ABSTRACT
The promise of happiness is felt in the act of creation but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then that the painter realizes it is only a picture he is painting. This chapter discusses the existence of a core that is common to all the creative arts and describes poetry-writing as a paradigm of artistic creation. It argues that the apprehension of an object's artistic import necessitates the adoption of a certain posture, or aesthetic stance. The chapter considers the artistic process in relation to poetry. Seamus Heaney's insight concerns the value of poetry and implies that the making of poetry fulfils a need in the poet to ratify and give form to his own subjectivity. Like the reader of poetry, he needs the help of poetic form to realize his intrinsic being, but in pursuing his vocation he has become its maker, a reservoir of forms to which others turn.
