Constraints help creativity in poetry

15 november 2011 A new study led by Janina Marguc at the University of Amsterdam, and published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, shows that cognitive constraints and obstacles can increase the possibilities of perception and expand our conceptual scope, allowing us to consider a greater range of possibilities and ideas.

An article in Wired relates this to the constraints of poetic form:

The artificial requirements of the sonnet are just another cognitive obstacle, a hurdle that compels the mind to think in a more holistic fashion. Unless poets are stumped by their art, unless they are forced to look beyond the obvious associations, they’ll never invent an original line. They’ll be stuck with clichés and banalities, with predictable adjectives and boring verbs. And this helps explain the stubborn endurance of poetic forms: because poets need to find a rhyming word with exactly three syllables, or an adjective that fits the iambic scheme, they end up uncovering all sorts of unexpected associations.

Read the full article here