Possessed by the Muses’ madness

Poe Walking the High Bridge, lithograph B. J. Rosenmeyer, 1930

“If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses’ madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.”

― Plato, Phaedrus