Lorca's "Imagination, Inspiration, Evasion"



Reading a little Lorca in Jubilat #7 today.



Lorca: "no one should say this is clear, because poetry is obscure. And no one should say this is obscure, because poetry is clear. . . we need to have forgotten poetry completely before it call fall naked into our arms."



I suppose that's what I search for in poetry (both writing and reading). I am most excited when I forget what poetry is and go on a hunt with letters, words, images, music etc. I also want my poetry hot ("what poetry cannot bear is indifference" as Lorca says).



Lorca says "not creation" but "discovery."



What is the difference between creation and discovery? Art as closed field (objects) versus art as open field (subjects).



Lorca:

"The imagination is a spirtual apparatus. . . [it] merely discovers things already created, it does not invent, and whenever it does so it is defeated by the beauty of reality."



Lorca's mechanics of poetic imagination:

"a concentration, a leap, a flight, hunting for imagery, return with the treasure, and a classification and selection of what has been brought back."



Selection for me is reordering of images and information. I suppose classification is along the same lines. Write drunk/revise sober etc.



How not to cripple the imagination in the act of classification and selection? Classification and selection is where the prestige lies. (best this and that plus some niche for the market. "Best South Norwegian Folk Poetry by Women under 29." )



So, how can we resteer classification and selection beyond a product ideology?



Risk anniilation.

Give up on immortality.

Agree to that little thing called death.



Lorca: "One cannot imagine what does not exist."



Does exist take into account the existence of the imagination. A flying pig is imagined but does not exist? Or because I can imagine it it must therefore exist since I cannot imagine what does not exist? Or is flying pig a poetic atmosphere rather than a poetic fact?



According to Lorca, imagination is bound to reality. Reality grounds the imagination, not the other way around.



Lorca: ""science is a thousand times more lyrical than any theogony."



According to Lorca, visible reality consists of the facts of the world and the human body.



According to Lorca, if we want to "understand the morse alphabet spoken by the heart of the sleeping girl" we will always fail.



Imagination is a golden poverty, but inspiration is different than imagination.



Lorca: "imagination creates a poetic atmosphere, and inspiration invents the poetic fact."



Which comes first the poetic atmosphere or the poetic fact?



Atmosphere then fact.

Fact then atmosphere.