Socrates said that all good poets "are inspired and possessed." I don’t know what possess someone to become a poet, but all poets inspire me. As I writer of plain prose, I rise in awe of those who push poetic pens.

Harriet Beecher Stowe got the idea for Uncle Tom’s Cabin reading the newspaper. I defy any writer to spend a morning skimming the paper—a good or a bad paper—and not find a fortune in ideas. The rest, of course, is work.

Goethe’s poems came suddenly upon him and insisted upon being composed immediately. Is anyone surprised that the great Teutonic poet would be driven by insistence? Whatever it takes, Johann.

Mozart, as it sometimes sounds, composed while “walking after a good meal.” And as it also sounds, when he couldn’t sleep. Where the ideas came from, he had no idea. But said that he could never force them to come.

Poe was inspired “by a species of fine frenzy—an ecstatic intuition.” Poe’s frenzies, sometimes drug-induced, earned him a reputation for the macabre. But his muse brought him much more than horror and death.

To Amy Lowell, the best description of the creative process is the familiar, “it came to me.” Not a lot of help, but after self-publishing her own work, Lowell helped other poets find their way into print.

Dostoyevsky was driven, it seems, by a dark muse. My favorite writer inspired me to take up the Russian language, just so I might be able to read him in the original someday. That day eludes me. Call me an idiot, but I press on, if only for a taste someday.

Walter Lantz was on his honeymoon trying to silence a bothersome woodpecker, when... Well, you know the rest.