The poet-paradox: A model of the psychological moment of composition in lyric poetry

Abstract

This paper attempts to develop a psychological model of the act of composition for a lyric poet. From reviewing a range of descriptions of the experience of poetic composition and creative states of mind, we address a major paradox for this kind of creative expression: on the one hand the lyric voice is a person alone, while on the other such writing seems to demand a turning-away from the personal ego. This paper takes its impulse in part from TS Eliot’s dictum that the best poetry must be impersonal, and extends this to the question of how such a position for the poet might be described psychologically. We suggest that a mental state somewhere between intention and the unconscious, a state of ‘unintention’, can be cultivated and in fact has been cultivated by lyric poets. We explore some aspects of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to further detail both the paradox at the core of lyric poetry and the possible mental positioning of the poet. We take a poem by Frank O’Hara to show how the balancing-act of this state of mind is expressed in this lyric poem, especially in its opening stanza.