Robert Pinsky, US poet laureate
said that all of his poems
in one form, or another
are about Long Branch.
The same is true for me.
All of my poems, well
most, are about you,
in varying percentages
and, maybe not the you
you think you are
but, the you I see you as
which is a kind you
a noble you, playfully erudite, and fun
the you I have carried with me
all these years
and, if you know me
well enough, you can
read any of my poems
and place your finger
right where x marks the spot
every single time
and possibly see yourself
as the hidden treasure
that I have always thought you are.
I am not sure I need to apologize
since I didn’t intend it to be this way
there are no secret messages
or hidden agendas
and it often surprises me
as much as it must surprise
and perplex you; I can only say that
something about you stayed with me:
it peeks out from between the sheets
of poems I have written, it has
mixed into my palette of colors,
it has woven itself into
this blanket of words
I sleep with.
I looked up.
Every poet needs a muse, but we don’t necessarily get to choose our muses. I am grateful to have one, though. To be able to draw consistent inspiration from a source removed from my current state and circumstance has enabled me to use my imagination to create instead of wallow. I have several muses, actually, not just one, but the common thread they share is that they help me write boldly, from the heart. That is not an easy thing for me because I am naturally shy, which in the past has inhibited me from doing or saying things that I later wish I had done, or said. The result is very liberating, and it leads me in an upward spiral; it helps me keep a positive outlook on life.
Long Branch, NJ is my hometown.
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award, the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2022 she was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. Lupita is completing an MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry at the University of Florida, and will be a staff scholar at Bread Loaf Translators Conference in June 2023. 
Not Enough Poetry 
I like your thoughts expressed here very much! I like the way you expressed the fact that you do have various muses and if they read your work they could put their fingers on where the ‘x’ marks the spot where they have inspired you! Indeed something from a person’s muses stays right within a person, inspires them, and if they read carefully they can find the place where they have touched one’s heart.
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Great poem, about your muse(s) and so about yourself and where you get your inspiration from. I think most of my poems have one central muse, and a few peripheral ones.
“maybe not the you
you think you are
but, the you I see you as
which is a kind you” – my favorite lines!
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Writing is the act of striding while perched on tall shoulders — all of the writers who have come before — and in that bodiless enactment, we are rich receivers of that inheritance. Some writers, though long dead, are my closet friends, conversing through words in the medium of the heart of my thought. This is a sweet and true love letter to those sources.
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Oh yes.. a muse is someone that we had long before we ever knew of their existence.. the wonder to be able to trace our fingers and find our muse before we knew of them.. it’s like a trace in the snow a little bit
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smiles…what an honor it would be to have impacted someone so much that you became a part of their life and every poem that they produced beyond that moment…i like too that it surprises you to find them there as well…unintentional but always there….
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it is surprising, on many levels, Brian. It’s almost like a filter that I see different situations through, or filter ideas through, and so a poem or phrase can be colored by that filter. But, then sometimes it is just a flat out inspiration. I used to stifle it, but since I gave myself permission to feel again, I find it helps me tap into my heart a bit more. Takes some boldness to let it go onto the page sometimes though, knowing where it comes from, but then again, beware the poets … 🙂
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I can only say that
something about you stayed with me:
it peeks out from between the sheets
of poems I have scribbled, it has
mixed into my palette of colors,
it has woven itself into this
blanket of words
I sleep with…. Oh, my, goodness, that is gorgeous!
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This is simply beautiful! You have brought it to life…
“it peeks out from between the sheets
of poems I have scribbled, it has
mixed into my palette of colors,
it has woven itself into this
blanket of words”
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Yes.. i think the most beautiful thing about poetry is it has a little bit of ‘you’ in all of it that ‘we’ can relate to as we are kind of one being in kind.. when we let our souls run free in words as well as life..:)
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This is exquisite. Utterly exquisite.
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I think you’re right – and we all have a muse (which chooses us rather than us choosing her/him/it). I love this sense of bewilderment:
‘it often surprises me
as much as it must surprise
and perplex you ‘
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Thanks, y’all for all of your comments. I honestly wasn’t too sure about this poem. It could easily have been a paragraph of prose, but I wrote it in a moment of inspiration, and it all came out almost exactly as it is here. Definitely came from the heart.
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I think when we let ourselves write freely, sometimes our heart takes us on a word journey we never thought possible. The result can be amazing….just like this poem. 🙂
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Thank you, I am very glad you like it. You are right. Sometimes we follow our heart on that word journey, never really knowing where it will lead us. Trusting our hearts with the outcome is the brave part.
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