My Muse

I am not sure exactly what my muse is. I thought it was supposed to be a part of my unconscious mind, but anytime I am writing poems, I seem to be thinking while I go. Even when I am not sure why the poem goes a certain way, I feel a conscious connection to the subject matter. Muse work for me is about ignoring whatever is in the forefront and tuning into the background, my muse seems to have a lot of fanciful ideas, but never seems very poetic. When I want my work to sound like a poem I have to go back and add words, usually little things like adjectives or expand a single word into a metaphor. The end result sounds more to me like poetry, and I do not think my muse minds. The closest I ever got to thinking that I did my muse justice was in my first workshop, I put up four quatrains, all with very short lines. The feedback I got was pretty much all the same thing, more explanation, or longer lines. The poems were pure muse, nothing was wasted and the end result was short and to the point. I only had one person tell me she liked the poems, and that was because she took the same class with me last semester that produced the inspiration and understood. When I think some one else is going to be reading my work, I tend to edit my muse, things that are plain and had to understand get a little clearer and poetic. I do not know if it is a good thing or bad that I do this, but in the end it's all poetry.