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Friday 8 October 2010

Hello, Muse, are you out there?

No, I am not summoning the rock band to appear before me. I am calling forth the ancient goddess of creativity. Because it just hit me that I have not written a poem in five years. That's right, FIVE years. Half a decade. It seems wrong even admitting that, but it's true. It's not as if I haven't written anything in those five years. I've written some travel essays and some web content and have dipped in and out of The Novel. I even started this blog (which I admit I haven't posted to that regularly these past few months). But the last time I wrote a poem was in the fall of 2005, when I was writing my M.A. thesis. And then I planned a wedding. And then I moved to another country (and switched careers). And not long after that I had a baby. Life happened and, when I should have had loads of inspiration for loads of new poems, my poetic mojo dried up.

I know it's not all up to the Muse. I've tried disciplining myself. With a Type A personality like mine, you'd think that wouldn't be too hard. But I've just ended up staring at a blank computer screen for an hour or, at best, writing a couple of lines that I end up deleting later. (And, at worst, I've been distracted by the washing-up or the order I need to place with Amazon, etc., etc.) When I was in college, the words just arranged themselves into poems in my head, and all I had to do was put my pen to my paper and they would pour out. Now, it's a struggle to extract an image or a metaphor painlessly. Maybe the problem is that I'm thinking too much.

So I am asking the Muse to return to me, to give me back the same passion and creativity I had when I was 19 (without all the post-adolescent angst). Because I want to dream in villanelles again.

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