Muses or Maestros? Women of the Beat Generation (Angela Baccala)

Muses or Maestros? Women of the Beat Generation (Angela Baccala):

"When I began studying the women of the Beat Generation closely, I looked to the one and only secondary source on their role in the movement, Brenda Knight's Women of the Beat Generation.[1] As I eagerly read through the newly-released text, I noted the divisions of the chapters: The Precursors, The Muses, The Writers, and The Artists. Pause. Who was a muse? Many of the women of the Beat movement were influential in their husbands' or lovers' or friends' writings. Does that make then muses? Was Joan Vollmer Burroughs -- the friend and advisor of Allen Ginsberg -- a muse? Was Edie Parker Kerouac, who wrote a hidden, unpublished memoir about her life? Was Carolyn Robinson Cassady, who paints and consults, and wrote Off the Road? Was Joan Haverty Kerouac, who wrote Nobody's Wife? These women had not merely influenced the work of their men, but had created themselves. Similarly, those women listed (in Knight's book) as writers -- including Joyce Johnson, Elise Cowen, and Hettie Jones -- influenced the Beat men. No clear line can be drawn between those who created and those who were a catalyst for other Beats' creative processes. Not only does the label 'muse' do an injustice to these women's works, but it does not thoroughly explain the Beat women's indirect influence in the movement."