• Please go here to view more photos from this year's event and past tournaments.
2011 National Book Festival
Summer in East Hampton - dogwalks on beach with Mark Doty
• Carol Muske-Dukes is part of the curatorial team of America: Now + Here and directs the poetry aspect along with Bob Holman.
• Sotheby's Benefit Auction for America: Now & Here in New York on June 23, 2010. From left to right: actress Swoosie Kurtz, playwright Marsha Norman, poet Carol Muske-Dukes, and poet Bob Holman.
• Please check out my friend Carol Olson Coote's splendid blog -- "Her Own Society" - with a nod to Emily Dickinson!
David Dukes Memorial
Donate online today at the USC Online Giving Site Please go the website to make a secure credit card donation. Your donation is tax deductible and a USC gift receipt will be sent to you via US mail.
The scholarship, established in memory of the late actor David Coleman Dukes, is awarded annually to a third-year Theater Arts student working toward a career in stage acting. A bronze plaque commemorating the scholarship benefit held in David Coleman Dukes' name can be seen in the lobby of the Bing Theater, off Queen's Court on the USC campus.
- Madeline Puzo, Dean, USC School of Theatre
Novels
• Channeling Mark Twain, 2007
• Life AFter Death, 2000
• Saving St. Germ, Viking, 1993
• Dear Digby, 1989
Essays
• Married to the Icepick Killer:
A Poet in Hollywood, 2002
• Women & Poetry, 1997
Anthologies
• Crossing State Lines: An American Renga, co-edited: Carol Muske-Dukes & Bob Holman, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011
• The Magical Poetry Blimp Pilot's Guide, editor: Carol Muske-Dukes, with Diana Arterian, Figueroa Press, 2011
Many of these collections were New York Times Most Notable Books.
A sophisticated and lyrical new collection from one of today's finest living poets
Carol Muske-Dukes is an acclaimed novelist and poet whose latest collection, Sparrow,
a haunting elegy for her late husband, was a finalist for the National Book Award. Twin
Cities is an emotionally rich book of poems about how things double - by reflection,
by reproduction, by severance. The poems embark from the twin cities of Minneapolis
and St. Paul, divided by a legendary river, and then move on to the parallel histories of
a life lived and a life imagined - and the random intersection of the two. Lit by loss,
these moving poems navigate between the poles of love and grief, curse and blessing,
abandonment and rescue - they are two, and they are one.
Praise for Twin Cities:
"Exploding with capacity and ambition, Carol Muske-Dukes' new poems are the
strongest yet from a poet whose work has long been essential reading. Twin Cities
formal and architectural intelligence is stunning, as well as heart-stopping in its insight
into 'how damage is made.' The richness of the language is made to carry the maximum
bearable amount of emotion - political, spiritual, social, familial, erotic - via brightly-lit
imagery which astounds with its originality, felicity, and honesty."
- Jorie Graham
Poet, essayist, and novelist Muske-Dukes discerns metaphorical resonance in her birthplace, St. Paul,
Minnesota, and its twin city, Minneapolis. The symbiosis between the twin cities with a river between
them inspires reflections on various forms of doubleness in poems as beautifully contoured and polished as river stones turned and lathed and buffed by deep currents. Muske-Dukes' language is earthy and
unadorned, and yet, within her gleaming lines, common words shape-shift and morph into fresh and
disarming imagery and realizations. In vibrant tableaus, wrenching stories, portraits, elegies, social
objections, and metaphysical equations, the poet––lyrical, mournful, and funny—considers such "twins" as
life and death, past and present, war and peace, men and women, art and life, yes and no. Ice-skaters do the whip; two kids labor over a condolence note; a mirror frames the essence of a relationship. The poet,
Muske-Dukes muses, is a "go-between," a "double emissary," and she nimbly and exquisitely performs the
poet's spirit-sustaining art of observation, remembrance, protest, connection, and drollery in a lucid,
involving, and deeply gratifying collection.
— Donna Seaman (from BOOKLIST)
Magic Poetry Blimp
Pilot's Guide
To All Kids, Teachers and Friends –
Greetings from The Magical Poetry Blimp! The Blimp is a fantasy vehicle – and we hope that you will hop aboard and zip along with us, as you turn the pages (virtually or physically) of The Magical Poetry Blimp Pilot's Guide.
In my last months as Poet Laureate of California, I am seeking to fulfill my charge from the governor's office – to create a state-wide poetry project capable of reaching communities where poetry might not be readily available. Many schools have little curriculum time allocated for the arts in this time of economic crisis – and less time for the crucial art of Poetry. Poetry (+ reading and writing and absorbing poems) helps kids learn to think and remember and appreciate the beauty and power of words.
The Magical Poetry Blimp Pilot's Guide (downloadable for free at magicalpoetryblimp.org!) is a way to make poetry – its rhyme and forms and always-remembered lines – readily available to all who want to encounter poetry, to read and write and learn it by heart – plus take off on the Blimp (the Imagination) and have a wonderful time! We hope the guide will be useful to students from ages 7-12 or so (depending on their reading level).
This entertaining, educational, interactive Guide is all yours – thanks to all of the writers who contributed chapters – and to the amazing designer/contributor Diana Arterian, the illustrious illustrator Rick Cortez and web-wizard Dave Howard – and so many others, who've fueled the Blimp and piloted it to the skies!
Please spread the word about the Blimp, so more students can learn, write and share sonnets, haikus, and ballads in the near future! We hope that you will hop aboard and zip along with us, as you turn the pages (virtually or physically) of The Magical Poetry Blimp Pilot's Guide.
Enjoy – and please send us feedback about the Guide on our website – we’d love to hear from you!
– Carol Muske-Dukes, California Poet Laureate
New Huffington Post Blog Entries
• Don't Bank on Banks -- Except for One! >>
• Scattershot Poetry Reviews -- Three Books >>
• April is National Poetry Month. The Women's Conference and California's First Lady Maria Shriver want to honor the importance of art, creativity and poetry in our lives. During April, they'll be sharing some of their favorite poems. They have chosen to feature two of Carol Muske-Dukes' poems (Twin Cities and Boy) here.
Articles
• Voice of America -
US National Poetry Month Encourages Reading, Writing Verse >>
• Video clips of The Creative Community and Poetry Readings >>
• Podcast of Carol's 2007 interview on NPR's Fresh Air with Terri Gross >>
Katherine Hastings, Cecilia Woloch, Carol Muske-Dukes, Nancy Norton - WordTemple Poetry Series at the Sonoma County Museum on November 13, 2009
2012 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award
• Oct. 5, 2011: Carol Muske-Dukes has been chosen as one of three honorees for the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award. This award is given to writers who have volunteered time or donated money to writers' causes, who have advocated on behalf of other writers, or who have made an exceptional contribution affecting the lives of writers.
This award, given through Poets & Writers, will be presented at the Poets & Writers gala during March 2012 in New York City.
Crossing State Lines:
An American Renga Edited by Bob Holman and Carol Muske-Dukes
Order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
A collaborative poem about America, from fifty-four of our best poets
Crossing State Lines: An American Renga is a poetic relay race across the continent: fifty-four poets responding to ideas of America-and to each other. This is a collaborative journey of impressions-from the election and inauguration of President Obama, through foreclosures, job losses, chords of country music, and bombs in Baghdad, to a poet-soldier's rifle-sight in Afghanistan.
The renga itself, in the ancient tradition of Japanese linked verse, provides the form of this historic conversation among the poets, as they meditate, within ten lines, on a moment in America. Crossing State Lines begins with Robert Pinsky's recounting of a line of poetry by Lincoln as fall deepens and "maples / kindle in the East," and ends some five hundred lines later, with Robert Hass's "greeny April" on the Pacific coast.
The Magical Poetry Blimp Pilot's Guide is now available for sale at Amazon.
The Pink Tuxedos
• Poets Rita Dove, Carol Muske-Dukes, Marilyn Nelson and Lisa Russ Spaar perform as "The Pink Tuxedos" at the 2001 conference of the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) in Palm Springs, CA. [Watch video clip]
• USC College News & Events: All Were Aboard on the Magic Poetry Bus >>
Liz Taylor, David Coleman Dukes & Sara Ballantine
Dear Carol,
We have not spoken in way too long, and I do not hold that against you, as I know you are one of the busiest blondes in LA! Just wanted to share a reminiscence of David with you.
In 1980, when I was 24 or 25, depending on who you want to believe, me or my drivers license- David was shooting "The First Deadly Sin", with Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway. I think this was even before you met him, Carol. Scott was off doing "Of Mice and Men" in Hartford, and David had invited me often to visit on the set, and he said he would introduce me to Frank Sinatra! As thrilling as that sounded, I was often very busy in NYC, and could never manage to get to any of his locations in a timely manner.
Then, one day he called and said, "Hi Sara, you really should try and come down to the set tonight. We are shooting in the Wall Street area, and Elizabeth Taylor is coming down to see Frank, and we could hang out and have a great time"! Well, I wouldn't have ever forgiven myself if I had missed that opportunity, so I took a nap and taxied down to Wall Street around 9:30 pm. It was like trying to get in to Fort Knox! I had never seen so many cops without a dead body somewhere.
Finally, I was able to catch David's eye, and he squired me through the rows of New York's finest, as a limo pulled up, and out popped Ms Taylor! She was quite a sight to behold. Dazzlingly beautiful, and about 48, right? She was sweet and demure and flirtatious when she met David, and then he introduced me, and she was perfunctory, and simply polite.
When Frank came out, it was like old home week, lots of hugs, and somehow, camera bulbs flashing, as the word must have gone out to every paparazzi wanna be in Manhattan. I will never forget her energy. Covered in diamonds, it was as though they created a force field around her. She seemed almost protected by some impervious barrier, which locked her away from the rest of us common folks. Apparently, she was a real down to earth babe, who loved to eat, and loved her men, but that night, she seemed to be delighted to once again to be viewed as the best prize in life's box of Cracker Jacks. Does that reference make me seem old?
Anyway, it was only because of David that I would ever have had a moment with Liz, and I will never forget it. I hope things are going great for you, and there will be a glass of wine with our names on it sometime this year!
Love and Light always,
Saratoga
Annie Muske-Dukes Weds Johnny Driggs March 13, 2010 - San Diego
Donate online today at the 
