The writer’s jump start

 Lydia Davis discusses John Ashbery’s notion of the poetic jump start in an article in Harper’s.

Davis’s article is about why writers write, and she says some intriguing things about why she writes. But her remarks on Ashbery’s notion of needing an occasional jump start stole the show for me.

Ashbery had poets he turned to when his batteries were low. These poets were not necessarily major influences on his work. They were helpful because Ashbery could see what each was trying to do. He could see how each had tried to achieve his or her aims. When Ashbery looked at what each of these poets had done, he found it easier to get back to his own work.

That’s the poetic jump start. Is there something similar for those of us who don’t write poetry?

Here are a few examples of stories and books that interest me:

• Guy Davenport and Bernard Malamud wrote some stories about historical characters. The stories are so deeply researched it’s hard to tell where fact ends and fiction begins. Davenport’s story “John Charles Tapner” is an astonishing example.

• Montaigne’s Essays are an attempt by one writer to figure out what he really thought about things. It was an investigation into what was on his mind.

• Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is an example of what can happen if a writer doggedly investigates a question that interests him. Hoffer started with the question of how mass movements begin. He kept researching as new questions arose. Hoffer would have been fascinated by the mass movements that are undermining this country today.

• The Rev. Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne is an example of a book about a place. Many other writers — including Nan Shepherd, Aldo Leopold, David George Haskell, Ronald Blythe, Robert Macfarlane and Roger Deakin — have written books about places that I admire.

I could go on. But the point is that when I have an idea that interests me, it sometimes helps to have a model.

I’ve heard musicians say that they listen to music, not looking for something to imitate, but looking for something they might want to sample or riff on. It’s a similar idea.

The moral of the story: When you find kindred spirits, keep up with their work.

• Source: Lydia Davis, “Demanding Pleasures: On the art of observation”; Harper’s, July 2025. It’s here:

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/07/demanding-pleasures-lydia-davis-observation/