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.

Carol Muske-Dukes 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, An Octave Above Thunder, was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and she has been the recipient of many awards, among them a Guggenheim fellowship. She has written three novels, and Married to the Icepick Killer, a collection of essays on Hollywood and poetry published in 2002, is her most recent book. She writes a regular column for the Los Angeles Times Book Review called “Poets’ Corner” and reviews for The New York Times. Muske-Dukes lives in Los Angeles with her daughter.


From the Hardcover edition.