To learn means months and months of study before any picture can be done; studies from nature, drawing first for a long time, painting only after. If you are ready to study hard and regularly, then you can begin; otherwise, it is better not to try. I want to train similarly in poetry, and learn the craft and art of writing poems. What is the way to study the classical poets as someone learning to write?
(I don’t think I should approach Sri Aurobindo’s poems in this manner, should I? My focus should rather be on reciting them like mantras and dwelling on the contents)
Will it be right to imitate them to learn- or will I risk losing authenticity, like borrowing phrases inadvertently instead of coming up with my own? Should I choose from a set of subjects to write so that I train myself in the techniques? How can I tune myself to inspiration so that I can express something higher?
Currently I pick a form, like the Sonnet, and sit through many hours trying to complete it in the correct rhyme scheme and meter. When I give this to ChatGPT, it makes corrections and rewrites it into a better version of whatever I wanted to write. How do I improve?
Poetry requires an inner hearing, the faculty of inspiration, so to say, just as painting requires an inner vision, a faculty that reveals what is hidden in the form. The technique is a framework which can be developed by practice. The inspiration comes through an inner opening of the consciousness to the deeper psychic being or the higher spiritual consciousness. Both are needed: technique and inspiration. Technique develops by practice (ChatGPT included), whereas the doors of inspiration open as the surface mind learns and grows in quietude and aspiration.
Technique develops by reading classical poets, in whatever language you feel inspired to write (mother tongue is best). It also develops the vocabulary. For inspiration, one has to read inspired poets who had the doors of inspiration open and whose poems carry the power of revelation. In English, I don’t see anyone better than Sri Aurobindo and some of his poet disciples such as Amal Kiran, Nirod Baran, Arjav, Harindranath, and a few others. Certain other English poets like Blake, Wordsworth, Frost, Browning, Keats, Shelley are also helpful.
Finally, as always, offer this urge to the Divine Mother and continue to write until the opening increases and the inspiration flows.
Affectionately
Alok Da
