Music hasn't always preceded theme for me. Sometimes I've been discursive to a fault. I find this balance hard to manage. What I crave is a music that's fused with and carries meaning. Detached from meaning, or without much meaning to bear, music can still give pleasure, and who am I to thumb my nose at pleasure? But it's rare that I get a memorable pleasure from poetry that's just music and wit. Music may precede theme when I write a poem, but it doesn't precede urgency, need, feeling, a vague but insistent sensation that something has to be said. I don't think that's writing "from the head." I think it's writing from the whole person. I want to encounter whole persons in literature, not just body parts (head, ear, heart, etc).
- Daniel Karasik, in interview with me over at One Ghana, One Voice. You can read the whole thing here, and the poem that inspired the discussion here.
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