Articles by Carol Muske-Dukes

A Palace of Pearls Jane Miller Copper Canyon Press: 62 pp., $15 paper Jane Miller is one of those poets not always on the radar screen: She has never been a self-promoter or a spotlighter, and she works in relative isolation. Read more

Jorie GRAHAM’S new book of poems, “Overlord,” like her other collections, has immense philosophical and compositional ambitions. Read more

School of the Arts Mark Doty HarperCollins: 112 pp., $22.95 Mark DOTY’s seventh book of poems, “School of the Arts,” marks a major change in a proven poetic style. Read more

Jack And Other New Poems Maxine Kumin W.W. Norton: 112 pp., $23.95 Maxine KUMIN’S fierce connection to the Earth and to the lives of animals, to plain style and to her themes of peacemaking and remembering, make “Jack” a deep intensification of all that has come before in her work: It isn’t gunfire that wakes me but the rat-a-tat-tat of hickory nuts raining on the tin roof of the trailer barn. Read more

Belongings Poems Sandra M. Gilbert W.W. Norton: 112 pp., $23.95 The title of Sandra M. Gilbert’s new collection, “Belongings,” is perfect for this collection of fierce, grieving poems, these dark and bright elegiac celebrations that include haunting sequences of sonnets. Read more

Looking back on this year, it seems impossible not to acknowledge that the most notable and best volumes of poetry are books of poems by well-known writers (great or late-great) and writers in their middle years. Read more

American Smooth Rita Dove W.W. Norton: 144 pp., $22.95 According to Rita Dove’s informal glossary, “American Smooth” is a reference to a type of ballroom dancing derived from traditional “standard” dances like the waltz or the tango in which partners are “released” to dance freely. Read more

We BOUGHT THE house, in Hancock Park, Windsor Square, in 1985. Read more

Poets of my generation remember when “Alone With America” was published in the 1970s. Read more