How can art and life coexist? This is one of the big questions that Susan Aizenberg ralses in the superbly crafted, deeply felt poems of Muse. From a beautiful elegy for the poet Lynda Hull to a brilliant sequence on Vivienne 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 Alzenberg 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