it, where it came from he doesn't. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was willing to take a chance that his preternatural gift would manifest itself and that he would be given an opportunity to harness, to a degree, the power inherent in the creative pistons firing in his brain, similar to the movement of the muscles in his body. I don’t understand lightning or the lightning of inspiration.

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I have been writing since 1969, and I have often considered and questioned the origin of inspiration as it relates to creativity; in my case, how it relates particularly to writing poetry and other fiction. I can, to a degree, agree with Edison who said genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration because I believe most good writers are driven and they hone their craft with significant rewrites and revisions sometimes toiling endlessly to get it “just right.” I think this is a given, and I can attest to laboring to secure the right word, phrase or sentence.

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However, just as I do not believe there are “born losers,” I don't believe there are “born writers” or born “anything” other than human beings with unlimited potential.

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Writing is hard work and requires persistence, diligence, and a host of other positive attributes and, these attributes are part of the creative process. Yet I find myself more intrigued by inspiration, and where it comes from.

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Where do creative thoughts about a particular subject come from, those creative stimulants that can not necessarily be specifically identified, stimulants to our senses that later may become a work of art, or, in my case, a poem? I realize that a writer might see be so powerfully impacted by a particular event that he writes a poem about his experience, but when he puts his pen to paper he cannot necessarily identify the end of the thing, and just as the end of a thing may produce the beginning of a thing such as a poem, the whole, which has become the sum of its parts, remains largely an unknown.

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“A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry,” said Shelly. “The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café

Richard Ilnicki, Guest Blogger

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Richard Ilnicki is the author of six books of poetry, his latest of which, The Hatchetman, is currently in the library of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library in Washington, D.C. He has written two unpublished novels as well, Mr. Monstriparity and The Bibliophile. An avid supporter, defender, lover and contributor to the state of Israel, the book deals almost exclusively with the Holocaust experience. Mr. Ilnicki lives and works in Tarpon Springs, Florida.