MAKING OF A POEM
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the backs of envelopes and posted off to editors or to poets by the vast
army of .amateurs who think that to be illogical
is
to be poetic, with
that fond question. Thus I hope that this discussion of how poets work
will imply a wider and completer view of poets.
Concentration
The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentra–
tion, and the supposed eccentricities of poets are usually due to mech–
anical habits or rituals developed in order to concentrate. Concentra–
tion, of course, for the purposes of writing poetry, is different from
the kind of concentration required for working out a sum. It is a
focussing of the attention in a special way, so that the poet is aware
of all the implications and possible developments of his idea, just as
one might say that a plant was not concentrating on developing mech–
anically in one direction, but in many directions, towards the warmth
and light with its leaves, and towards the water with its roots, all at
the same time.
Schiller liked to have a smell of rotten apples, concealed beneath
the lid of his desk, under his nose when he was composing poetry.
Walter de la Mare has told me that he must smoke when writing.
Auden drinks endless cups of tea. Coffee is my own addiction, besides
smoking a great deal, which I hardly ever do except when I am
writing. I notice also that as I attain a greater concentration, this
tends to make me forget the taste of the cigarette in my mouth, and
then I have a desire to smoke two or even three cigarettes at a time,
in order that the sensation from the outside may penetrate through
the wall of concentration which I have built round myself.
For goodness sake, though, do not think that rotten apples or
cigarettes or tea have anything to do with the quality of the work of
a Schiller, a de la Mare, or an Auden. They are a part of a concen–
tration which has already been attained rather than the causes of
concentration. De la Mare once said to me that he thought the desire
to smoke when writing poetry arose from a need, not of a stimulus,
but to canalize a distracting leak of his attention away from his
writing towards the distraction which is always present in one's en–
vironment. Concentration may be disturbed by someone whistling in
the street or the ticking of a clock. There is always a slight tendency
of the bcdy to sabotage the attention of the mind by providing some
distraction.
If
this need for distraction can be directed into one chan-
