Sparrow Poems

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.

<b>Carol Muske-Dukes</b> is the founder and director of the graduate program in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her last collection of poetry, <i>An Octave Above Thunder</i>, was nominated for the<i> Los Angeles Times</i> Book Prize, and she has been the recipient of many awards, among them a Guggenheim fellowship. She has written three novels, and <i>Married to the Icepick Killer</i>, a collection of essays on Hollywood and poetry published in 2002, is her most recent book. She writes a regular column for the <i>Los Angeles Times Book Review</i> called “Poets’ Corner” and reviews for <i>The New York Times</i>. Muske-Dukes lives in Los Angeles with her daughter.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>