Skylight

by Carol Muske-Dukes

A reissuing of Skylight, poetry by Carol Muske.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Carol Muske-Dukes (born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1945) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, critic, and professor, and the former poet laureate of California (2008–2011). Her most recent book of poetry, Sparrow (Random House, 2003), chronicling the love and loss of Muske-Dukes’ late husband, actor David Dukes, was a National Book Award finalist.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Samadrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my pet peeves with poetry is on full display in this poet's works - losing so much of time re-reading lines, fishing out implications from the layers of metaphor thrust upon allusion thrust upon circumlocution that in the battle between the reader's enthusiasm for emotionally connecting with the verses and sheer exasperation, exasperation wins.
Poetry is meant to be savoured - the rhythm, the flow, the delicate alignment of pretty words combined with some semblance of purpose all taken in together - and not decrypted like a hidden code through multiple readings. It doesn't matter if the occasional pair of lines succeed in concealing their intent, their true significance, perhaps, too exclusive to the poet's inner life or too obscure to aid our understanding. But there should be a limit to this sort of penchant for inserting excessive imagery and hyperbole.

Don't take my complaints too seriously though. Finding poetry that hits just the right note is actually like finding the right shoe fit and hence the criteria of such determination will differ from reader to reader. Besides I had problems with only a few of the poems. Most of the remaining ones are exceptionally well-written and make their points with so much subtlety that you are more likely to miss them unless you keep your eyes peeled.

I had no idea Carol Muske-Dukes (former Poet Laureate of California) had such a good knowledge of Indian history and an even firmer grasp over our cultural sensibilities. (Color me impressed)
Her 'Ahimsa' on the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (which is still regarded as one of the most barbaric things done to us by the British and which caused Tagore to reject his knighthood) is elegiac and deeply philosophical.

"Say you walked in the shadowy garden
in Amritsar, before night descended,
tried to imagine the massacre, that crazy saint
Gandhi and the people on their knees to a god
less civilized than he. You would
disagree, agree....
violence teaches nothing."

While 'War Crimes', a reflection on rape (a subject which Adrienne Rich versifies with more finesse, no doubt, in her Diving Into the Wreck) is wrenching and cerebral.

"...that the great nerve
which runs from head to pelvis
which makes us courteous
shy
scrupulous
makes us touch another with gentleness
would tremble
till it was plucked
held in the pliers
then in the fire
shriveling in that little violence
of heat and light
which in another form
we often refer to
as love."

The variation in her themes is another noteworthy aspect of her range as a poet - subjects from abuse of young children, a daughter's view of her painter father, a child with a stuttering problem, an opium addict mourning the loss of his wife/lover, real estate, to the last set of poems which seem to be meditations on grief make appearances in this collection.

No points for guessing that the poems on India-related subjects, an old man in Benares carrying his dead wife in his arms to her pyre, the one on sexual violence and androgyny are my favorites from the collection. Yes I am predictable like that.

**I received an ARC from Open Road Integrated Media via Netgalley**

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

These free verse poems are distinguished by alliteration and assonance rather than rhyme. The subject matter varies, but many are about art, about being a child, and about love. My two favorites were the title poem and “Fireflies,” quoted in part below:

We walked together up that country road.
It was dark. Vermont. Another season.
Then, looking up, we saw the sky explode
with fireflies. Thousands, in one frisson
of cold light, scattered in the trees, ablink
in odd synchrony. That urgency,
that lightening pulse, would make us stop, think
of our own lives. The emergency

that brought us here.

I love the build-up of short sentences and clauses there, and the striking choice of words: “frisson,” “ablink,” and “synchrony.”

I feel sheepish that I had never heard of the author before; this is an e-book reissue (via Open Road Media) of a 1981 collection. Muske-Dukes, a professor at the University of Southern California and recent poet laureate of California, has published eight poetry books, four novels, and two essay collections, and regularly writes for the New York Times Book Review. I would certainly be willing to try another of her books.

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skylight: Poems by Carol Muske-Dukes is a re-release of previously published poems giving an overview to the various styles, themes, and subjects of the poet. Muske-Dukes is the former Poet Laureate of California and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, and a wide array of awards including the Witter Bynner Award, the Castagnola Award and several Pushcart Awards. She is currently the professor of English and Creative Writing and the founding Director of the new PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.

This is another collection of poetry I read before finding out about the poet. I do this sometimes so that I won’t look at a biography and think that I have to like this collection. How can I not like the poetry of a former Poet Laureate of California? Needless to say, this a solid collection of poetry. Perhaps it is because of the poets skill that I finished this collection content but not feeling what I usually do when finish a collection. Usually I will read a collection and one of two poems will stand out above all the rest and there will be a line or two that I have to share with everyone I talk books with. It was not the case here. The collection was not the rollercoaster of a few peaks and a few valleys mixed into a steady medium level. Here all the poems were on a higher than medium level with very little deviation.

“Tuesday Again” caught my attention in the transformation of the narrator and the freedom found in an earlier annoyance. “Ahimsa” is a tribute to nonviolence and Gandhi's political change after the massacre at Amritsar. “Short Histories of the Sea” capture the spirit of the day when the sea was contained unknown wonders and dangers:

and beside them historians
wrote poems
in which
the sea was eccentric
tempestuous character

“Census” reminds us:

Once everybody had a place
among the nameless. Now we
can’t afford to be anonymous

and from “Choreography,” perhaps my favorite:

Somewhere, in a garden of jade, sits Buddha.
He is neither holy nor just
but has been carved from stone in a world
which has invented holiness and justice.

Perhaps the most moving and personal poems are in the final section titled “Siren Songs”. Here free verse and paragraph form tells profoundly sad stories in a beautiful manner.

This an outstanding collection of modern poetry from an accomplished poet. The physical style is straightforward and easily recognized. This is a rare collection without a bad poem or filler.

Open Road Integrated Media reprinted this collection using a special typesetting that keeps the lines in their original form and uses intents if the line runs over the page size. This is a great improvement of e-book readers. Changing the font size or page dimensions often changes the original lineation of the poem. This is quite frustrating for the reader trying to see the pattern in the words and lines. Open Road has seemed to fix this problem and allows the reader to see the poem in its original form. A definite added plus for e-book poetry readers.

[Slee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was given a copy of this collection to review through Netgalley.

When Curled into a good book, it takes a truly witty or moving turn of phrase to pull me away from the next morsel in order to take notes, or to mark a passage. Yet, something in Carol Muske-Dukes word choice, her deft execution of the trickster form, the seductive way she turns a poem on the reader and leaves them as exposed as the subject matter, left me marking passages again and again, notating over and over, "yes! this is exactly how it feels," or "Mrs. L. needs to read this." Twenty-two times she caught me, brought me up short, and sent me scrambling for a way to remember her words and the way they made me feel in that moment.

Her word choice in The Painter's Daughter, "Coaxing the murder that no one saw from the stubborn evidence of light." It's visceral, full bodied, and yet somehow alienating. When she writes about the opium trip of a man who seems to has lost his lover, perhaps his wife in a car accident that was his fault, but that he can't escape the pain and guilt of, the poem begins so inconspicuously, but ends so painfully and hauntingly, it's like a scab you can't help but pick.

Her writing puts me in mind of Margaret Atwood, and will stay with me. Her work is uncomfortable, explores, child loss, abandonment, violence, abuse, gender identity, and ivory tower feminism. It certainly won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for those moved but such tea, it is strong tea.

Follow my other reviews at Biblivoracious.

[Leona Ngo · Rating 3 out of 5]

beautiful words. Will be reading more of her poems.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 M9878s 1981