On Why This Website is Called Musing Without a Muse

In the past, writers would invoke the help of a muse to inspire the writer to produce a great work.  For example, here is the opening of the Odyssey:

"Tell me, O muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, O daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them."

Homer was just a medium for the muse to tell the story of the great Ulysses. Consider this written years later by Milton:

Sing Heav'nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed,
In the Begtinning how the Heav'ns and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: Or if Sion Hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's Brook that flow'd
Fast by the Oracle of God; I thence
Invoke they aid to my adventrous Song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above th' Aonian Mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhime.




At the beginning of Paradise Lost, Milton, like the classical writers, invokes the muse.
These are two examples of where appealing to the muse for inspiration was successful.  I would expect there are far more cases of writing where the muse failed to do her thing and the writing is dreck.

The muse of epic poets is Calliope. I could invoke Calliope's assistance in my writing but if I did, it would no longer be musing without a muse.  So there is no invocation here.  Just thoughts that flow forth from my fountain of wisdom, such as it is.  Incidentally, the early English poets used alliteration as their primary poetic technique and I have a weakness for a good alliterative phrase.  For example, William Safire wrote about the "nattering nabobs of negativism." Before you get your panties in a twist and want to scream at me that those were the words of Spiro Agnew, I must tell you they are beyond Agnew's skill and were written by Safire. Now, I never agreed with Safire's politics until late in his life, I did admire his ability to turn a phrase.  He was a master.  Perhaps he used the muse. So far, I have resisted. Not as a matter of pride, but I have enough gods to pray to as it is and I am not sure the calls are answered anyway.