A new collection of emotionally rich, issue-oriented poems from an award-winning poet whose work "has long been essential reading" (Jorie Graham).
Carol Muske-Dukes is the author of eight books of poems, including Sparrow, which was a finalist for the National Book Award; four novels; two collections of essays; and Crossing State Lines- An American Renga, co-edited with Bob Holman. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California, and was California Poet Laureate from 2008 to 2011.
“Muske-Dukes writes with piercing clarity about both current events
and personal struggles . . .the intensity of these poems – which
seek to know more about the lives of others and our world – is
difficult to forget.” – The Washington Post
“This book is the culmination of a lifetime of poetry writing and
acquired wisdom. The poetry is at the highest level but it’s
also about daily life: poetry as life story . . . the
overriding theme is learning to be who you are in a world of
massive possibility.” – Michael Silverblatt, “Bookworm”
"In this collection . . . [women] are rare and mysterious,
afflicted and abused, generous and generative, soaring above
circumstance. Although this book tells many stories, it belongs to
the histories and tumultuous hours of women whose lives we might
not even notice otherwise . . . These poems offer us pictures of
unsung choices that shape women’s lives." – The Rumpus
“Muske-Dukes’s skill in these poems is her ability to ground her
public and private concerns so firmly in compelling images,
graceful allusion and lyrical cadence . . . her poems are an active
resistance to erasure; they elevate, explore and elegize the
experience of women who have already been erased by circumstance,
society, and history.” – Lorna Knowles Blake, The Hudson Review
“A kaleidoscopic work, both politically charged and personal.
Family events, feminist celebrations and activist struggles have a
transcendental element.” – Carol Rumens, The Guardian
“Poems of keen attunement . . . Muske-Dukes wields a finely
calibrated matter-of-factness shot through with frissons of wonder
as she reports on the shifting elements of dark and light in
everyday moments, and tracks the physics of feeling – attraction
and repulsion, chaos and sudden, rare, fleeting clarity.” --Donna
Seaman, ALA Booklist
“A beautiful book . . . with its theme of life’s fierce tenacity .
. . Because of a keen intelligence, [Muske-Dukes’s] portrayals are
neither sentimental nor occasions for protest. Instead they
are colorful, accurate, and strikingly alive.” –Grace Schulman, New
York Journal of Books
“Scathing intelligence and an open heart: the most difficult
combination in the world, and bountifully manifest on every page.
In the birth room, at the death bed, beneath the falling ash of a
California wildfire, before the whole, hurt spectacle of an
imperiled and beloved world, these poems remind us what it’s truly
like to see and feel. And oh, the achieved musicianship: every
image and abutment, every syllable and turn of diction earns its
place in the cadence of the whole. These poems arrive like a life
line.” --Linda Gregerson
“Much of Muske-Dukes’s verse kneads at the hardships of womanhood .
. . nearly every poem heaves with grief or torment or even, at
times, profound love.” –Caitlin Youngquist, The Paris Review
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