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I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Is it offensive if I announce that I am not a fan of the question, what's your creative process? Like many writers I am asked this often after public

readings. The question presumes that there is only one door into language, into the imagination.

Plus, I always think the person pictures me leaning over a candle and burning incense after having sharpened my special pencils.

And yet I understand the curiosity behind the question. I want to say that my creative process is occasionally

uncreative. It's strange how some days I sit at my desk and find writing a poem to be an

easeful journey not quite a walk in the park but something close maybe a jog on a beach beside crashing waves.

Then there are days I sit in front of the computer like a stone, pleading with the great cosmic figure in the sky

to give me something, an image, a phrase, half a metaphor, anything. Sitting through the silence is probably the greatest challenge.

That space holds all the insecurities and frustrations of creating.

And yet, I treasure the meditative quiet

in the long hours of just thinking.

The rewards of going deep into myself is a greater knowing,

most of which is probably beneficial only to me. I find that poems emerge out of dialogues that I have

either with myself, other works of art, or my friends. In this way my poems are a collaboration of

silences. Today's poem spotlights how writing can record false starts and difficult beginnings, but always

in the end is emblematic of how we push language to say who we are beyond our physical being.

From American Anolex by Gary Young.

Jean once confessed that when he was younger, he'd had a terrible temper and often flew into a rage.

I couldn't imagine it.

...