Am I really to blame?

The Poetic Museling are blaming me as one of the guilty parties for the situation they find themselves in now. I conducted a workshop on "Developing a Poetry Chapbook from Concept to Completion," during the 2008 Muse Online Writers Conference. Some of the poets who took this workshop continued to meet after the Conference to write and critique, and collectively decided to create something that was greater than each of their individual works.

They're now assigning blame to me for giving them courage, vision, and tools to go forward with a dream to create a real book. They called me "mentor", and asked for my advice along the way as they chose and edited their poems, and I was happy to oblige.  

The resulting Lifelines Anthology, written by the Poetic Muselings, is now available on Amazon. Am I excited and proud of what these poets have created out of that class?  You bet I am.  Do I accept the blame (and kudos)?  Nah.  They did it all themselves, following through what was little more than a series of prompts with guts, tenacity, talent and a lot of hard work. The resulting book is a beautiful thing, full of insightful poetry, life stories, and a great deal of vision.  Well done Muselings.  It was all your own doing!