People are always asking me (and by "always", I mean "never), "Hey Harv, where do you get all your brilliant blogging ideas from?"

As I explained before, I get them from Bosco, my idea-lemur. Ain't he a cutie?

Apparently Gerard of American Digest faces a similar form of inspirational assault in the realm of poetry, although he refers to it simply as "The Arrival":

You beg for months off and you may get them. Then again, you may not. Frankly, you don't have a lot to say about it.

I think you'll find, or perhaps have already found, that the poems you'll end up liking best of all your work tend to arrive first and are written after. They don't come up out of the page, or out of an immediate experience. Instead they always tend to appear almost unbidden out of that state that Wordsworth captured when he wrote, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

I've come to think of this experience as "The Arrival." It doesn't happen often but you know it when it does.

Off the top of my head, I'm thinking Gerard's lemur might actually be a capybara:

[artist's conception of Gerard being inspired by his muse]

Posted by: Harvey at 07:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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