An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems

An Octave Above Thunder finds poet and critic Carol Muske looking back on 20 fruitful years of writing. Muske is the author of five previously published books of poetry, including Red Trousseau and Skylight, as well as 1997's well-received collection of essays Women and Poetry: Truth, Autobiography and the Shape of the Self. In Women and Poetry, Muske uses her own poetry to trace the evolution of her ideas about women, poetry, and the self; in this collection of both new and older work, she mines her past for the poems themselves. The result is a triumph, a lyrical and lucid contemplation of the personal, the political, and the public spaces where these sometimes converge. In "The Invention of Cuisine," Muske paints a "still life of our meals," a portrait of the historical moment in which "the pure impulse to eat" becomes the drive to create: "this little moment / before the woman redeems / the sprouted seeds at her feet / and gathers the olives falling from the trees/ for her recipes. / Imagine..." It's a small but vivid portrait of the transformative power of imagination and art--much like An Octave Above Thunder itself.