Poets are constantly getting “ideas” for poems, but many never find their way into a poem. What happens to them? What should happen to them?
Levi Stahl, who is the publicist for the University of Chicago Press, explains that the poet’s ideas should go into the poet’s notebook, which “can be many things: a quiet rehearsal space, a commonplace book, a tinderbox, an ongoing conversation with one’s peers and influences.”
Even more importantly, clarifies Stahl, these valuable notebooks behave as “an ally in the fight against time’s inevitable losses.” The poet’s notebook is the gold standard and repository for holding “the fleeting impressions that help the poet eventually attempt to put the world into words.”
It sounds so simple: keeping a notebook for ideas is a hedge against memory loss associated with time’s passing. Maybe everyone could put such a tool to use, whether a poet, publicist, or grave-digger. Everybody suffers memory loss. Everybody is under the spell of the passage of time. Good ideas can, thus, help everyone.
To read Levi Stahl’s entire article, please visit The Five-Minute Muse.
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