Writing in the dark

Denise Levertov prefaced her 1978 poetry collection "Life in the Forest" with a quote from Henry James's odd story "The Middle Years," penned in James's 50th year, in which the main character describes the artist's plight: "We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion. Our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

Later, though, Levertov offered more practical advice to artists and poets whose ideas well up in the middle of the night. "Wait till morning, and you'll forget. / And who knows if morning will come," she writes, but flipping on the light will startle you "stark awake" while the vision fades back into darkness. Instead, she encourages writers to keep paper and felt-tip marker at hand by the bed and to practice writing in the dark, using one hand to guide the pen and the other to feel the paper and "keep each line / clear of the next":

Keep writing in the dark,
a record of the night, or
words that pulled you from depths of unknowing,
words that flew through your mind, strange birds
crying their urgency with human voices...

Keep writing, she says, because writing in the dark "may have the power / to make the sun rise again."

Now if only Henry James and Denise Levertov could have taken paper and felt-tip markers along on their final rest!