Muse

Jan 17 2015

The erotic poet,

drunk, dissolute, debauched.

The earnest poet,

who writes of love, and longing

and loss.

The modern poet,

who is bored of sex

too correct to care.

Jaded by porn,

craving more, and more.

The godly poet,

often disappointed

He's never there.

Who wants to obey

but becomes a liar.

Whose vow to be chaste

leaves him mad with desire.

And the impoverished poet,

too poor to procure

too pure to lie.

But who whores out his words

for bare survival.

Where is the muse

on whom he will lavish praise

the male gaze

illicit eye?

Who'll take his breath away

and leave him inspired?

For the Victorians

a flash of ankle sufficed.

So if less is more,

he'll remember her scent

her heat

her voice.

Like Josephine,

who was young and ripe and smelled of sex

and instructed not to bathe.

Like the dream-girl

you obsessed about.

The virgin, whore, coquette

who was wise, naive

depraved.

The insatiable muse

you wish you could channel.

Who takes you in hand

tracing out your words,

purrs in your ear

like silk on silk.

Urging you on

complicit, helpless.

A stirring, deep down in your gut

you almost forgot,

rising-up in your belly

to carry you off.

This began with the realization that I pretty much never write erotic poetry. Whatever happened to the stereotype of the poet as drunk, dissolute, and debauched; never mind preoccupied with sex?!! Perhaps I am lacking the besotted passion, the erotic muse. By temperament, maybe I shouldn't be a poet at all: too cool and rational and detached.

Although it can be argued that all creative acts are a kind of seduction: the artist preening, styling, posing; displaying his/her "fitness" to the opposite sex. So here, all the various poets are somehow touched by the erotic: by sex or love or desire.

The ancient Greeks thought the source of inspiration was external: the muse acting through us, and we simply channelling. It feels this way when the writing is going well: like automatic writing; as if the thing writes itself. I suppose in the poem, the opposite occurs: the writer must draw on his own imagination, as well as his memory, for inspiration.

The poem also touches on the compartmentalization of sex and love (at which the earnest poet -- who, so unlike the erotic poet, is all about denial -- fails utterly!). And, too, on the ambivalent male view of women: the virgin/whore dichotomy; the conflicted desire for one idealized woman to be all things.

I apologize for once again having some fun with "inspire": that is, setting its metaphorical meaning against its literal one (Who will take his breath away/ and leave him inspired?). And, as usual, I just couldn't resist a little shot at religion (what's new?!!): that is, the absent God of the 4th stanza.

I'm not sure how true it is that Napoleon wrote Josephine asking her not to bathe on her way to Elba. (Or something like that.) Or whether we quite understand what he actually meant, seen from our modern context. But it was too much fun to resist. ...I especially like ripe. (Maybe the muse working through me after all!)

I'm not sure about the abrupt change in person in the final 2 stanzas: from 3rd to 2nd. Why does "he" become" you"? I suppose what I'm doing here is implicating the reader. It's all observant and detached ...and then, suddenly, the reader is being challenged to own up to his own illicit thoughts and forbidden desires. I generally try to be more disciplined about changing point of view like this. But maybe, in this case, it works.

In the end, I think the poem does get erotic. Not explicitly (which is easy and cheap and pornographic), but with the subtle indirection that lets the reader decide.

(We're all impoverished poets, btw. Or if not impoverished, it's certainly not thanks to our versifying. And even for the few who do make money, they aren't alive to enjoy it!)