Muse

by Susan Aizenberg

Muse, the first full-length collection from poet Susan Aizenberg, brings together poems of personal history, elegy, and the complex lives of artists, writers, and “ordinary” people, in an exploration of the relationship between art and life, esthetics and ethics. She is sharp-eyed in purpose, trying to understand “what love is” in a continual shifting between loss and knowledge. While “there is no other world than this one” for Aizenberg, nevertheless she finds a world of affirmation. Aizenberg sings elegant blues, keeps a perfect balance between elaboration and restraint with formal skill that is both impressive and consoling, reminding us that poetry is a form of intelligence in which music creates a world full of mystery and depth.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2002

About the author

Susan Aizenberg is the author of three poetry collections: _Quiet City_ (BkMk Press 2015); _Muse_ (Crab Orchard Poetry Series 2002); and _Peru_ in _Take Three: 2/AGNI New Poets Series_ (Graywolf Press 1997) and co-editor with Erin Belieu of _The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women_ (Columbia University Press 2001). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many journals, including _The North American Review_, Ted Kooser’s _American Life in Poetry_ column, _Prairie Schooner_, _Blackbird_, _Connotation Press_, _Spillway_, _The Journal_, _Midwest Quarterly Review_, _Hunger Mountain_, _Alaska Quarterly Review_, and the _Philadelphia Inquirer_ and have been reprinted in several anthologies, among them _Ley Lines_ (Wilfrid Laurier UP) and _Wild and Whirling Words: A Poetic Conversation_ (Etruscan). Her awards include a Crab Orchard Poetry Series Award, the Nebraska Book Award for Poetry and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Levis Prize for _Muse_, a Distinguished Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council, the Mari Sandoz Award from the Nebraska Library Association, and a Glenna Luschei _Prairie Schooner_ award.

Reviews

[John Adams · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging little collection of poems.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

"under cottonwoods tall / and thick around as ancient / columns, not touching..." from "Sometimes When You're Asleep"


"the leaves stripped / from the sugar maple, the way they pressed / themselves against the sidewalk, fragrant and dark / as roses crushed in a book" from "Prayer"