Well, I like Sydney and Chaucer and always read your remarks, Jon, gladly, even 
when I don't agree. But this list has become something of a  teaparty lately, 
hasn't it? even though Marcus was after me, I don't think he fit the definition of 
a troll, and it was rather bemusing to see the gallantry of the men stepping 
forward to defend the women from insult since I remember a time when it was 
more of a compliment to expect the women to defend themselves. Though I 
should say I was glad for Dominic's humorous intervention.

And what is this, where Janet needs say her muse is not a seminaked woman, or 
Alison must specify the complex difficulties of being a heterosexual woman, are 
we all defining our museselves by reference to our sexual preferences? ergh, 
what happened to ideas? 

I suppose I could share my own experience which goes something like this: I 
have been a muse for several and disliked it so much that I became invisible and 
went around in sackcloth and ashes rather than feed the mommy/daddy/sister/
darkbeloved/ they made of me. I have had this infrequent but recurrent dream 
in which I am kissed, at the end, by a woman, perhaps resembling the muse and 
wake up speaking, but what I write is not to or of her, but poems to various 
other realities, incidents in a supermarket, an art museum, the way war 
contaminates the gestures of ordinary people on the street. On the other hand, I 
could also say that it took me a while to realize that the dream also 'meant' that 
it took the kiss of a woman to wake me into full being. And I've written some 
love poems, but always to particular people, and always meant, so that when the 
relationship ended so did the poems. For I think the traditional western muse 
thrives on absence, that one glimpse on a bridge is enough to keep on writing 
Beatrice into paradise, even if the poet, and she, go on to marry and have a 
(separate) horde of kids. I doubt, seriously, that Dante would have so written, if 
he'd seen the girl on the bridge grow up and marry, for, in my experience of my 
being muse, it has seemed that the presence of my reality disrupts the 
imagination that fills my absence with whatever lives in the poet. I suspect the 
traditional idea of the muse accordingly, it relies upon the absence of a woman 
who can be filled with the poet's fantasy, true imagining perhaps but still limited 
by the poet's histories and prejudices. 

But is this so interesting? I don't know. The Platonic idea of the lover and the 
beloved is based upon the model of two men, and, given that, it seems one of 
the issues would have been the issue of such a relationship. Which the Greeks 
solved by granting the higher value and reality to the immortal 'children' of art 
and literature 'born' of such unions. But there are many other realities that says 
nothing of.

Anyway, you all know I'm crazy anyway, accordingly to rumor, so disregard if it's 
beside the point. But yee, you make me want to break those little play dishes!

Best,

Rebecca


Rebecca Seiferle   

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 22:58:08 -0800
>From: Stephen Vincent <[log in to unmask]> 
>Subject: Re: More on the Muse  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Less there was some doubt, I just wanted to say I liked the Sydney, and the
>Chaucer, too.
>Tho I obviously have trouble with contemporary equations with some of the
>older formal interps of Muse functions, provoked or not, Jon, I appreciate
>what you bring to the plate - poems et al.
>
>Stephen V
>http://stephenvincent.net/blog/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> I don't think anything can be inferred from silence on this list.  The
>> assumptions that every member reads every posting, has the time and
>> motivation to reply to any he or she considers worthwhile, and means to 
send
>> a message by not replying to any given one, are all dubious, and none is
>> valid in my case.
>> 
>> I've always liked the Chaucer poem referred to and don't feel any need to
>> contrast it to the Sidney one to either's advantage or detriment.  Poetry, I
>> feel, isn't graded on the curve.
>> 
>> Reading them together it strikes me how much more alien the Chaucer one
>> sounds to me, while Sidney speaks in accents that seem to me more
>> contemporary than Tennyson's.  The Chaucer makes me think of a medieval
>> tapestry, beautiful but frozen, while Sidney might be crooning into a
>> microphone.  Well, you asked.