Muse

David Wagoner, American, born 1926

 

 

Cackling, smelling of camphor, crumbs of pink icing

 

An Invocation, 2009, stained glass, cut, sandblasted, engraved, painted, fired and held by copper foil. 

Judith Schaechter, American, born 1961.  On show at the Arts League, Philadelphia in 2015.

 

Invocation:  to call in.

The muse is about interiority. 

  Inside and outside the muse, the poet is looking at us and waiting for the muse.

  The two are intertwined and the muse is entirely holding the poet up.

On either side pathways through our natural world: not horizontally but vertically because it is that upwards which requires the muse.

 

 

Clinging to her lips, her lipstick smeared

 

 

Halfway around her neck, her cracked teeth bristling

 

With bloody splinters, she leans over my shoulder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh my only hope,  my lost dumbfounding baggage,

 

My gristle-breasted, slack-jawed zealot, kiss me again.