Taking up where A Mnemonic for Desire left off, with a song “forming out of nothing,” Steve Mueske’s second collection, Slower than Stars, is by turns playful, irreverent, surreal, and deeply lyrical. His poems, often philosophical, are informed by writers such as Kafka, Joyce, and Nietzsche; artists Paul Klee, Andy Warhol, Man Ray, and Jan Groover; as well as the work of poets, photographers, and musicians. One moment, the coyote and the sheep dog are employed as adversaries in a poem about “the death of love.” Another moment, a factory worker is busy packaging shadows. But Mueske has a serious side as well: whether writing about the extinction of the black rhino, his personal battle with depression and suicidal ideations, the early lives of his children, or the pain of watching a loved one succumb to dementia, he opens himself up to the reader with an artful transparency. Eight years in the making, these poems span fifteen years of Mueske’s life.
