Review The poems in Maria Castell-Greene's Muffled Song make a rare and rich music-the rollicking, cantilevered, and beautifully burdened lines make us attentive to the "merciless shimmering" of this new sound. But Castell-Greene's gifts are more than just sonic and syntactical. There is fierceness in this voice-the speakers of these poems have a wonderful, no-nonsense toughness-and there is also great humanity. This is a writer who can see the world, in all of its fragility and complexity and beauty, and she can sing it. This is a remarkable first collection. -Brittany Perham, author of The Curiosities Fueled by a fierce looking and words that capture "air shining between the notes" the poems in Maria Castell-Greene's Muffled Song find a wild tenderness in all things. With a passionate restraint for domesticated darkness and a hunger for secrets, Castell-Greene's lines make musical alchemy out of the mundane. Hers is a welcome new voice in American poetry. -Robin Ekiss, author of The Mansion of Happiness About the Author Maria Castell-Greene lives on the San Francisco Peninsula with her husband. She's a mother of six, grandmother of nine, plus great grandchildren. Recognized for her writing abilities in daily notes about patients during her nursing career, she retired and took up a new vocation. When assigned a poem in a first writing class, found herself smack dab where she wanted to be. This was quite a late start, compared to fellow writers who found their calling young, however now has 18 years of practice & instruction at Stanford Continuing Studies, plus an enduring writing group. Her poems appear in The Avocet and in the medical Journal of General Internal Medicine.