Interview with Emmet Gowin, 1998.

(Nancy, Danville, Virginia, 1965 )

"Emmet Gowin: It might take us a lifetime to find out what it is we need to say. Most of us fall into where our feelings are headed while we're quite young. But the beauty of all this uncertainty would be that in the process of exhausting all the possibilities, we might actually stumble unconsciously into the recognition of something that's useful to us, that speaks to a deep need within ourselves. At the same time, I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can't know exactly what it is we are doing."
...
"EG You're absolutely right and what a good point. The fact that something is unsayable, that you are emotionally restricted from saying or even recognizing consciously what your own spirit is struggling with, energizes one's work. That is exactly where good work comes from. And that's why you can't ask somebody to find out what it is they need to do. It's like going to a doctor and getting a prescription for what will make you well. You go and fill the prescription, you take the chemical, and nothing happens - because that's not what's wrong with you. That's the dilemma. You can take the cure for the wrong problem. However, we want to put the accent on the creative imagination and putting ourselves in accord with our own lives and the energies that made us."