Customer Reviews:

• "After reading Challenging the Muse I realized how much my sister Andrea loves romance. I always knew she was a romantic, just didn't know how much of a romantic until now. I love "Honeymoon Serenade" to picture a newly married man looking down at his new wife and thinking such lovely thoughts.

Andrea has always thought she wasn't much of a religious person but she's wrong, she brings to life with her words the love and sacrifice of Christ, she also makes me believe with her writings that Christ and his angels are out there helping us all the time.

I love the poem "Flowers From the Sea" her descriptive words made me see that flowers are beautiful but how much more lovely seashells could be. This chapbook truly is a work of art and all of the poems are her challenges, which to me would be far more difficult to write, following rules and yet being able to create such inspired visions of beauty.

I'm very proud of my sister and how she continues to strive to do her best, to enter contest after contest and not always win and yet continue to try. She inspires me to do better to always do my best." - Jennifer Walker

• "Master Sonneteer, weaver of romance and love, you will not want to miss reading Andrea Dietrich's Challenging the Muse. In the first half of her book, many moods of the Muse are felt. In "The Homemaker" we find the mundane tasks of a happy mother who loves caring for her family's needs. "Initiation Night" brings poignancy, shame and sadness to a love gone astray. In "Talking to You" there is a love that can only speak to air filled with the smell of antiseptics, where only a rose can bridge the love and communicate. Pulling forth from the fiery depths of human love comes a fragile tenderness, like that of a porcelain China teacup in "She's Breakable." Enjoy high drama as you feel the need and urgency of love's pleasures. In 'Death of an Innocent" you will see 'Beyond the clouds and mother's wail, an angel guides a child through parting veil.' Discover the thief of love, a vagrant bard who loves and leaves. In the second half of Andrea's book, she presents a more philosophical bent with faded, broken dreams, haunting fears, mysteries, ghosts, issues of life and death and the soul's release. In "Pursuing the Comet:" 'This scene, though dreamed, revealed man's youth, Serenity is found in seeking truth.' Find wisdom in the puppeteer whose guiding, unseen threads remain untangled.' Witness the courage of a young maiden who must face her destiny in "Ruth of the Prairie." Through "Challenging the Muse," Andrea brings to her readers the many faces of human love. You will find yourself savoring the many love potions she concocts and reveling in the many colors of passion that she paints. Don't miss this intriguing read, "Challenging the Muse."" - Mary L. Ports

• "Andrea Dietrich is a prize-winning poet who welcomes and embraces poetic challenges. As Ms. Dietrich expands her knowledge of poetry styles, she is also generous in her support and advice to fellow poets. Included in this chapbook are examples of kyrielle, etheree, villanelle, quatrain, pantoum, rondeau, sonnet, and madrigal, all forms she crafts with precise attention to detail.

Appropriately, Ms. Dietrich begins with a poem titled "The Power of Words," from which I chose this excerpt:

      So whether they be dull or cast a spell,
      we learn and grow if we digest them well.
      And whether they be heard or signed or read,
      it's by the power of words mankind is led.

I particularly enjoyed "What My Dark Knight Wrought." The poet's knight is rakish and cocksure, an alluring temptation his lady can barely resist. I quote the final verse here:

      Could passion that he breathed have been my cure?
            Unlikely…but I reveled in the ache.
                  My love for him I'd finally abjure,
      But what my dark knight wrought will long endure.

"She's Breakable" is an exceptional poem comparing two women in love with the same man. This is the sort of poem that must be read and contemplated in its entirety but I chose one excerpt in example:

      A willow frail, she cries too easily.
      She's sapping you; she'll never let you be.
      She's fragile glass that you must not let fall.
      Yet here I stand, prepared to give you all!
      I'm durable; you cannot shatter me.
      She's breakable.

"Talking to You" is a touching tribute to a woman as beautiful in old age as she was in youth:

      When I talk to you….I'm talking to the air.
      It smells of antiseptics, and today your room
      is stifling. I push you in your wheelchair to
      the garden, where breath of spring awaits us.
      I talk to you, but we do not converse. I look
      into your eyes grown pale. Their empty stare
      seems fixed upon the roses. I gently pluck
      one up – a crimson rose in bloom – and
      place it in your thinning snow white hair.

"Characters of Narratives: Life 101" is an accurate study of the people we meet in life. All are distinct in personality and presentation. I chose one excerpt from this poem by a wisely observant poet:

      A few, by fate and nature not so blessed, court insanity,
      or at the very least, create confusion
      with crises that seem to come unceasingly
      yet never seem to have a resolution.

Classic styles of poetry seem to have lost favor with modern poets, possibly because creating stories in effective rhyme and cadence is difficult. Andrea Dietrich is a modern poet who celebrates the classic styles, and does it very well." - Laurel Johnson

• "I have read Challenging the Muse several times, and each time I find that I just can’t put it down! I am enthralled by Dietrich’s mastery of a plethora of poetry forms, into which she creates atmospheres, moods and stories that hold the reader spellbound from the first poem through to the last. The poems mentioned in reviews already listed here are also favorites of mine; since they have been discussed, I would like to talk about some of my other favorites, with the following excerpts:

Goddess of the Night is a picturesque rendition of the moon...it’s attraction to sky-gazers, and its ethereal effect on our visual and emotional senses, as Dietrich writes:

      She casts her glow on those below
      who love her mystery...
      who reverence her as with allure,
      she dances on the sea.

In This Golden Day (A Madrigal for Amber), the opening stanza sets the stage for magical expressions of imagery and sound, in a romantic setting:

      My Amber dear, awake to me.
      My madrigal has melody
      in trill of gold finch that you hear.
      Awake to me, my Amber dear!

The prose of Optimal showcases Dietrich’s talent for assembling rhyme-free stanzas that weave a storyline of deep, enduring love, encapsulated in these closing lines:

      He’s a patient man
      whose heart holds so much love
      he knows that one day soon
      she’ll have no other choice but to yield
      to him whose benefits are optimal.

Sonnet on Grandpa takes us all back to memories of grandparents who largely made this country what it is today, as Dietrich says:

      Into the fields he’d take his burly frame,
            in winter’s snow, in summer sun’s strong heat.
      And every day he’d finish with the same
            flushed cheeks and labored breath, sore back and feet.

One realizes the spiritual depths of Dietrich’s words, within the two following excerpts:

      Oh see! Beyond the clouds and mother’s wail,
      an angel guides a child through parting veil.
                  (excerpt from: The Last Embrace)

      And when I touched her light, beheld her face,
      surrounding me came utter love’s embrace.
                  (excerpt from: The Last Embrace)

Before the Trek also emphasizes her deep sense of faith, as in its closing couplet we are told:

      I’d stumble, but I trusted Him to place
      His signs to guide me back by light of Grace.

Dietrich’s profound knowledge of the human psyche and its spiritual potential is displayed in the final lines of her poem, Tale of Wonder and Woe:

      Those luminaries lost their light that day;
            like Morning Star, proved false, lost chance to grow.
      The wise one said, “I give; I take away.”
            So hide your talents not, but let them glow!
      For you are they, the stars now sent to live
      in human form, the ones God can forgive.

It is indeed an honor and a pleasure to read Challenging the Muse, and to have this compilation of extraordinary poems for one’s own personal library, to enjoy reading over and over again." - Review by Jan Turner (Coauthor of Faery Folk & Fireflies)