I find myself wanting to write a little about imitation in poetry. It's interesting in this class to be doing it consciously, rather than through the normal poetic process--it reminds me of Harold Bloom suggesting that the way literature itself grows is through authors misreading their influences in an attempt to create serious work (as well as, eventually, imitating themselves and the work they've done in the past), and this gradually growing into a new mode or style of its own.
What interests me about what we've been doing recently in this class is inspiration as a way to consciously grow as poets--using it as an overall practice rather than just an isolated exercise. It probably seems strange to some people (especially with all the talk of "plagiarism--which, as soon as you leave the realm of an essay, becomes "allusion"), but in practice it's completely natural.
I also liked the exercises we've been doing recently that are essentially free-writing--the picture of the city, the objects we passed around the room (mine was a yellow block), etc. The effect seems to be sort of like conjuring a shape out of a place where, before, there was nothing. It would be cool eventually to also get around to fiction, though I can imagine the process there being a little more difficult.
The Plath Cabinet on the other hand is interesting for being an almost perfect imitation. I'm not particularly familiar with Sylvia Plath (I read Ariel years ago, and never really went back), but there's a very precise control of tone and imagery that recalls what I've experienced of the original almost exactly.
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