Feeding the Muse

From whence cometh the inspiration for poetry?  The subject matter?  The form? What feeds the poet?  Classically, the Muse, but who is she/he/they?  Big life experiences:  birth, death, travels. Attention to details: the smallest mossy saxifrage, the angle of the lifesaving cloak on the homeless shoulders of the man/woman on the bench in the park where children slide. The focused study of the structures and tools of the trade. Just walking through the day.  

But it also helps to feed yourself on the works of others: through public readings, writing groups, books.  I don’t do this nearly enough, but this month I picked four books out of my library (which is mostly “stacks”)  and I am reading one poem (mostly)  from each, every day (mostly).  

The poets are diverse, and I like that about them.  Mixing them up (rather than sequentially and in one sitting reading the entire collection by one author–although that has its place too), lends insight to different ways of seeing and expressing.  

Now I have you wondering:  what books are these? My current little pile consists of Shall We Gather at the River by James Wright; The Rescued Year by William Stafford, Fold and Unfold by Nancy Jakobsson, and The Trouble with Poetry by Billy Collins.  

So go to your bookshelf (where we too often “shelve” poets), or your local library (the 8_1's in the Dewey system), and pick several at random to walk with you through the next days.  

What poem will these poems inspire? Well, we will have to see, won’t we, thee and me.