The Lesser Feast of Grady Louis McMurtry

Much of my poetry is “writing poetry,” i.e., bumbling along, putting sentences together, imitating, even if only sometimes subconsciously because it was the last book of poetry I read, somebody else in their style, technique. But then, once in a while, I start writing “as a poet.” The floodgates of inspiration open. You are acting as the “hand & pen” for some universe outside the span of time. And it is at times like that, that one must most beware, at least in my experience, of “tampering with the product.”

 

And then will come those lines of initiatory experience that will tell you, rather than you tell them. Or  even “write” them, for they are being written for you. To you thru you, as it were, from somebody else. Or at least from somewhere else. Much of my initiatory experience has come from “letting it flow,” and then trying to understand it later, even if it didn’t seem to make much sense at the time. As the Greek poets used to say, “from the Gods.” And you wouldn’t believe how many times I have been absolutely amazed as what I have “told” myself, as it were, when thinking about it later. And then sometimes I have even told myself things that I have never been able to understand even to this day.