“To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force – the imagination.” William Carlos Williams, Spring and All.
Who makes that call? Unless you claim it for yourself, you’re probably not. Be like Homer, on your way home – dawdle, daydream, and engage those encountered on the way home dawdling, daydreaming, and by all means, rustle the leaves!
Although Homer’s trip home from ten years at war wasn’t the same as my trips home from way more than ten years at school, I presume in you an expansive view of figurative language!
Master useful remnants and schemes so long as you remember that yesterday is yesterday for a reason, to clear your path forward. If your path forward bears much resemblance to yesterday, if you display your diploma, e.g., or if your boss is old enough to be your mother, then maybe one of those cruises with on-board mindfulness seminars is in order for you?
The clue is in the etymology “I create.” To make language generate meaning, beyond the purely notional and semantic, is the alchemy to be mastered by the poet. It is not the same as making the inhabited universe; the poet is the antithesis of artificial, but everything he makes is. Mystery here, alchemy there.
Dave Read