Judy asked, >can a poet truly lose the Muse?
Now, this Romantic concept of muse is amusing. I trot it out occasionally
when I am in full egotistical, creative or randy flight, but I don't truly
believe in it. It's one of those tidy concepts inherited from our
forefathers&mothers to explain their exalted position above the rest of the
tribe. The tribe's songs were considered, of course, museless, born merely
of the wrack and fiddle of their everyday lives. Now 'wrack and fiddle' are
the cornerstone of our poetic, both academic and tribal. Well, mostly. Some
grandiose strutters try on an elevated tone, but stuff them.
Many a volume has been written about the muse, and 'her' many
manifestations. I too love the concept of 'a poet must be in love' to write.
Is there overlap here? I think not. I am often in love in a romantic and
sexually charged way, and sonnets and sequences pour forth. (SPAM emails
arrive offering me excess.) In between such episodes, my love for my family
suffices, and love for nature, etc - music and words themselves also. I see
love not as the opposite of hate bu the oppsite of fear. Yes, confidence
comes into it.
I write verse for others. I write poetry for myself, in any genre. Sometimes
they come together; sometimes this is good.
Lose the ability to write poetry? Yes, I can see that happening. I've had my
very fallow periods when I would then turn my hand to writing a doco or an
article or somesuch. (The quickest way back to poetry is to give my
something to write for 'duty' - I will studiously avoid it by writing
poetry!) I believe the body has a lot to do with it - how fit you are. When
I walked into the wind shouting my poems at the world as a young 'Beatnik' I
was fit by dint of my age and compulsary school sports. In middle age, torn
and bewildered by excesses of drugs and alcohol over many years, I wrote
little and that little was crap in the main. Oh, some people create a
forumula for their work and keep it going into old age through decades of
unfitness - but they are merely echoing themselves. The public might buy it,
even the academics, but true poets progress as they go ...
Writing poetry is a physical thing, just as the brain is a muscle. Some
attributes of life slow down with age - mainly due to our rotten
lifestyles - so our impetus to write also suffers. It is not a time to read
more or go to the library for more research. It is time to exercise more and
eat more vegetables! Then the ozygen will again return to the upper chambers
and there revitalise our language and its expression.
When I was in my mid-thirties, worried about Death and such, I slumped in a
lounge chair and saw a program on a Balinese artist, Lempard or Lempad was
his name. He lived until well over 100 and changed his style of art at
various decades right up until his nineties! I will go Googling to find more
about him. Suffice it to say he was an inspiration to me and I got out of
that lounge chair and changed my ways. With various lapses into an unhealthy
way of life, I've been aware of my body's influence on my writing output
ever since.
Cheers -
Andrew
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