Book Review of Sparrow Poems by Carol Muske-Dukes

Book Review
Sparrow Poems
By Carol Muske-Dukes
The basis of Muske-Dukes’s compilation of poems is to express her love for her late husband through free verse poetry. Modern in its style, but traditional with its syntax and form, Sparrow Poems utilizes strong allegorical verse to convey strong companionship. Sparrow Poems differs from the most common form of poetry that is simply about “love” because Muske-Dukes seems to still be coming to grips with her loss. It seems that she is not fully aware of the fact that it is death that has altered her universe.
When reading the titles of the poems grouped together in the index, one may assume that Muske-Dukes randomly organized the poems. But after careful analysis, it can be seen that the order of the final compilation has been chosen in order give the book time intervals. It seems as though Muske-Dukes is rummaging through the house where she lived with her husband and is picking up objects or looking through pictures and translating spots of memory into verses. One poem that illustrates the idea of “rummaging” through memories is Anniversary. In this poem, Muske-Dukes repeats the phrase “eighteen years” as well as the word “chimes.” One stanza reads as follows: “Exhausted by pity, I sit/ in the sun near the pool/ The wind lifts the chimes/ you repaired so patiently/ last year, knotting the strings/ from which the silver cylinders/ depend.” (33)
Mixing modern personal style with verses from classic poetry, Muske-Dukes has created variation that is unique and incomparable to other modern poetry. She has incorporated verses from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Two Gentleman of Verona, and Romeo and Juliet. Lines of poetry written by famous authors such as Samuel Beckett, Christopher Frye, Oscar Wilde, Eugene O’Neill, B.L. Joseph, and Amanda McBroom have also been integrated into various poems throughout the book. This type of incorporation makes Sparrow Poems unique because it mixes intense emotions of love while utilizing the negative imagery of death as the underlying antagonist. This idea of contrasting images can be specifically seen with the poems that incorporate Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In her poem Romeo¸ the author brings David’s image for interpretation alive, while leaving space for the reader to imagine his presence. She identifies him in the following stanza: “the lit trap door above that leads to heavens/ resembling a parenthesis between identities---/ where players wait to be cast/ Come night, come Romeo/ come loving black-brow’d night!”
David was not only referred to as “Romeo” in order to present him to the audience. Throughout several of her poems, David is referred to as the “actor.” While one poem is specifically called Actor, the concept of David as an “actor” is brought up again in the poem Like You. She personifies the idea of David as an actor in order to resurface some visual concepts of time and death. In Like You, she also refers to death as a critic. “Death was a critic, like me/ Death could never be the actor.” (6)
Muske-Dukes has translated her feelings of recent loss of her husband, David, into a complex book of poems. She has incorporated emotions such as lust, love, companionship, and loss into free verse poetry that exemplifies her personal style. As a single project book, Sparrow Poems was compiled by Muske-Dukes with the specific goal of expressing personal insight while creating a narrative of the time shared with her husband, David. The title, “Sparrow,” holds significance with the content of the poems. Throughout many of the poems, Muske-Dukes makes references to Lesbia’s Sparrow, written by Gaius Valerius Catullus. Lesbia’s Sparrow is about a woman losing her lover and the impact it holds on her emotions. Her lover is referred to as a sparrow “flying the dark no one ever returns from.”
A compelling book of poetry that embodies intensity as well as solitude, I would recommend Sparrow to anyone who wants to travel inside the mind of someone who has channeled their experiences of tragedy and loss into passionate poetry.