1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

The Muse Is a Llittle Girl

The muse is a little girl, impossibly polite. 
She arrives when you’re talking 
or walking away from your car. 
She’s barefoot, she stands 
next to you, mute; she taps your sleeve, 
not even on your skin, just touches the cloth 
of your plaid shirt, touches it twice. 
She feels with her index finger the texture 
and you keep talking, or you don’t. 
She will wait one minute. She’s not hungry 
or unhappy or poor. She goes somewhere else 
unless you turn and look at her 
and write it down. I’m kidding. 
She’s a horse you want to ride, she’s a tall horse, 
she’s heavy, as if she could bear armor. 
You can’t catch her with apples. 
I don’t know how you get on.
I remember my cold fingers in the black mane.

Marjorie Saiser
http://www.poetmarge.com

Please join in for Round 7 of Writing From The Inside Out by attending the October 2020 read-around sessions on Friday afternoons (it’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Next Read Around is October 9, 2020 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I have been a part–time poet. Perhaps this is why the goddess of poetry is a fickle mistress who has blessed me with her presence often at inopportune times. “Perfect” words for a line of poetry pop into my mind in the middle of a meeting or while merging into traffic on a busy freeway. I capture what I can because I know she will play hide and seek with me when I sit to write. I am grateful for the gifts she gives. I pay homage to her by playing with words, by sensing the shapes of sounds, and by peering into the scenes she offers as metaphors. On rare occasions, she rewards me with a golden poem in one piece. These are blessed moments. 

Every poet who has kept to the craft for a period of time will eventually write a poem about writing a poem, and likely write about the wayward muse, the uncalendared moon that comes and goes without a peg to pin to the page. Perhaps the power lies in that “fickleness," never one to be fettered by dates and times and who easily hides inside hints of a thousand unwritten lines. Marjorie Saiser’s poem, My Muse Is a Little Girl, is a lovely example of the relationship to her own inspiring angel. She contrasts an extended metaphor of the muse as a “polite" little girl, building up the possibility, only to dash it with another image, that of a powerful horse that you cannot coax with apples and that you want to ride if only you knew how to get on.

Week 27 Prompt Menu

  1. Personify and describe your muse. You can do as Marj (she seems to like to be called Marj) did, and describe a scene that captures the way your muse communicates with you; add detail, like the barefoot girl’s tap on the sleeve of the plaid shirt; not once, but twice. for a stretch, compare the way you wish your muse would communicate with the way it actually does. 

  2. Same as above only write it as “An Ode to My Muse."  

  3. Write a letter to your muse; what would you want the muse to know about you; what would you fill in for your muse since the last time it spoke to you; what would you ask of your muse. You can start with the prompt, "Dear Muse, …"

  4. Become the muse and speak what is in your heart to the author of the one who tries to pen you down (haha—ok, maybe not the best way to “capture” the relationship); or who tries to share your wisdom, wonder, and magic with the world.

  5. Have a dialogue with your muse

  6. Saiser’s Little Girl metaphor suggests the muse , a polite child who gives multiple chances to be heard, “goes somewhere else” when the author does not respond and “write it down.” How does your muse gives you chances? Where does your muse go when it leaves?

  7. In Marj’s poem, when the muse switches from polite girl to (wild?) horse, she notes that the horse cannot be coaxed ith apples. What do you do to coax your muse to come?

  8. Write from whatever else in the poem inspires you or from elsewhere in your life.