Introduction by Sabina Becker, Poetry Editor

Ancient Greek legend has it that there was a family of sisters who lived on Mount Helicon in Boiotia. These goddesses were not officially considered major figures to be worshipped with massive burnt offerings like the Olympian pantheon of twelve. Yet maybe they should have been, considering all that's been credited to them over the centuries!

The Muses have long since eclipsed the Olympian gods, at least in terms of day-to-day significance. It isn't hard to see why. They've demanded comparatively little of us and, by contrast, given much. Kings may not have roasted bulls by the hundreds in their name, but poets, musicians and artists have all paid them ample tribute in stories, songs, and statues, in plays, paintings, and poems. And while kings, like the Olympians, have fallen largely by the wayside in terms of both temporal power and relevance to ordinary folk, the artists, like their Muses, remain durable.

Originally, there were only three Muses. Over time, however, their significance grew and they became more specialized as the arts flourished and proliferated. Eventually there were nine:

Kalliope, Muse of epics and eloquence
Euterpe, Muse of music and lyrics
Erato, Muse of love poetry
Klio, Muse of history
Polyhymnia, Muse of oratory and sacred poetry
Thalia, Muse of comedy
Melpomene, Muse of tragedy
Terpsichore, Muse of choral song and dance
Urania, Muse of astronomy

Nowadays, most artists and writers think of Muses less in terms of invoking one of the Nine than of their own personal minor deity (who may or may not have a name) peering over their shoulders and whispering in their ears as they create. Generally, they no longer capitalize the word Muse, either. In popular culture, it gets worse. Often a beautiful but otherwise insignificant woman is spoken of as some male genius's muse (note the lowercase m), although this phraseology diminishes Muses and women alike, reducing both to passive objects rather than active participants in the creative work--which is what they really are!

You may not know all--or indeed any--of the Nine by name. Yet the Nine persist, slipping in and out of our consciousness like shadows. Whether one knows them as actual goddesses or archetypes from the collective subconscious is, ultimately, irrelevant. They are still with us. They have not ceased to inspire. They still function, as anyone who has ever created a work of art--however humble--can attest. Kings dry up between pages in a history book; artists, on the other hand, stay fresh because people keep drinking inspiration from them, as artists themselves keep drinking inspiration. Legend has it that they drink from the Hippocrene, the Muses' fountain on Mount Helicon, which never runs dry.

Unending inspiration, passed on and on . . . This is the real gift of the Muses. And even now, in the electronic age, the Helicon's mystical, metaphorical fountain still runs. May you drink deeply of its inspiration, and never thirst.

The Helicon introduces . . . Sam Vaknin

Suspected Muses: Erato, Melpomene, Klio

Our first Heliconian is none other than Sam Vaknin, who lives much nearer to the legendary Mt. Helicon than most of us--and in more ways than one. He hails from Skopje, Macedonia--neighbor not only to Greece, but also to the ethnic tinderbox of the former Yugoslavia. Yet much of the conflict he deals with, in poetry as in life, is not outer but inner; he is the editor of Mental Health Disorders categories in the Open Directory Project and Suite101, and on Mentalhelp.net. Sam has written extensively on the subject of narcissism; he is the author of Malignant Self Love--Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain--How the West Lost the East. He serves as a columnist for Central Europe Review and eBookWeb, is a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent and, until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia. These things, among other energies, colors and informs his poetry, creating a language that sears the senses and burns itself into the reader's consciousness. Not surprisingly, he is extensively published both on and off the 'net, in English and Hebrew. (You can learn more about Sam and his work at his website: http://samvak.tripod.com/)

Sam says this about his writing:

I use words as others use algebraic signs: with meticulousness, with caution, with the precision of the artisan. I sculpt in words. I stop. I tilt my head. I listen to the echoes. The tables of emotional resonance. The fine tuned reverberations of pain and love and fear. Air waves and photonic ricochets answered by chemicals secreted in my listeners and my readers.

My world is painted in shadows of fear and sadness. Perhaps they are related--I fear the sadness. To avoid the overweening, sepia melancholy that lurks in the dark corners of my being--I deny my own emotions. I do so thoroughly, with the single-mindedness of a survivor. I persevere through dehumanization. I automate my processes. Gradually, parts of my flesh turn into metal and I stand there, exposed to sheering winds, as grandiose as my disorder.

I write poetry not because I need to. I write poetry to gain attention, to secure adulation, to fasten on to the reflection in the eyes of others that passes for my ego. My words are fireworks, formulas of resonance, the periodic table of healing and abuse.

These are dark poems. A wasted landscape of pain ossified, of scarred remnants of emotions. There is no horror in abuse. The terror is in the endurance, in the dreamlike detachment from one's own existence that follows. People around me feel my surrealism. They back away, alienated, discomfited by the limpid placenta of my virtual reality.

Now I am left alone and I write umbilical poems as others would converse.

Before and after prison, I have written reference books and essays. My first book of short fiction was critically acclaimed and commercially successful.

I tried my hand at poetry before, in Hebrew, but failed. 'Tis strange. They say that poetry is the daughter of emotion. Not in my case.

I never felt except in prison--and yet there, I wrote in prose. The poetry I authored as one does math. It was the syllabic music that attracted me, the power to compose with words. I wasn't looking to express any profound truth or to convey a thing about myself. I wanted to recreate the magic of the broken metric. I still recite aloud a poem until it SOUNDS right. I write upright--the legacy of prison. I stand and type on a laptop perched atop a cardboard box. It is ascetic and, to me, so is poetry. A purity. An abstraction. A string of symbols open to exegesis. It is the most sublime intellectual pursuit in a world that narrowed down and has become only my intellect.

 

 

(Please go forward to see Sam Vaknin's poetry . . .)