Giving Credit to the Muse

Beyond the Pale. Artist, Anthony Weir.




For the longest time, I had trouble understanding the concept of a muse. I thought about it as something a little bit ridiculous, too romantic for me. I pictured a love-sick poet soaking his writing page with tears, pining for his lover.

Then one day it hit me: a muse is anything or anyone that drives you to create. I think my muse is constantly changing, and my muses are writers of the past. James Wright, Truman Capote, James Dickey, Edith Wharton, James Agee, and so on. And you have to give credit to the muse, because nobody writes in a vacuum. Nobody goes it alone. And if you don't give credit to your muse, your work dries up.

I'm reminded of a Native American Trickster Tale:

Coyote was hungry and cold. He wrapped himself in a blanket and went to talk to Stone, who had magical powers. "Stone," he said. "I am starving to death. If you help me, I will give you my blanket." Coyote placed his blanket across Stone.

As Coyote walked home, he saw a deer and he killed it with his first arrow. "Oh boy," Coyote said. "That was lucky." Then he thought of Stone and was thankful.

A few moments later, Coyote began to feel very cold. "Stones do not need a blanket," Coyote said to himself. "And anyway, I killed the deer myself. Stone had nothing to do with it."

Coyote returned to Stone and took his blanket. But when he returned to his camp, he saw the deer had turned to dust. Only magic could have done such a thing to the deer.

Coyote thought about it. Then he said to himself, "I know where I made my mistake." Coyote held his blanket tightly around himself, shivering from the cold and weak from hunger. He thought, "I should have eaten the deer first, THEN took my blanket away from Stone."

Coyote went back on his promise. He lost his connection to what is right. And he failed to give proper thanks to the magical source that helped to nourish him. As a result, his nourishment turned to dust.

I think it would be the same for me if I failed to properly acknowledge my muses.

Today in my Native American Literature class, the students were doing presentations. Their presentations took many forms. One by one, the presenters came before the class, sat in a chair, and shared part of themselves and what the literature had taught them. One student had written a song. She played her guitar and sang. Her arm flew out and then came back with great force to pluck the strings. She closed her eyes and her voice was strong and sweet.

Another student put on dark glasses and read parts of a journal he had started during the semester. The entries were fragmented and painful for him to read. They were based on a fall he had experienced, a fall into the void of clinical depression. Because the literature we read this semester is a literature of survival, he had identified strongly with it. The literature had helped to draw out his dark thoughts, like the chewing tobacco my Daddy used to put on my bee stings used to draw out the poison.

Another student read his own poems. Another had painted a picture for the first time in many years. She smiled shyly and claimed she had no talent and wasn't "creative in any way." Another, a philosophy major, talked of how his classes had converged this semester to bring him to a new state of consciousness.

It was a beautiful experience, but I don't take credit for any of this. The authors we studied were the students' muses.

And they gave proper thanks. Yes they did.