The Psychology of Inspiration in Prose Poems by Lynn Emanuel Essay

Portraits in Pain The Psychology of Inspiration in Prose Poems by Lynn EmanuelReconstructing notions such as potentiality and inspiration, Emanuels prose poems,whose thematic range spans from involvement with the paintings of her renowned scramAkiba Emanuel (a model and pupil of Matisse) to the portraits of Gertrude Stein,illuminate the interrelationship in the midst of language and world, and the psychology of inhabitingboth through inspiration. This paper will address the question of what fuels creativeness when itis put to work through the involvement of other voices which are stand for (in Emanuelscase) as suffering from having their genius interrupted either by death, by lack of recognition,or by amnesia.In all Emanuels three collections of poems, and a couple of other chap books, inspirationplays an all important(predicate) role, yet Emanuel is not interested in inspiration in the tralatitious sense tomean divine connection with a higher actor or a muse, and romantic t ranscendence.Inspiration for Emanuel is always triggered by an onset at correspondence what pain is. Thepain of creation and composition, and the pain of tuition and writing promote two differenttypes of understanding first, that there is something to constrain out of nothing, and second, thatnothing is always a low gear. Inspiration for Emanuel is therefore the beginning of nothing.But how does one begin nothing, a created nothing, that is, a nothing which mass be renderedand read and which can explain both the pain of understanding such relations and theinspiration that befalls them? One of Emanuels answers seems to be condition through her use ofamnesia. It is through the theme of forgetfulness that a connection between the writer an... ... . Pittsburgh University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999Lethem, Jonathan, ed. Introduction. The Vintage Book of Amnesia an anthology of Writingon the Subject of Memory Loss. New York Vintage Books, 2000Surez Araz, Nicomedes. The Amnesis Manife sto, 1984 http//www.-smith.edu/calc/amnesia/manifesto.htmlZawinski, Andrena. Poetry in Review. In Posse Review. Osiduy. Issue 9. Vol. 1, familyundisclosed http//webdelsol.com/InPosse/zawinski9.htm91 Joyce 1992, 8542 Domangue 1997, no page number3 Berman 1993, no pagination4 Emanuel 1995, 425 Surez-Araz, 1984, no pagination6 Joyce 1992, 8547 Emanuel 1995, 578 Emanuel 1999, 79 Zawinski, no year no pagination10 Emanuel 1999, 2711 Emanuel 1999, 2812 Clark 1997, 1013 Clark 1997, 11914 Emanuel 1999, 2915 Emanuel 1999, 3016 Emanuel 1999, 3417 Emanuel 1999, 3418 Lethem 2000, xv