Negative Capability Redux
For the past few years I’ve secretly thought of December as Negative Capability Month. This is partly my cranky introvert response to the over-commercialized “Holiday Spirit” and partly because the poet Keats first coined the term Negative Capability on December 21, 1818. For me, it’s a helpful reminder to be patient and attentive as I revise poems or overhaul a manuscript (something I’m working on right now).
Keats (in a letter to his brothers) described Negative Capability as “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”. My own understanding of it keeps evolving over time. I first encountered Negative Capability as a teenager reading Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (if you are a fan of the series, Negative Capability is the mindset Lyra uses to read the Golden Compass). At the time, the most important word seemed to me to be “Mysteries” and I thought it sounded cool, but I wasn’t sure how one actually accessed Negative Capability or what one used it for (certainly not for passing standardized tests!).
Only later, when I read Keats in college and grad school, did I start to recognize Negative Capability as the frame of mind I needed to write a poem, or to revise one. At that time, “doubts” was the part that resonated most for me. I had so many doubts about whether I’d be able to finish projects I started, about how my work would turn out, whether any of it would ever be published. But I kept writing through/into/out of my doubts.
In 2020, I latched onto the “uncertainties” part. Every day was full of Covid-related uncertainties and political uncertainties. Creative work felt like my best way of navigating those uncertainties.
And in 2021, for me, the most important word was “irritable”. I actually do a lot of “reaching after fact & reason” when I put together poems with elements of history or technology or science. I use facts to find images and metaphors. I need facts because learning fuels my writing. But when I try to make the facts tell the whole story or when I try to wrangle the manuscript into a perfectly logical or chronological order, the writing falls flat and I get more and more frustrated. Irritably trying to yank the facts into place so that I can have a solution NOW, leads to creative dead ends. But when I stay calm and playful, when I turn the facts and quotes and images around and around like puzzle pieces, letting them show me how they might fit together, then I move the draft forward.
My Negative Capability word for 2022 has been “being”. We live in a culture that puts a big emphasis on Getting Things Done. But being creative sometimes means stepping back and doing less—or at least not immediately jumping into action. Being with the mess, “being in doubts”, being alive, and being surprised or unsettled are all part of my process—and not just my writing process, but also my reading process. Whether I’m reading a client’s poem or the Poem-A-Day in my inbox or even one of my own, I know that I learn more from it if I can start by being with it rather than trying to do anything to it. If I need to revise the poem or give feedback on it, I want those thoughts to arise from being and listening, not making and reaching.
Negative capability is holding space, it’s listening to a friend’s heartbreak without jumping in to offer advice, it’s standing aside for the inflow, it’s being on the water and letting the paddleboard move with the waves, it’s being moved by art and music, and it’s carrying the questions in the back of my mind for months, trusting my future self to answer them. It means shuffling poems into an arrangement (even a wrong arrangement) and reading them aloud, noting the rough patches without rushing to get rid of them, learning from them, shuffling the poems again, learning more, and finally starting to hear where they are working together.
Sign up here to receive my posts in your inbox.
