II. On Cook

In Jon Cook's article, he elaborated on the idea of 'writing as discovery', more exclusively, creative writing as discovery.  Using example of literary pieces of fiction and poetry in the article as well as persepectives from different writers, to me the article seemed to be intended for other creative writers like himself who may feel as though their art is above or below the methodological realm and can't contribute to or be contributed to by the research method. 


 I particularly like how he quotes Keats in saying 'If poetry comes not as naturally as leaves upon a tree, it had better not come at all.'  For me, this echoes of the myth surrounding the culture of a writer's life that paints them as whimsical layabouts who wait for the muses to bless them and guide their quills to the paper.  The quote strikes as a defensive statement to someone who might have suggested that it could be something a little more concrete and bound to method.


I feel like this sort of article would be used to either reassure or firmly educate aspiring writers that the act of creative writing is a mixture of both columns.  You really can't have one without the other.  Without Christopher Marlowe further utilizing the potential of the method of blank verse for the English drama,  William Shakespeare and several authors may not be considered with the same regard as they are today.  But without the creativity of those authors and those before them, blank verse and all the other forms of prose and poetry would have no importance, much less exist, possibly.  In the same line of thought, someone had to be inspired to research and come up with those methods in the first place.  


Cook puts the article together in a great web of different arguments for all sides, those who think research and method are the death of creativity and those that think that creativity is nothing but a puddle of milk without a bucket to sit in, that craft and technique are bitter rivals.  At the end, though, he funnels it all into the same end:  that creative writing. through language, nature and intention, begets itself and the evidence of its research.