The Call to Create: Celebrating Acts of Imagination

Creativity is an inherently tricky subject: the very attempt to define it can chase it away. Leonard (The Wounded Woman) fares no better than most in her attempt to teach readers to ""discover how to recognize that call [to create], to identify the inner tendencies that sabotage your creative efforts, and to detect [your] inner helpers."" She identifies a surprisingly large number of inner archetypes that hinder creativity--the Sower, the Cynic, the Celebrant and the Sluggard, to name a few--and invokes her own metaphors to convey what creativity is: ""creating is like being in the wilds, surrounded by beasts""; ""I experience the journey of creative transformation as moving in a continual cycle, somewhat like the seasons."" Her case studies of ordinary creative people are draped with loose references to artists' experiences with and statements about creativity; her examples range from Fugard and Emerson to John Muir and Maria Callas. However, many of the quotations from famous figures are presented out of context, so that even the most beautifully rendered begin to sound flat and repetitive. To skeptical readers (perhaps too full of ""the Cynic""), much of Leonard's text will sound flimsy and familiar. (Apr.)