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"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.
About the author
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.
Summary
The first full-length collection from poet Susan Aizenberg, bringing together poems of personal history, elegy and the complex lives of artists, writers and "ordinary" people, in an exploration between art and life, aesthetics and ethics.
