Dearest Crocodile Andee,

  Your (following) message languished for hours in (dare I say it?) my "Deleted Items" folder. 'Twas only 'pon reading it in Joanna B's message that I sought it out in other folders. Doubtless it landed in "deleted" bcuz of your "forefathers" and "exalted position." (I hadn't known that was your personal preference).

  On to less essential topics.

  Nope. Doesn't work yet. I'm still imagining you in your friend's mirrored shower, tweeting like Dorothy's parakeet. Hmmmmm....

  NOW on to lesser topix.

  What you said that most grabbed me was: "I write poetry for myself, in any genre."

  Ahm ponderin . . . ponderin . . .

  J

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Burke" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, July 04, 2005 2:23 AM
Subject: Re: poem


> 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
>