Product Description
Sparrow, a luminous new volume of poetry by acclaimed poet, novelist, and critic Carol Muske-Dukes, draws the reader into a mesmerizing world of love and loss. In the wake of personal tragedy, the death of her husband, Muske-Dukes asks herself the questions that undergird all of art, all of elegy. “What is the difference between love and grief?” she asks in a poem, finding no answer beyond the image of the sparrow, flitting from Catullus to the contemporary lyric.

Beyond autobiographical narrative, these are stripped-down, passionate meditations on the aligned arts of poetry and acting, the marriage of two artists and their transformative powers of expression and experience. Muske-Dukes has once again shown herself to be, in this profound elegiac collection, one of today’s finest living poets.


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

her best book
Elegant and colloquial at once, wounded, passonate and alive, this book's an elegy of the first rank -- as well as a meditation on marriage, the acting life, and the difficulty of really knowing anyone. Formally acute, tonally various, this is one of the year's strongest books of poems. ... Read more

Product Description
Carol Muske has been called one of the best poets of her generation. The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Carolyn Kizer, commented that her technical dazzle and virtuosity are "one of a kind: Mozartian." The poems in her new collection, Red Trousseau, use Los Angeles as a symbol for the seduction of appearances; in the title poem, reality crosses from the Wallace Stevens notion of the sun "hovering in its guise of impatient tribunal" to a director's reshooting of a tarnished sunset, so that "the scene, infinite, rebegins." In Carol Muske's work, red, blue, and yellow dominate, serving to link such disparate things as a soundstage's fake prie dieu, a precinct station map of gang activity, and a schoolgirl's model of the planets, all of which take on the red of Salem burnings, the self-immolation of a political dissident in Prague, and Eros itself, moving like a red shadow over the body of love. Fate in Red Trousseau is drawn by a biochemist as a chemical, recodable spiral inside us, looping back and forth like a mobius of DNA or a movie reel; like a director or a lover, a rebeginning. Muske's Hollywood, also deriving much of its spiraling energy from another modernist, Marianne Moore, circles around its version of reality, infinitely rebeginning, until it becomes wholly the form. Life is made into an object - beautiful, but no longer life. Until, of course, the writer begins a new story, spiraling around a new apprehension of the world that is dangerous, political, and most of all, erotic. Stylistically brilliant and emotionally resonant, the poems in Red Trousseau display the work of a master poet at the peak of her craft. ... Read more

Product Description
The sense of self in poetry written by women is historically elusive, certainly less culturally defined than in poems by men. Yet it has ended up, in the present climate of truth-telling, autobiography, and testimony, that the positioning of the self as autobiographical referent in poetry has become central to our reading of poems by women. In Women and Poetry, poet Carol Muske focuses a critical eye on her writings over the last fifteen years in an effort to investigate her evolving attitudes on the subject of women poets and the self.
Muske argues that the poem of "testimony," created in part by the reinforcement of critics, has dramatically overshadowed the diverse variety and range of poems by women. She reexaminines what many have taken for granted for some time now--that the poem of testimony "fits" women's needs in particular, as if it were a defining characteristic. Springboarding from Muriel Rukeyser's famous lines, "If just one women told the truth about her life/the world would split open," Muske retorts with a question of her own, "What truth?" In so doing, she illustrates a split in women's poetry between those whose self stood as representative of truth or moral narrative, and those who continued to write as if the self were a fiction. In her engaging introductory essay, Muske reflects on these and other pressing questions concerning the current state of women and poetry.
Carol Muske has published five collections of poetry, most recently Red Trousseau. She writes frequently for the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Nation, Parnassus, and the Washington Post Book World. Currently she is Professor of English, University of Southern California.
... Read more

Product Description
From the author of Dear Digby--a tragicomic tour de force. A brilliant chemist walks the tightrope between genius and madness, as she becomes obsessed with solving the equations in her "Theory of Everything." "A prescient novel for the 1990s."--New York Newsday. ... Read more

Product Description
Poetry and Hollywood seem like the ultimate odd couple, and once upon a time the accomplished poet, novelist, and critic Carol Muske-Dukes might have agreed. But no longer.

This is a collection of real-life adventures and meditations on literature and landscape. In Married to the Icepick Killer, Muske-Dukes explores the uniquely Southern Californian approach to poetry, including the random appearance of poems by Emily Dickinson and others on L. A. billboards; the hiring of poet-consultants to “top off” the final scene of a submarine action film;and the wonder of teaching a genius surfer poet. She also illuminates the pure poetry of falling in love with actor David Dukes, who introduced her to the City of Angels and its poetic paradoxes. Poets from Dickinson to Brecht, Robinson Jeffers, Arna Bontemps, and Randall Jarrell make appearances in these pages, and are seen in rapid close-up as the author reveals her talent as “camera,” witness, and learned and intrepid adventurer and social critic.

Muske-Dukes is a wise and hilarious diviner of correspondences and contradictions. In Married to the Icepick Killer (the title is taken from Muske-Dukes’s wry, loving remembrance of her late husband’s exceedingly varied career), she provides a geographical (and commercial) context for cultural counterpoint and shows how it both complements and collides head-on with a poet’s sensibility. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Cambridge Turn On Your Brain
Being familiar with and a fan of Muske-Dukes' poetry and fiction--have you read "Dear Digby"? If not, why not?--I can't understand the brief, snide "criticism" of one of her customer reviewers. The essays in "Icepick" celebrate, disect and illuminate a cultural mish-mash of writers and writing history in California--and offer insight into the "writing scene" in LA, so closely knit as it is with movies, ocean, earthquakes and sun and a literary history overlooked! It is not enough to pass off an accomplished author's work in one snide line. It is misleading and unfortunate. It is obvious from CMD's essays her passionate belief in the art of poetry, of writing, and the life of a writer in sprawling Los Angeles, passion that makes for an engaging read.

I agree with Cambridge
The best part of this book is the title.Once inside it is a major disappointment - shallow, self-centered and, frankly, boring.STAY AWAY FROM THIS BOOK.

engaging title, lively book
Acerbic, funny, culturally aware and crackling with insight, as are Ms. Muske Dukes's poems and criticism

Title: good.Book: bad
Narrow, incomplete and pretentious, as are Ms. Muske-Dukes' poems and poetic opinions. ... Read more

Product Description
An Octave Above Thunder presents a collection of poems spanning more than twenty years in the career of Carol Muske, who has won acclaim for work that marries sophisticated intelligence, emotional resonance, and technical craft. This volume brings together new poems and a generous selection of work from Muske's five previously published collections.Amazon.com Review
An Octave Above Thunder finds poet and critic Carol Muske looking back on 20 fruitful years of writing. Muske is the author of five previously published books of poetry, including Red Trousseau and Skylight, as well as 1997's well-received collection of essays Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography and the Shape of the Self. In Women and Poetry, Muske uses her own poetry to trace the evolution of her ideas about women, poetry, and the self; in this collection of both new and older work, she mines her past for the poems themselves. The result is a triumph, a lyrical and lucid contemplation of the personal, the political, and the public spaces where these sometimes converge. In "The Invention of Cuisine," Muske paints a "still life of our meals," a portrait of the historical moment in which "the pure impulse to eat" becomes the drive to create: "this little moment / before the woman redeems / the sprouted seeds at her feet / and gathers the olives falling from the trees/ for her recipes. / Imagine..." It's a small but vivid portrait of the transformative power of imagination and art--much like An Octave Above Thunder itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Thematic Mastery
Carol Muske's book "An Octave Above Thunder" is a tribute to Muske's ability to weave themes and subthemes into her book.The book explores everything from the power of a woman's voice to sex to death. Sheis also masterful at using language to illustrate gestures and actions thatseem indescribable.I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys therichness of images and words.

Pleasure From Sound
In the oral tradition of literature, it was necessary to use alliteration and eidetic "tricks" in order to effectively and faithfully pass along the exhaustive details and subtle nuances of an original poem.CarolMuske returns to poetic origin in "An Octave Above Thunder",giving her readership a body of work that begs to be read aloud.Thus, inmany of Muske's poems, the joy is in the presentation- the feel of thetongue alliterating and the sensual quality of her construction.

Muske isa lyricist who creates intellectual music.In the poem "At the Schoolfor the Gifted", she describes a classroom blackboard as "cut outcamels plodding across the blackboard's high/ sill.Yet the desert belowrefuses to unfurl its/ mica wings" (31).Not only is this a freshvisual, but so too is the language. Muske's work delights the ear. Therefore, much of the beauty of craftsamnship is lost if the words aresilently ingested.What I found most beautiful is how each poem has amoment that moves the reader to open their mouths and speak her words.Itis this musicality and precision that I will remember from "An OctaveAbove Thunder".

Well-crafted poems with a lot of stuff for writers to steal
If you get easily bored with poetry, but desperately love it anyway -- read this.The writing is complex, yet spare.I intend to reread Muske's book to catch what monster catfish I missed the first time.If you want something fun and superficial, try Hal Sirowitz and not this.

A Foul Thunder; excruciatingly bad poetry!
These poems appear to be the neurotic ramblings of a frighteningly self-important, yet somehow dull poet. I couldn't even drag myself to the end. But I did give it a 2 because a few of the little 'gems' were so overblown that they made me laugh. Awful, simply awful. ... Read more

Product Description
“Why don’t you just die?” Boyd Schaeffer asks her husband, Russell, one night during an argument. The next day, he does just that. Russell was rich, sensitive, charming, but always unreliable—and it is not clear to Boyd what emotional legacy his untimely death has bequeathed her. Now, she and her young daughter embark on a journey of grief, self-reproach, and self-discovery as funny as it is serious, and so profound and surprising that her individual life, in its quiet midwestern setting, takes on the universal lineaments of myth.

With the help of several unconventional companions—as well as her daughter, who offers a child’s instinctive wisdom about life’s mysteries—Boyd begins to understand that endings are often also beginnings, that the Book of Life and Death is constantly being rewritten before our eyes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Thank god I'm Finished With It
Like a few other reviews, I had trouble figuring out where this creative writing professor was going with the creation! Too much garbage about the funeral home details. Who cares what a trocar does to your guts on the mortician's table. It wasn't much to feel or be entertained by. I smiled only when I got to the last page; I was through. Like buying a pair of shoes that don't fit and then trying to wear them. I should have chunked it. Sorry, but this one must have been for the exercise.

Thought provoking
I was intrigued by the author's approach to life and death. This was an interesting read but I seemed to want more at the end. Muske-Dukes gives you something to think about while enlisting your mind in her characters. A gentle read.

DEALING WITH DEATH, GUILT AND A LACK OF LOVE
I was really wanting more from this novel -- I didn't find it hard to get through, as another reviewer mentioned below, I just found it lacking in several areas.The characters are likable enough -- I just didn't find them interesting or sympathetic in many ways.The woman who is the center of the story has married a man I suspect she does not really love -- and barely respects -- and put her medical career on hold in order to have a child and make a life with him.In her case, the verb 'make' connotes a bit of a feeling of 'force' -- their life together doesn't seem to mesh, their personalities seem to be very much at odds with one another.

As a result, when they argue early in the book, and she tells him 'Why don't you just die?', it's not too much of a surprise when he does just that.The rest of the story involves her coming to grips with the guilt that she inevitably feels over this unfortunate chain of events -- and her struggle to understand (and recognize) her own emotions and feelings on love and death.

The scenes mentioned in another review involving detailed descriptions of embalming procedures didn't offend or disgust me as much as they made me wonder why they were there at all -- perhaps to give some authenticity to one character's line of work (a funeral director).He provides a somewhat believable catalyst for the widow's emotional and intelluctual struggle with her own demons, and works on a few of his own in the process -- but I was left with the feeling that the novel could have been much more effective (and interesting) if it were quite a bit shorter.

Struggled to finish
The reviews on the back cover mention humor and laughter, but the only time I laughed while reading this book was when Boyd gave the dollhouse daddy doll a swirly.Given the initial premise (she tells her husband to die and the next day he does), I expected some black humor.But this book rarely provoked even a smile.

I don't need humor.A book doesn't have to have a plot.I can even overlook disjointed dialog (this book has its share).What I cannot forgive are characters I don't care about and can't understand.I could not get a clear picture of just who these people were or why they behaved as they did, especially toward each other.In fact, the only one for whom I felt any sympathy was poor dead Russell; like most people, he just wanted to be loved.

At the end of the book, I was still waiting for the answers to questions such as:Why did Boyd hate Russell (and his mother) so much?What was the point of refusing her inheritance?How did she feel about Will?After losing the patient during a legal abortion, why would she risk performing one on a minor with no one else attending?Why were the last few pages about Roger?

Freddy, the four-year-old daughter, seemed to be the only one with any sense: when the going got rough, she fell asleep.

we must read this book
I finished Life After Death just before September 11th and on the 13th I began reding A Death in the Family. Together these books provided a balm... the kind of balm one uses to bandage an injury and go on however painful going on is. There has never been a time when understanding human emotion,loss and the will to go on has been more important. Life After Death is jarring and it is smart. It will make you tough. A Death in the Family is tender and insightful. It will help you find a balance. We need what these books provide. ... Read more

Product Description
Fresh out of graduate school, Holly Mattox is a young, newly married, and spirited poet who moves to New York City from Minnesota in the early seventies. Hoping to share her passion for words and social justice, she decides to teach poetry at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island, only minutes from Manhattan. There Holly meets a woman who will change her life forever: Polly Lyle Clement, an inmate who claims that she is a descendant of Mark Twain and is capable of channeling his voice. As Holly is caught up in the drama of her students’ lives, her identification with their despair leads her to lose all perspective on the nature of justice. And when she is drawn into an affair with a fellow poet, Holly risks all that is familiar and conventional in her life.

Praise for Channeling Mark Twain:

National Book Award Finalist

“Muske-Dukes takes vast chances with both her voice and her subject matter, and ends up with a work strongly based on reality, but unquestionably elevated into the wondrous realm of art.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“This is a novel that asks all the right questions–about writing, about life, about our common humanity.”
–The Times-Picayune

“A gripping story complete with a politically charged narrative, sexual tension and vividly drawn characters.”
–Time Out New York

“Riveting . . . a powerful story.”
–The Washington Post

“Muske-Dukes shows us there is something magical and mighty in the connections that art can forge among human beings.”
–Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[An] elegant work of prose.”
–People (four stars)

“Deeply rewarding.”
–The Wall Street Journal

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Great Read
I had a great time reading 'Channeling Mark Twain'. The book flowed well and wasn't predictable. I hate predictable and formulaic books. There were a number of obvious 21st Century women's themes brought in, but why not. I don't believe you have to recreate the world to create a fictional story. The scenes were realistic enough that they sent me looking at New York City maps on Google. Don't read this book unless you're willing to just relax and enjoy it.

An Intriguing Story, wih a Mix of Autobiography, Poetry, History, and Mystery
I read Carol Muske-Dukes' CHANNELING MARK TWAIN straight through, fascinated, although I often forgot that I was reading a novel. Much of it felt like a life history--written by a young teacher-poet so captivated by her life in New York City that she simply could not resist sharing her experience. She is caught up in her work- and poems-in-process, and her efforts to do something good for society, namely, teaching poetry as a volunteer in a women's prison. The first-person narrator, Holly, seems designed to remind us of Carol, the author, whose own name sounds as if she might also have been born in December. And from the book's dedication, we know that Muske-Dukes has been there: "To my unforgettable students, the members of the original Free/Space Art Without Walls Poetry Workshop, Women's House of Detention, Rikers Island, 1973-1983."

Although the young teacher-poet-narrator begins with seeing the pimps as she arrives at Rikers Island--pimps waiting for prostitutes to be released--she manages to bring in flashes of her earlier life in the midwest, featuring wonderful vignettes of her mother, who was always quoting poetry. The narrator juxtaposes her own fragmentary autobiography, including poems, with the fragmentary life accounts and autobiographical poems of the student-poets, inmates at Rikers Island. The juxtaposition and interplay cast light on both realms. So does the poetry.

As other persons make their way into the story--a husband, a lover, associates at Columbia University--the reader realizes that they indeed are invented characters, some of them anyway, not real people, and they are there to make possible the creation of a plot. Yes, this is fiction.

CHANNELING MARK TWAIN, despite its realistic setting and its genesis in the author's real-life experience, is a highly literary piece of work, allusive on almost every page, basically so in its central plot involving the "channeling" of Mark Twain by prisoner Polly Clement, who claims Twain as an ancestor. The author manages successfully the necessary intricate structural crafting, minute narrative detail, the historical and geographical background. Her talents as a poet make convincing both the heroine's poetry and that of the convicts. The inmates are not just pitiable, but diverse, singular, often appealing personalities, portrayed with an artistry that avoids sentimentality. Although we are caught up in the emotional texture of relationships and events in the prison as well as elsewhere, the tone is expertly controlled, and there are touches of humor throughout. I read the denouement thoughtfully and sadly but not with a sense of depression.

I liked the novel.Its story held my interest and so did its techniques, its management of autobiography (or embroidered reality), its assumption of the necessity of poetry, and its deft weaving of on-going events, background details (like the flaming tragedy of the General Slocum)--and toward the end, mystery. It is a unique and engaging mix.

Too scattered/ambitious
I actually couldn't finish this book, it was so discombobulated. There are way too many things going on at once. Holly (the heroine) somehow finds time to interact with and subtly reject her husband, contemplate an affair with an absolute jerk, teach a poetry workshop at a jail, hold down a job that has something to do with the criminal justice system, write her own poetry and essays, flash back at length to her own childhood, and belong to a women's group that seems like something out of the 60s. There do not seem to be enough hours in the day.

Holly keeps coming up with one-liners about the male hierarchy and oppressive patriarchy and spouting them off to whoever is around. I can't tell if it's a joke or not--she's very flippant, and her generalizations about men and women are staggeringly broad, but on the other hand, the author seems to want her to be taken seriously.

The book verges on screed (against capitalism, men, the criminal justice system) but never really gets to the point and really didn't convince me of anything besides the fact that the author clearly has some serious biases. It also completely distracts from what little amount of story line there is. Give me Sinclair's "The Jungle" any day.

Does poetry make a difference? (3.75 *s)
For many poetry is obscure, vague, tedious, and trying. But for poets, poetry is the highest form of human expression capable of imparting great feeling, joy, and understanding - transforming. Such is the feeling of Holly Mattox, recent post-graduate and poet, who arrives in NYC in the 1970s with her sometimes husband K.B., a hospital resident doctor, to write poetry, participate in radical politics, and attempt to make a difference in the lives of the oppressed, namely female inmates at Rikers Island, by teaching a poetry workshop.

The book is highly autobiographical as the author did conduct poetry workshops at Rikers for a number of years. The gritty reality could hardly be more palpable: the intimidating presence of the pimps monitoring the exit of the prison for ho's, the no-nonsense female correctional officers, the stark reality of steel, bars, etc. And then there are the women in Holly's class - most all of whom having led precarious lives as prostitutes, drug runners, or victims of domestic abuse with highly detrimental impacts on their psyches. The author captures the contrast of a privileged white girl leading a class of these underprivileged women writing meager, ungrammatical, though intensely personal, poems concerning their train wrecked lives. There is the interesting, but improbable, character of Polly Clement who claims to be the great-granddaughter of Mark Twain and can quote at length from his works, especially Huckleberry Finn.

Holly is a bit of a an uncertain and naïve character. She is a radical who grows disenchanted with a women's group that talks the game of helping the oppressed. She feels compelled to live the life that was cut short for her mother in the dust storms of the Dakotas in the 30s. She is ambivalent about being married to her best friend and searches for a more edgy relationship. She disingenuously confronts the prison warden to release two inmates from solitary lockdown - as though the warden is unaware of her agenda.

Between the constant bits of poetry (Holly is also haltingly writing a poem throughout the book), Holly's wanderings and hesitancies, and some rather unlikely prisoner actions, the book seems a little spotty, not completely convincing, yet worth the read. The reader can decide the impact, if any, of poetry on the women in the workshop.

didn't grab me
I just finished the book, although it took me a long time to finish.I enjoyed the characters in the book and a chance to go into Rikers prison.I could also relate to Holly since I am a teacher and work in Chicago Public Schools.Although I tried to understand the poetry, I found it difficult at times. I think if I was more of a poet and into poetry I would have enjoyed the book more.I was glad that I was able to read the reviews on this site. That gave me more understanding.I am also curious to read some of the other novels that were referenced as being similar. ... Read more

Product Description
Bi-Monthly magazine for poets and writers. Helping them go from inspiration to publication. Newstand copy. No mailing label. Slight cover and edge wear. ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Amiri Baraka, Rosalind Solomon, Carol Muske-Dukes, Wesley Mcnair, David Wojahn, B. H. Fairchild, Robin Becker, Garth Fagan, Gerald Stern, Tony Hoagland, Michael Collier, Jean Valentine, Brian Turner, Forrest Gander, Colette Inez, Lynda Hull, Craig Arnold, Marilyn Nelson, Donald Revell, Louise Glück, Walter D. Wetherell, David Wagoner, David Kirby, David Rivard, Mary Ruefle, David Huddle, Patrick Phillips, Enid Shomer, Sherod Santos, Dean Young, Frank X. Gaspar, Betsy Sholl, Idra Novey, Andrea Hollander Budy, Ruth L. Schwartz, Jeffrey Harrison, Jacqueline Kolosov, Ruth Whitman, Kevin Prufer, Terrance Hayes, Russell Edson, Susan Mitchell, Lynn Emanuel, Chase Twichell, Cornelius Eady, Larissa Szporluk, Joel Brouwer, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, C. Dale Young, Marie Howe, Cleopatra Mathis, Jason Shinder, Leslie Ullman, David St. John, Mary Szybist, David Bottoms, Tim Seibles, Mary Crow, William Wenthe, Alice Jones, Patricia Goedicke, Ted Deppe, Jeffrey Skinner, Richard Foerster, Peter Cole, Frannie Lindsay, Cynthia Huntington, Joan Silber, Laura Kasischke, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Natasha Trethewey, Caroline Knox, Blues People, Dennis Nurkse, Judith Vollmer, Noelle Kocot, Paul Mariani. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 279. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones, (born October 7, 1934) is an American writer of poetry, drama, essays, and music criticism. An often controversial figure, he is the author of numerous books of poetry and has taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo. Baraka was born Everett LeRoy Jones in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended Barringer High School. His father, Gearld Roi Jones, worked as a postal supervisor and lift operator. His mother, Anna Lois (née Russ), was a social wo...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=8568334 ... Read more

Product Description
This digital document, covering the life and work of Carol (Anne) Muske-Dukes, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thompson Gale. The length of the entry is 2344 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author