By Rose Anderson (Guest Blogger)
Calliope
is the writer’s Muse. When I decided to write books, I chose her as
mine. I figured if she inspired the likes of Homer, then maybe she’d
send a little mojo my way. Calliope has been pretty good to me so
far. Though they’re not all at Amazon and Barnes & Nobel just
yet, she’s smiled on a total of 18 published and unpublished books
that fit across genres, several magazine articles, and a few
non-novel professional works. After my first release, I created a
blog as most authors do. It’s a virtual temple, of sorts, fit for a
Muse’s amusement. I named it CalliopesWritingTablet.
Who
are these women who amuse and bemuse and inspire the arts and
sciences? When Uranus the god of the vast sky melded his essence with
Gaia the earth and mother of all life, the Titans were born. Sometime
later, Mnemosyne, the personification of memory, lay with her nephew
Zeus for nine consecutive nights and the nine Muses came out of that
union.
Calliope
Clio
Erato
Euterpe
Melpomene
Polyhymnia
Terpsichore
Thalia
Urania
As
these nine women were long considered the source of knowledge,
places dedicated to learning, were dedicated to them. Hence
the name Museum. As a child growing up in Chicago, a city
known world-wide for its museums, I used to stare at those Greek
statues standing here and there inside the Field Museum of Natural
History and outside the Museum of Science and Industry and wonder. If
Zeus had only nine Muse daughters, then why did the Museum of Science
and Industry have far more than nine Muses holding up the roof?
Needing to know, I looked into it and discovered they weren’t
Muses. These muse-mimics were architectural caryatids – decorative
statues of women with the sole purpose of supporting the roof-line on
their heads.
The
Field Museum has the real deal. The famed nine Muses of the
ancient world, statues as large as their Titaness mother, look down
on the main floor. I found these statues rather curious. I couldn’t
imagine what they had to do with stuffed and mounted animals,
mummies, and dinosaurs. Each one held something, a clue as to who she
was and what she represented. While some made perfect sense to me as
a child, others were confusing. Years passed before I figured it out.
Calliope
- Muse of Epic Poetry - carries a writing tablet
Clio - Muse of
History - carries a scroll
Erato - Muse of Love Poetry - carries a
Cithara (an early guitar)
Euterpe - Muse of Music - carries a
flute
Melpomene - Muse of Tragedy - carries a Tragic
mask
Polyhymnia - Muse of Hymns - carries a veil
Terpsichore -
Muse of Dance - carries a lyre
Thalia - Muse of Comedy - carries a
Comic mask
Urania - Muse of Astronomy - carries a globe and
compass
I
understand now that Muses in museums symbolically represent the very
best found in the many cultures depicted in the vast museum
collections. They’re ambassadors of poetry, the arts and science.
As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve dedicated my author’s journey to
Calliope the writer’s muse. I’m not alone. For centuries writers
made a habit of dedicating to the muses. I’ve found these examples:
William
Shakespeare, Henry V:
O for a Muse
of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of
invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs
to behold the swelling scene!
Charles
Baudelaire, The Venal Muse:
O muse
of my heart, lover of palaces,
Will you bring, when January lets
loose its sleet
And its black evenings without solace,
An ember
to warm my violet feet?
John
Milton, Paradise Lost:
Of Man’s first disobedience,
and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought
death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one
greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat,
Sing,
Heavenly Muse…
Homer’s
Odyssey:
Sing to me of the man, Muse,
the man of twists and turns
driven time and again off course, once
he had plundered
the hallowed heights of Troy.
Dante’s
Inferno:
O Muses,
O high genius, aid me now!
O memory that engraved the things I
saw,
Here shall your worth be manifest to all!
Emily
Dickinson Awake ye muses nine:
Awake ye muses
nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my
Valentine!
The
Aeneid by Virgil:
O Muse!
the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and
whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To
persecute so brave, so just a man…
Mary
Darby Robinson, Ode to the Muse:
While softly o'er
the pearl-deck'd plain,
Cold Dian leads the sylvan train;
In
mazy dance and sportive glee,
SWEET MUSE,
I'll fondly turn to thee;
And thou shalt deck my couch with
flow'rs,
And wing with joy my silent hours.
William
Blake, To the Muses:
Whether on crystal rocks ye
rove,
Beneath the bosom of the sea
Wand'ring in many a coral
grove,
Fair Nine,
forsaking Poetry!
How have you left the ancient love
That bards
of old enjoy'd in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The
sound is forc'd, the notes are few!
Phillis
Wheatley:
There shall thy tongue in heav'nly murmurs
flows,
And there my muse
with heav'nly transport glow:
No more to tell of Damon's tender
sighs,
Or rising radiance of Aurora's eyes,
For nobler themes
demand a nobler strain,
And purer language on th' ethereal
plain.
Cease, gentle muse!
the solemn gloom of night
Now seals the fair creation from my
sight.
Catullus:
And
so, have them for yourself, whatever kind of book it is,
and
whatever sort, oh patron Muse
let
it last for more than one generation, eternally.
:)
I’m in good company! Calliope had a hand in every one of these:
The
Witchy Wolf and the Wendigo - Based upon a very real modern
day sighting of the Wisconsin Wolf Man
What does an immortal
Native American shaman do when the grave he’s sworn to watch over
for all eternity disappears under urban development? His purpose of
guarding his wife’s burial mound gone, Ashkewheteasu seeks to end
his immortal existence. In his despair, he assumes the form of a wolf
and steps in front of a moving car and into the life of Dr. Olivia
“Livie” Rosalini. The veterinarian saves the animal’s life, and
in the process saves the man within. Unbeknownst to Livie, the dog
she’s taken into her home and grows to love is a magical being
seeking to win her heart as a man. While Ash is learning a new world
filled with new love, friendship, and happiness, an old menace makes
plans to steal it all away; just as he had 3000 years before.
Loving
Leonardo - An unusual polyamorous Victorian love story with a touch
of reader-interactive art history
Bound by limits dictated by
society, Art Historian Nicolas Halstead lived a guarded life until a
tempest in the form of Elenora Schwaab blew into his world. At first
Nicolas can't decide if the audacious American is simply mad or
plotting blackmail for not only does she declare knowledge of his
homosexuality, she offers him a marriage proposal. After Ellie tells
him of a previously unknown work of Leonardo da Vinci, a book of
erotic love poems and sketches dedicated to the artist's long-time
lover Salai, Nicolas joins her in a race to save the book from
destruction. Along the way they encounter Historian Luca Franco and
discover a comfortable compatibility that comes to redefine their
long-held notions of love. The trio embarks on an adventure of
sensual discovery, intrigue, and danger. Little do they know Leonardo
da Vinci's book is far more than meets the eye.
Dreamscape
- A haunting, a murder, a mystery, a reader's puzzle, and a love
story that transcends time
Unable to deny his own
translucence, Dr. Jason Bowen determines his lack of physical
substance could only mean one thing -- he's a ghost. Murdered more
than a century before, Jason haunts his house and ponders the
treachery that took his life. When Lanie O'Keefe arrives with plans
to renovate her newly purchased Victorian mansion, Jason learns,
ghost or not, he's still very much a man. Jason soon discovers he can
travel through Lanie's dreams and finds himself reliving the days
before his murder with Lanie by his side. It took one hundred and
twenty years for love to find them, but there's that insurmountable
little matter of Jason being dead.
Hermes
Online - A CataNetwork Sensual Reads Reviewer's Choice Winner 2011
Imagine
if you will a story begun in the halls of Mount Olympus long before
this modern tale was conceived. It was a time when the god Hermes
flew on his winged sandals and carried messages from the gods to the
mortals below. And between that time and this, couriers became
postmen and handwritten letters became bytes. It is said the gods
still speak to those who listen... Left bruised and brokenhearted
after a cruel breakup, Vivienne Bennet finds herself mired in a world
of self-doubt. To her surprise, she receives an email that challenges
her to rediscover the woman she once was. Together Vivienne and the
enigmatic man known only as S embark upon the world of anonymous
Internet communication where suggestive emails lead to erotic chat,
where cybersex leads to Skype, and C2C sends both into the arms of a
love they'd believed lost forever.
I
hope you’ve enjoyed these snippets from my flights of fancy. After
inspiring two more novels waiting on their covers, Calliope is
currently motivating me into a new tale. For updates on new books and
where she’s taking me next, stop by my blog and say hi! I just may
have another ember tucked away to warm your senses.
About Rose
Have you
ever fallen so deeply in love with the characters in a romance novel
that thoughts of them linger long after the last page is turned? Have
you ever been so completely immersed in a love scene that you'd swear
you've just been kissed or more? Meet my strong, confident heroines
and compelling heroes. Come see how their lives entwine and through
their stories discover love profound. From my current novels to the
passionate stories that follow. I promise to sweep you away on a
sensual tide of memorable story-telling.
Rose
Anderson – Love Waits in Unexpected Places
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