I went to the latest Distinguished Writers event at my humanities center last week; this time the writers were two poets: Cate Marvin and Robert Pinsky. Not surprisingly, poetry reading has more immediate relevance to songwriting than the novelists, short story writers, and non-fiction writers I’ve seen earlier in the series. But what I found particularly useful came in the question period after they had both read. Someone asked about writer’s block and how to get around it. Cate’s response resonated with my experiences. She said essentially that the way to get around writer’s block is to stop thinking about the great work of art that you’re trying to create and just write. She mentioned that she gives completely ridiculous assignments to her students; when you’re working out how to write something you’re not expecting to, it gets you away from thinking about how what you write will be received, and instead you just figure out how to write. She talked about writing around expectations. That’s precisely why I not only like songwriting prompts, but like particularly weird ones – my favorite of all times being the “succotash” prompt that led to my Dandelion Wine song. The most important thing for me in songwriting is getting out of my own way; not having time to think about whether what I’m writing is any good or not. So prompts are great, as are time limits. One of them – maybe Robert Pinsky? – made the point that to write a really good poem you have to write a bad poem; the broader lesson was that you just have to write and that writing a lot will make you a better writer. At a different point, Cate Marvin talked about her writing process and that for awhile she wrote on an old manual typewriter – that it was like walking on a tightrope, because you just have to start and then follow where it goes, without being able to go back and change things. Another question someone asked the poets was about their “voice” when reading their poems, since both regularly read aloud (and they were doing that at this event). Robert Pinsky commented that it’s not that they have any special approach to reading, but rather that when you read something that you feel deeply you will read it well. He mentioned a project in which average people are recorded reading poetry they love aloud, and that those performances are wonderful because they are heartfelt. Again, the link to music performance is clear. The final point I found interesting (but will take a bit more thinking to figure out how I feel about it) was something Cate Marvin attributed to a mentor of whose, who had been known to say “This poem is very nice, but does it need to exist?” Poems – and songs – are important, but it needs to be accomplishing something. More thoughts on that (I hope) in another blog post.