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| Simplicity of a flower |
I have been reading Steve Jobs a biography by Walter Isaacson and have become enthralled with Jobs’ pursuit of simplicity. His idea that as one simplifies there is a point when the object you seek to reduce to simplest terms becomes complicated again. So one must search deeper for the release of a greater simplicity. And he did this by constant pursuit of epiphany, the moment of recognition that he had found “it.” So as I am reading this book, I am thinking about how this applies to writing. Simplicity and the reader reaching an epiphany together in the form of story. Ezra Pound did this. His production of the poem “In a Station at the Metro” is all about simplicity. He started out with many images, and 30 lines of poetry. Pound whittled down and streamlined his poem until only two lines remained of one intense image and all that the image carried to his reader. This is what I think of: How to write with simplicity in mind? How to come to that moment of epiphany, when the writer knows the story has been told.
