Page 216 of The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood reads: “…the poet was pregnant with his work, the poem went through a period of gestation, often a long one, and when it was finally ready to see the light of day the poet was delivered of it often with much painful labor. In this way the very process of artistic creation was itself an imitation of Nature, of the thing in nature that was most important to the survival of Mankind.”
Such an idea to ruminate.
In turn, I wonder how this relates to the creation of the universe by God in the Bible. Was God also “pregnant” with love/desire/need for humanity? Did he have a gestation period while creating Earth, water, light, etc. until the sixth day when he finally gave birth to Adam and Eve? Is the Lord’s Creation the original process of art? The original form of creative expression?
But also in this way, is not the poet a god in their own right? I don’t mean this in any way sacrilegiously. I intentionally switched “God” to the improper, lowercase form of “god” to simply mean a being of power, authority, and (hopefully) morality.
Thus, is it as simple as consciously creating an original work in order to become a god? And, if we are all gods, why don’t we create in exactly the way we long to? No censoring ourselves or catering to the judgement of others, just the pure outpouring of our innermost selves.
And then, as a result, why don’t we live this way outwardly, always?
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