Life & Wisdom Quote by George Murray

The line has the bragging rights of speed, but it reads more like a poet’s attempt to demystify craft without denying the spark. “I had an idea” is almost aggressively plain: not a vision, not a calling, just a workable ignition point. Then comes the telling shift into bodily, even involuntary language: “it all came out quickly.” The phrasing treats the poem less as something engineered and more as something expelled - a release. That’s not romantic hand-waving so much as a quiet claim about momentum: once the internal mechanism clicked, the poem’s form apparently arrived with it.

Putting the title in quotes and leading with “With ‘Carousel’” narrows the boast into a case study. He’s not insisting every poem is born in a rush; he’s pointing to one piece where the composition behaved like a carousel itself - a self-propelling ride, circular, rhythmic, hard to stop once it’s moving. The speed also doubles as an alibi. If “Carousel” is messy, risky, or emotionally exposed, the quickness becomes a kind of defense: blame the velocity, not the intention. If it’s brilliant, the quickness is a flex: the mind was ready, the draft merely caught up.

The subtext is an argument against the fetish of suffering and endless revision. Murray frames inspiration as pragmatic and reproducible: have the right idea, and the work can arrive fast, almost cleanly, before doubt can interfere.