The poet as fraud

For the few who have seen my blog I have got good reviews about my poem. It was written in my usual 'I-have-no-idea-what-I'm-doing' manner. I start with a line popping into my head and I think "hmmm doesn't sound half bad". Then I set about trying to figure out what that line has to do with my life. In what situation am I likely to say something like that? I then just let it flow.

I believe that we all have them hidden deep within us. The bible says that the Lord has written his word in our hearts. The essence of his word is love. Jung spoke of the collective unconscious, from which we are all connected. While Lacan believed the ego was a construct of the unconscious, thus the ego, I, was a portrayed image.

By Lacan's explanation, that poem came into being and just needed my conscious mind to adjust to reflect the new image. Jung was suggesting that the poem may not even have been mine, but I tapped into it and expressed it; but it did not necessarily have its origins in me.

Based on how poems erupt from me and don't take kindly to my trying to shape them in a particular direction or form, I am inclined to believe that at least in essence they lived before my awareness and took the easiest path into substantive existence. Which would make me a conduit and a thief/plaigariser since I inturn imbue them with my own visions. Perhaps they are forced to be garbed in the images of my mind. In order to be, they must sacrifice the purity of the raw emotion that they are. It would only be right to lament if one does not do them justice then.

Am I then filled with a spirit (we say filled when its a good spirit/Holy Spirit and possessed for any other state) ? To the contrary, I oft feel empty and pretentious...sitting there trying to write a poem and I don't even know where it's from and where it is going. I just make notes as it is dictated.

I am then like the mother and father who donate sperm and egg, and the mother who later births the child. I accept the mission and later provide its entrance, but I did not give it life. I affect it only by its nurturing environment. If the vessel is impure, the contents become contaminated.

Selah