For most of her adult life, Kathryn Ridall has worked in the mental health field as a trainer, psychotherapist and university instructor. In her mid-fifties, Calliope, the fiery muse of poetry, paid her an unexpected visit.
When the Muse Calls
Poems for the Creative Life
With poems by Kim Addonizio
Anna Akhmatova Ellen Bass Robert Bly Leonard Cohen Billy Collins Emily Dickinson Donald Hall Jane Kenyon
Jane Hirshfield Stanley Kunitz Dorianne Laux
Denise Levertov Pablo Neruda Naomi Shihab Nye
Rainer Maria Rilke Rumi
Gary Snyder William Stafford James Wright
and many others
Contact Kathryn
kathryn@kathryn-ridall.com
When the Muse Calls
Poems for the Creative Life
Edited by Kathryn Ridall
From the first months of my opening to poetry, I began to collect poems about the creative process. My favorite moments as a psychotherapist occur when enough psychic pain is cleared that people can attune more closely to the passionate desires of their soul. I have watched the muse appear in many different forms and have seen lives transformed by her presence. I also have witnessed the inevitable ups and downs as people settle in with the fiery, unpredictable muse. In my own life, I have lived with muses of romance, spirituality, psychology, and most recently poetry. The poems in WHEN THE MUSE CALLS were collected with an eye to my experiences as both a poet and a psychotherapist.
LIFE WITH THE MUSE
I decide: no more poetry.
Rejection slips have queued
like boxcars
on an abandoned train.
Reading Neruda reminds
how small the thimble
I dip in the great well.
I think I’m done,
goodbye to her,
but the Muse has her own
inscrutable ways—
every night in dreams
she hands me my refused
pen. All night I scratch
the words she whispers
in my ear.
I think I might go mad
but secretly smile
at myself in mirrors,
maybe I have a destiny
with this after all.
For a long while—
uninterrupted duets.
Then one day
without warning
she flings a glance
over a shoulder
cast of moonlight,
disappears to a remote
island inhabited
by wandering muses.
She’s gone for weeks.
Coaxing, pleading,
poured libations
have no effect at all.
I do what lovers
have always done—
scribble lines about
devastating distances
that break the heart.
© 2007 by Kathryn Ridall