This Saint Patrick’s Day, I raise my glass to the “muses,” the little women behind the big men. (and a toast to my husband, who is my muse!)
It gets my Irish up sometimes when I read about famous men and the women who supported them from the shadows. I’ve written quite a bit about Gala Dalí, a complex woman who left a promising poet for a complicated young artist.
Hadley Hemingway is another example of a muse with a younger husband. I’ve been reading The Paris wife: a novel by Paula McLain. The beautiful, lush writing contrasts with his stark short sentences, and though I know those aren’t the actual words of Mrs. Hemingway, I imagined that she would write exactly that way, using the all the adjectives and adverbs her husband discarded.
The Writer’s Wife
They share it all, fair and square,
“his” typewriter, “her” child,
he lets her have the adverbs,
most of the adjectives too,
and he takes all the fresh-air nouns,
closing all the windows and doors,
until she can no longer tolerate
the pain of a life without verbs.
....Bilocalalia.... 
