Negative Capability #2: Mess can be Best!
This article is for: Everyone!
This is the second of two articles about a thing called Negative Capability, and how it can help you make better poems.
English Romantic poet John Keats invented Negative Capability, and he defined it as:
“when a [poet] is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”This little idea has been surprisingly useful over the 200 years since Keats came up with it. It has several aspects, one of which is how to keep writing even when you feel that everything you’re doing is useless—which I covered the first article.
In this article, I want to talk about another aspect of Negative Capability, the one that Keats most probably had in mind:
How staying in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts” can help you make better poems.
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Let’s first of all consider why doubts and uncertainties might be important.
To understand this, I like to think about the moments after the Big Bang, when there were zillions of particles and unimaginable quantities of energy packed into tiny spaces, and therefore the potential for just about anything to arise: stars, comets, planets.
Or maybe the time of the so-called Primordial Soup, when Earth’s oceans were packed with teeming molecules that could react together in trillions of different ways, and had the potential to create something astounding: life.
Both of these were moments of astonishing potential, with numbers of possible outcomes that must number into the quadrillions or more.
So, good times to be creating something!
But were they neat? But were they tidy? Were they predictable and under control?
Definitely not!
All that creative potential was matched by, and was also a consequence of, the sheer chaos and mess that was present.
It ain’t that different when you’re drafting a poem!
If you count up the number ways you can arrange even a small selection of words on a page, it’s not long before you get into equally huge numbers of possible permutations. So every time you work on a poem idea, you’re creating your own kind of “Big Bang” or “Primordial Soup” moment: a time that has colossal creative potential.
So, naturally, this is also a time of gigantic uncertainty (which is why the fears can arise that I tackle in the first article).
And this is especially true when you’re being at your most creative.
In other words, you’re likely to experience the highest levels of uncertainty and doubt when you’re doing things right—when you’re activating the creative powers of your brain and the universe to their fullest.
That being so, I hope you seen why Negative Capability might be not only helpful for you, but even essential:
The more you can tolerate uncertainty about how the poem is going to turn out, the more you can stay in that moment of massive creative potential and make use of it.
Negative Capability in practice
OK, nice theory. What does it mean for you though when you’re actually writing?
Let’s think first of all about what things look like when your Negative Capability is not all that Capable! Or, as we might say, when it’s weaker.
Well, you are likely to feel uncomfortable with any stages of a poem where you don’t already know what it is you’re aiming to do.
So, in this frame of mind, whenever you hit a moment where you have multiple options, you’re like to choose one of them very quickly.
For example, you might:
Start drafting already knowing what you want the poem to “say”
Decide very early on what aspects of the topic you’re going to bring in, and how you’re going to structure them, and not change that
Pick a form or approach early on and stick with it
When you want a metaphor or simile or adjective, go for the first one you can think of
Use the ending from your first draft.
By making these fast decisions, you close down those pesky, messy other possibilities and can keep moving on happily and without worry.
And making choices is necessary, of course Otherwise you’d be paralyzed!
But what if you waited, and let other things happen?
In other words, what if you used Negative Capability?
In this approach, you’d live for longer with at least some of the different possible options, and see where they lead you.
So for example, you might well start a poem with a definite idea of what you want to say, and maybe you’d draft that first. But then, you would also explore some different routes: maybe you’d freewrite a couple of times on the topic, or spend a week letting it bubble around in your unconscious, and see what alternative approaches present themselves.
Then, you wouldn’t necessarily make rapid choices between those alternatives:
You might draft two or three versions of the poem, all quite distinct, and spend some time working on each of them before deciding which to keep.
Or, you might create a loose, messy, baggy draft that includes many different kinds of material, and be OK with not knowing for some time which parts of that material you’re going to keep, and in what order.
Once you’d got a draft, you would also be prepared to dive back into the creative soup, by unpicking it and starting again.
For example, perhaps you’d reconsider the point of view you’re using, and try from a very different perspective.
Or maybe you’d change the form, or experiment with a new voice.
You’d also be prepared to let smaller choices hang for a while too. Maybe every time you need a new metaphor, you’d make a list of 20, then not pick one for a day, or a week.
Endings in particular might get worked over many times. You might create five different endings for the poem, put them all aside for a month, then come back and see which one seems to round the poem off best.
In other words, at every stage of the poem’s creation, you’re open to several possibilities, and willing to wait to decide which one’s best.
This is obviously a much slower way of creating. But I think it can pay off in terms of the quality of poem you make in the end.
But I will add a word of warning: don’t go so slow you get bogged down!
It is possible to take this too far, and make a single poem take months. I’ve done this for longer poems, and I’m fine with it—but it is important to feel that your poem is moving forward, not stuck.
So, like all poetic techniques, sometimes you want to use Negative Capability, and sometimes you don’t. But I do feel it has several significant advantages.
What are you gaining when you use your Negative Capability?
In other words, what happens when you put off a decision about a poem, and live with the “doubt and uncertainty” for a while?
1. You give your creative unconscious time to help you out. The creative “well” that ideas come from is a wonderful resource, but it doesn’t always produce on demand. Sometimes it needs time—to let things seep in, to digest and recombine the material you’ve given it. Waiting allows that to happen.
2. You give yourself time to notice or remember other ideas that might be helpful in the poem. If you’re thinking about what metaphor to use, for example, you might see lots of possibilities in the world around you as you go through your day. Or if you’re pondering what form or approach to use, you might read a poem that helps you out.
3. You allow yourself to explore more possibilities, and since you never know exactly when the best idea is going to strike you, that improves your odds!
Next Steps:
The next time you have a choice to make in a poem—any choice—just try delaying the moment of decision. Let it sit in your mind and body for a while, and resist any “irritable reaching” for a quick answer:
Give yourself longer to find the form or shape of a poem that works best.
Let there be different versions of a poem for a while, before you choose between them.
Not sure what adjective or metaphor to use? Make a list—but don’t pick right away. Wait a day or more before making your selection.
And see how it goes! John Keats will be proud of you—and you might get to like what it gives you in terms of results.
