Elizabeth Gilbert on Ruth Stone's genius

An extract from Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk "A different way to think about genius" in which she describes meeting the poet Ruth Stone who described the way poems "came" to her. The full talk is on TED: http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html
and on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86x-u-tz0MA&feature=related
Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses -- and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person "being" a genius, all of us "have" a genius. It's a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.
Ruth Stone's WHAT LOVE COMES TO: NEW & SELECTED POEMS is published in the UK by Bloodaxe Books in the UK and by Copper Canyon Press in the US:
http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=1852248416

Elizabeth Gilbert faced down a premidlife crisis by doing what we all secretly dream of running off for a year. Her travels through Italy, India and Indonesia resulted in the megabestselling and deeply beloved memoir EAT, PRAY, LOVE, about her process of finding herself by leaving home. Shes a longtime magazine writer covering music and politics for Spin and GQ as well as a novelist and short-story writer. Her books include the story collection PILGRIMS, the novel STERN MEN (about lobster fishermen in Maine) and a biography of the woodsman Eustace Conway, called The Last American Man. Her work has been the basis for one movie so far (COYOTE UGLY, based on her own memoir, in this magazine article, of working at the famously raunchy bar), and now it looks as if EAT, PRAY, LOVE is on the same track, with the part of Gilbert reportedly to be played by Julia Roberts. Not bad for a year off.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). TED's website makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from TED's archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted. See http://www.ted.org
http://www.amazon.com/What-Love-Comes-Selected-Poems/dp/155659271X

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Elizabeth Gilbert
• Ruth Stone
• Bloodaxe Books
• Copper Canyon Press

[leconfidant]

@JCRJohnson I heard this objection before, but it's illogical. Just because someone uses a metaphor doesn't mean they're wrong. All language uses metaphors at some level, because associations are pervasive. To use a metaphor is a perfectly legitimate mode of discussion and argument. If there is a dry, logical scientific way to describe the process of creating poetry, go ahead and tell us how it happens in the language of dry logic and emprical science.

[leconfidant]

@JCRJohnson She doesn't believe it. She feels it's a better way of relating to creativity than egotism that's all. I believe it as a point of fact, partly because it's perfectly logical that ideas come to us from outside our brains, and partly because every artist experiences this phenomenon, and partly because scientific realism, for all its beauty, does not make a great art. If it did, fashion designers would be part-time astro-physicists and vice versa.

[JCRJohnson]

@skoaner Her story is as much a fantasy as 'Lord of the Rings' but Tolkien never insisted that Gandalf visited him and narrated the thing to him. If she truly believes in the literalism of what she is saying, which she at least pretends to do, then she suffers from a psychological dysfunction. The reality of the universe is so amazing, exciting and challenging... it is a shame when people believe that the fantasy that they create is in some way superior to the world we actually live in.

[skoaner]

@JCRJohnson Poetry is not logical. Words make you think and feel of certain things and there isn't always a clear answer. Poetry requires imagination and divergent thinking. She's describing a state of mind she must be in in order to write. And just because you fail to understand her process doesn't mean it's BS. The only thing that stinks here is your boring, predictable, mechanized thinking.

[JCRJohnson]

Not insightful, poetic- with the licence to avoid any actual basis in fact. I could tell of searching for the poem, tracking it down in the nooks and crannies of the broken city- catching glimpses of it as it ducks into an alley following one of the cast off ghosts of society... how I have to be careful sometimes not to scare it off... to just sit quietly, not quite looking at it until it came close and settles into me.

All BS of course but it sounds so pretty is has to be true right?

[BrokenneckYgor]

Like to see EG in a catfight

[ZOMGJUSTUS]

Ruth Stone is amazing, this is so true.

[AstridVonAij]

This talk is so beautiful, so insightful. She is a philosopher more than a novelist. Ja.

xo- Astrid