This is National Book Critics Circle Award finalist's posthumous volume of critical essays. Those who have read ""Orpheus in the Bronx"", Reginald Shepherd's previous collection of essays about the act of creating poetry, and those who take on the task, can immediately understand why it was a national finalist for a prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award. Shepherd was candid and disarming, practical and funny, able to mix thoughts about the Transformers with the realities of growing up poor. This is Reginald Shepherd's final opportunity to speak his mind about the craft he loved, the art of using words to express the soul and the wit of every person's experience. Edited by Shepherd's longtime partner and intellectual confidant, Robert Philen, ""A Martian Muse"" stands as a final monument to a master in the craft, but is also a readable, important work in its own right.