DAVIS | JESPERS | DAY | GERMANACOS

Tracking the Muse
Four Writers on Process

This summer, Blackbird editors contacted the writers featured in our Introductions Reading Loop and asked them to open a window in some way onto their creative process. Four responded, and we think that you will agree that their efforts enhance the poems and stories that we chose to call to your attention.

Serendipitously, all four of the commentaries treat, in one way or another, the transmutation of autobiography or lived experience into art through a filter of association.

Like her poems, Kathy Davis’s statement takes a surprising turn to comment on her use of collected sensations. Richard Jespers demonstrates what he draws down and lifts from his quotidian routine to fashion a narrative. Adam Day marshalls his store of family memories to arrive at an intersection of compassion and loss, and Anne Germanacos presents us with an additional collage of fractured perception.

Blackbird intends to publish materials that relate to the process of creation in future issues. Take pleasure in these.  

   Tracking the Muse: Four Writers on Process
         Guns, Tea, and Eating Chicken | Kathy Davis   
         Exploiting My Own Material | Richard Jespers          
         The Unreliable Prism | Adam Day          
         Scratchings | Anne Germanacos

   Introductions Reading Loop    

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