Genius and Madness

I think that poets, although often highly narcissitic, are perhaps the best equipped to reach the masses. Personal dramas are expressed in ways that ignite the shared human spirit. No matter our life circumstance we all feel fear, love, and deep emotion. A poet who is intune with these sensations and can express them effectively, gives to the world an affirmation of thier own feelings that they simply could not put into words. Love is universal yet so abstract of a concept that the challange to channel it into comprehensible words has been the calling and passion of poets for centuries.

That's another BIG topic--art and narcissism. Maybe the subject for a later post. Of course, if the poet is too narcissistic--utterly self-indulgent, writing ONLY for the self and not for an audience--that would get in the way of true communication, and make for very bad poetry...

I have to admit I'm the same type of poet--the writer whose best works are spawned by love: unrequited, gone south, or passionately in the now. I was once told by another poet that the love poem is the most popular poetic subject because it is so simple to generate. Everyone who has ever loved, it seems, has at some point written a silly love poem. (Come on, admit it! Even if you just changed the last two lines of "Roses are red, violets are blue!") He lamented that this thins the creative juice out of the subject, and only truly sensational love poems are worthy of any recognition because we all love. Poetry is about ( I think) emotion to the furthest extremes, right? Well, needless to say, I didn't quite agree. What's more extreme than love, afterall? The emotion that could make a man write a lifetime or works for a woman who will never be his.

I think there's definitely a connection between love, sex, and poetry.

I agree with you (not your poet friend)... And to me the key line is "for a woman who will never be his." It is the unattainability, the impossibility, that is haunting and torturous and throws the artist into a swoon that the art reflects back. When you get the love object, does the poetry then die? An interesting question...

sex is good all the time...it feeds the human needs specially to boys

An interesting blog you have here! Just to add to the list you have in this posting, Nietzsche shared your thoughts on the intersections of creativity and sex. In the Will to Power, he says, “The force that one expends in the artistic creation is the same as that expended in the sexual act: there is only one kind of force.” This is why he thinks the (male) artist is typically quite chaste. Of course a woman can never be an artist for Nietzsche, because she can only see far enough to perfect herself - attention to words, music, and such requires seeing beyond yourself. Charming man.

thanks! yes, Freud sort of stole this idea of N's, as he did many of N's ideas. but i guess i mainly disagree. that is, the artist--as i describe in the initial post--benefits from being in love (and in lust) and sex, or at least the promise of it, releases a lot of energy, and thus energizes the art... i don't know, i keep puzzling over the nexus. like with most stuff, it boils down to the particular artist one is talking about...

As an artist with a mild mental illness known as A.D.D. i can say my sexual drive has lessened by taking Strattera. People with serious mental illness such as chronic depression often in episodes have a high sex drive.I associate high sex drives with mental illness.Whatever the level of anxiety and mental disfunction the higher the sex drive.It should be noted as serious mental illness continues into ones 20s or 30s the sex drive comes almost to a halt. Sincerely David Petropoulos

Writer Eve Ensler thinks "sexuality is the greatest gift we've been given. Its energy is the basis of creativity, love, ambition, desire, life. Sexuality has gotten all these bad raps because it's so powerful. Everybody wants to squash it, control it, define it, judge it -- as opposed to just rejoicing in it, following where it goes." And playwright Arthur Miller has said, "Sex is the most compressed set of circumstances that we've got. Everything is in that collision."

Quotes from a page on my Talent Development Resources site: Sexuality.

Passion...
Art is fueled by it, poetry is... and so is love. I do think there may be a connection between creativity and passion, but not all passionate people are creative, but most if not all, creative people ARE passionate. Both art and sex contribute to the senses... visually, auditory and emotionally. I think a very interesting question is the connection (if any) between creativity (genius) and madness... mania... and sexuality. And another is the role of hormones, chemicals in the brain, in creativity and mania. Isn't it true that artists often "create" in a quest to satisfy a yearning... and sex would be utilized in a similar fashion?

I am asexual and, I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but I am an extremely creative person. I write, draw, compose, perform, and I also have synesthesia. If you look on AVEN there are many creative related forums.