Applause

by Carol Muske-Dukes

Applause is a collection of poems about joy and dread--mirroring the extremes of the contemporary American experience. Joy is defined in motherhood, self-conscious love, friendship--while dread is described through an accelerating sense of doom, and the failure of nearly all prescriptive political solutions to the world’s problems. The overall mood is one of bravado in the face of ruin--the metaphor of applause, standing there clapping, well-intentioned in a crumbling world.

63 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 5, 2023

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)