Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW, Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Carol Muskie Dukes.

Her new book of poems is Sparrow.

She is the author of several previous collections of poetry, most notably the recent selected poems an octave above thunder.

She's written three novels, Dear Digby, Saving St. Germ, Life After Death, as well as collections of essays, women in poetry, and married to the Ice Pick Killer, a poet in Hollywood.

When we last spoke, she had written a novel called Life After Death, which in a sense was

written before and in certain ways predictive of the death of her husband, David Dukes.

This book is a book of eulogies, largely, to that actor,

her husband, David Dukes, called Sparrow. And I noticed this is the first book, isn't it, in which you take the name on a book of poetry, Carol Musky Dukes. Even the selected

poems was Carol Muskie. That's right. And you've been publishing novels under Carol Musky

Dukes. What did it involve to become officially Carol Muskie Dukes as a poet?

I think a sense of resignation ultimately.

Well, two things, actually.

I did want to acknowledge, in a way, a change in the sort of current of my writing.

But originally I thought, this was some years ago, I thought when I began writing novels,

I thought I wanted to distinguish between the poems that I write, the poetry that I write, and the fiction. And so I used Carol Muskie

Dukes, you know, sort of coupled my married name, as they put it, to the name that my own name. And I

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