Southern Illinois University Press, 2002 Paper: 978-0-8093-2443-9 | eISBN: 978-0-8093-8929-2 Library of Congress Classification PS3601.I94M87 2002 Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susan Aizenberg is the coeditor (with Erin Belieu) of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, a contributing editor to the Nebraska Review, and author of a chapbook-length collection of poems, Peru, which appears in Take Three: 2: AGNI New Poets Series. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in the Journal, AGNI, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
REVIEWS
“How can art and life coexist? This is one of the big questions that Susan Aizenberg raises in the superbly crafted, deeply felt poems of Muse. From a beautiful elegy for the poet Lynda Hull to a brilliant sequence on Vivian Eliot, we are moved by narrative, delighted by the music of speech, and dazzled by glittering imagery. But ultimately Aizenberg forces us to confront disturbing questions about how the aesthetic can be reconciled with the ethical. She faces these questions unflinchingly. They are the heart of her enterprise. A real, three-dimensional human being emerges out of the phrasing, the images, and the thoughts of these memorable poems, shaped out of words but entangled in the gritty detail of ordinary life.”—Maura Stanton, author of Glacier Wine
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“Clearly Susan Aizenberg has chosen to serve the most demanding of the nine muses, Clio, the muse of history. Aizenberg honors her with rich and vital poems of personal history, elegy, and what could be called Lyrics of the Long Haul—poems of the middle years, poems which testify to the difficulties of grace and the precious arrival of wisdom. This is an elegant and sustained volume. More importantly, it is an instructive one.”—David Wojahn, author of The Falling Hour
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
One
White Cat and Notebook: A Still Life
Two
Contrast, Composition
Nights Mutable as Water Revise Themselves into the Shape of Our Extravagant Past
Southern Illinois University Press, 2002 Paper: 978-0-8093-2443-9 eISBN: 978-0-8093-8929-2
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.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Susan Aizenberg is the coeditor (with Erin Belieu) of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, a contributing editor to the Nebraska Review, and author of a chapbook-length collection of poems, Peru, which appears in Take Three: 2: AGNI New Poets Series. Her poems have appeared and are forthcoming in the Journal, AGNI, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
REVIEWS
“How can art and life coexist? This is one of the big questions that Susan Aizenberg raises in the superbly crafted, deeply felt poems of Muse. From a beautiful elegy for the poet Lynda Hull to a brilliant sequence on Vivian Eliot, we are moved by narrative, delighted by the music of speech, and dazzled by glittering imagery. But ultimately Aizenberg forces us to confront disturbing questions about how the aesthetic can be reconciled with the ethical. She faces these questions unflinchingly. They are the heart of her enterprise. A real, three-dimensional human being emerges out of the phrasing, the images, and the thoughts of these memorable poems, shaped out of words but entangled in the gritty detail of ordinary life.”—Maura Stanton, author of Glacier Wine
— -
“Clearly Susan Aizenberg has chosen to serve the most demanding of the nine muses, Clio, the muse of history. Aizenberg honors her with rich and vital poems of personal history, elegy, and what could be called Lyrics of the Long Haul—poems of the middle years, poems which testify to the difficulties of grace and the precious arrival of wisdom. This is an elegant and sustained volume. More importantly, it is an instructive one.”—David Wojahn, author of The Falling Hour
— -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
One
White Cat and Notebook: A Still Life
Two
Contrast, Composition
Nights Mutable as Water Revise Themselves into the Shape of Our Extravagant Past
What It Is
Cortland, 1970
Twenty-Five Years from Anywhere Like That
Kiss
For the Dark Girl
Triptych: For Michael
In the Frame
Far Rockaway
Debut: Late Lines for a Thirtieth Birthday
The Uses of Metaphor
Grand Street
Against Romance
Muse
Three
Three Poems for Judi
The Life You Really Have
Memory from Childhood
Luminous Child
Flying West
Art
Ode for My Son at Seventeen
Half-Light: No Feeling
Sometimes When You’re Asleep
Heat
Georgic on Waking
L’Heure Bleue
Grace
Florigraphy
Prayer
Notes
Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC