What is creative energy, to a poet? It is the same energy that moves through all things -- creating, maintaining, and changing. Poetry, and the creative arts in general, are not so different from other activities of life. When a poet is writing, when a woman is walking, when a stone lies asleep in the earth, when a businessman is being busy, the same energy is acting.

Its action is a "flowing," passing from one form to another, one person or being to another -- through exchanges, conversations and conversions, and the everyday doings of life.

Here is one example of that creative energy at work. At the head of corporations (and other power structures) is a special person, and his value lies not only in technical knowledge of the business and its product, but also in qualities of leadership. Leadership is an outward control of material functionings, and it is also a control of the inner energies that move the material. Some of the inner energies are expressed as enthusiasm, and a dynamic attitude. Without this invisible force, there is just a dead, decaying structure.

Energy flows through hierarchies of people and other channels. There are different types of this energy as it performs its functions. Electricity is energy, but it is not the kind that runs our body. An apple will give energy to us, but it won't spark a light bulb. Though, with the energy that we get from the apple, we can earn the money to buy that electricity.

Plants change energy from one form to another; they can convert sunlight directly into food energy, but humans can't do the same conversion -- so we wait until the energy has flowed through the plant and has been changed into a type of energy that we can use.

Poets take a different energy and change it. We use creative energy -- in its inner rhythms and melodies which might be imperceivable or inexpressible to other people -- and we manifest it as poetry. When we write a poem, we tune into the creative flow, and we transform the particular energy of the poem into a physically written poem. We are like a radio receiver, lowering the frequency of an existing unperceivable sound into an audible one.