Inspiring Muse Poetry Challenge

Earlier, I provided some of the Muses of poets. This continues that story with some Muses of other literary figures.

Famous Literary Muses:

1. Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) was inspired to write his classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by a real 10-year-old, Alice Pleasance Liddell.
2. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’ Muse was Charlotte von Stein, a German writer. He wrote a poem directly to her, “To Charlotte von Stein.”
3. James Joyce and Nora Barnacle Nora crossed paths with James Joyce on Nassau Street in Dublin. Joyce was smitten by her copper haired beauty and they arranged to meet again on the 16th of June, now known as Bloomsday to devotees of the author’s magnus opus, Ulysses. (She masturbated him under a bridge on their first date.) They eloped from Dublin and went to Trieste. (Reference: “Irish Stew Podcast.)
4. Charles Dickens with Ellen Lawless Ternan. “In the 1850s Dickens had become increasingly dissatisfied with his wife, Catherine. Catherine had borne ten children and had grown quite stout and lethargic….. Dickens met the Ternans, Maria, Fanny, Ellen, and their widowed mother, Frances, during rehearsals for Wilkie Collins’ play The Frozen Deep in August 1857….. The forty-five-year-old Dickens became enamored with the youngest of the sisters, eighteen-year-old Ellen, called Nelly. Soon rumors of Dickens’ indiscretions were rampant and he battled them by severing friendships and business relationships with anyone who didn’t see things his way. (Source: The Charles Dicken Page, “The Mystery of Ellen Ternan.”)
5. Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy. Thomas Langlois Lefroy was an MP for Dublin University, Privy Councillor of Ireland and Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. In 1796, Lefroy began a flirtation with Jane Austen, friend of an older female relative. Some have suggested it may have been Lefroy “whom Austen had in mind when she invented the character of Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, as the courtship between Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen took place over the year or so that Pride and Prejudice was written.” (Source: “Thomas Langlois Lefroy.” Wikipedia.)

POETS AND THEIR MUSES
By Roy E. Peterson (January 13, 2022)

Poets and their Muses have become legendary.
I studied Greek Muses in a myth commentary.
Calliope was the Muse of epic poetry.
Eros was as erotic as a goddess can be.

Muses are a figment of our imagination,
But they are the central core of our cogitation.
Without my mystic Muse my words would be moribund.
My verses would be aimless and likely would be shunned.

I have been fixated on a Muse that comes to me
To share my darkest hours and inspire poetry.
She is a girl I once knew. I keep her picture close.
If I need inspiration, she helps me be verbose.

I feel her presence and the quickening of my heart.
She helps me with my rhyme schemes and tells me where to start.
My Muse often comes to me sometimes when I’m asleep.
She takes my hand and leads me where dreams of love are deep.

Poet Note:
I have recorded some dreams of her.

MY MUSE IS WHO?
By Roy E. Peterson (February 17, 2019)

I have talked of Muses
In several poems before.
Perhaps if you are guessing
The clues you should ignore.

It could be a composite
That I am writing of
Melding all the thoughts into
An idyllic kind of love.

If you seek an answer
To who became my Muse,
I will help decipher
One of my hidden clues.

It may be in a word or two
That make a subtle difference.
Did I use words “is,” or “was,”
The present or the past tense?

I don’t mean to be obtuse.
I don’t mean to be unkind,
But if you study all of them,
I think my Muse you’ll find.