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?

Hi, I'm Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Carol Muskie.

She was our guest last week as well.

She's the author of a book of poetry recently published by Viking called Red Truceau,

as well as the author of Saving St. Germ, her novel, which came out simultaneously.

We're going to be talking today

about metaphor, about politics, about a lot of things relating to the writing of fiction and the

writing of poetry. And I thought we'd begin by hearing the first poem in the book, read Trousseau,

read by Carol Muskie. The poem is called to the muse.

Okay. Trousseau, read by Carol Muskie, the poem is called To the Muse. To the muse. She danced topless, the light-eyed drunken girl who got up on the bow of our

pleasure boat last summer in the pretty French Mediterranean. Above us rose the great gray starboard flank

of an aircraft carrier. Sailors clustered on the deck above, cheering, and the caps rained

down, a storm of insignia, S.S. Eisenhower. I keep seeing the girl when I tell you, the Eisenhower

is now in the Gulf, as if the two are linked, the bare-breasted dancer and a war about to be fought.

Caps fell on the bow and she plucked one up, set it rakishly on her red hair.

In the introspective manner of the very drunk, she tipped her face dreamily up, wet her lips.

In Otelisk, her arms crossed a kimbo on the cap.

Someone, a family member, threw a shirt over her, and she shrugged it off, laughing, palms fluttering about her nipples.

...