From that Raintown article:
To talk about the Muse is to talk about where poems come from, and how. They come to us from people, places, ideas, things, sensations, experiences, memories, the dead, and our own intense emotions. Then we ask how they come.
I think what the writer names as the where is really the how. The...stuff comes to us as people, places, memories, the dead. And we try to represent the...stuff with phrase or word or rhyme. Some of which comes predisposed from lots of past use for similar attempts. Words, rhymes, and such carry the remnants of a lineage of proximity to certain veins of the stuff. They have tendencies in sound and sense from their poetic history because the stuff is potent and leaves a mark on language. But where is it from, this stuff? From a Who, emergent from matter or more dualist-daring? From a Completely Outside? From a Crazy Deep Inside? From a Happy Accident of Primate Yodeling Place?
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