MUSE

Muse

I was wrapped in a blanket of warm
silence, one snowy winter day
Just before the dinner hour
Before they all came home
Quiet so thick, like a warm bowl of oatmeal
nourished and soothed as I rested on a
hand-me-down bed
with my dog at my feet
Suddenly a hand seemed to touch my shoulder
so softly that my dog did not stir
glowing gently, she said "write what you see, write what you feel... it is all there...I am here when you
need me.
Thus I met my muse.  She had been with me
even as a child -- though I did not fully know her till that day.  


WHEN I MET MY MUSE
I glanced at her and took my glasses
off -- they were still singing.  They buzzed
like a locust on the coffee table and then
ceased.  Her voice belled forth, and the
sunlight bent.  I felt the ceiling arch, and
knew that nails up there took a new grip
on whatever they touched.  "I am your own
way of looking at things," she said.  "When
you allow me to live with you, every
glance at the world around you will be
a sort of salvation."  And I took her hand.
- William Stafford

Write a short poem about a true or fictional meeting with your personal muse.

Include these three elements in your poem about meeting your muse
1)  Use at least one metaphor (Her voice belled forth)
2)  Use at least one example of alliteration (still singing)
3) Include one thing your muse says to you, either in quotes or not

Example poem....

Words on how to think about your Muse:

"But in ancient Greece and ancient Rome -- people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then...People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.  The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity "daemons." .. The Romans had the same idea, but they called that sort of disembodied creative spirit a genius.  Which is great, because the Romans did not actually think that a genius was a particularly clever individual.  They believed that a genius was a sort of magical divine entity, who was believed to literally live in the walls of an artists' studio, kind of like Dobby the house elf, and who would come out and sort of invisibly assist the artist with their work and would shape the outcome of that work"
-Elizabeth Gilbert