"In incisive, jolting poems of the here-and-now, he takes measure of debt as a legacy, and the repercussions of constant mass shootings . . . Miller's poems are beacons." --Booklist Winner of the UNT Rilke Prize and the Colorado Book Award for Poetry
The poems of this fourth collection from Wayne Miller exist in the wake of catastrophe. It is a world populated by rogue gunmen on shooting sprees, a world where the only inheritance a father has to pass on is his debt. In this world, every box could be a bomb and what comes after is what is lived. And yet, this painful past is not set in stone. The past becomes the present, yielding toward an immediate future.
The collection coalesces around a series of "post-elegies" triggered by three occurrences: the birth of his child, the death of his father, and his experience of the seeming explosion of sociohistorical and political conflict and violence over the past decade. Throughout this series, Miller processes grief, but also cuts through pain to open up a way forward in the aftermath of shared loss. Post- thrums with pathos and humor, pain and the beauty of living.
"Part stark elegy where the ghosts we carry are relentlessly tied to us, part unrelenting look into today's world of social media, loneliness, and violence, and part fierce celebration of survival, Post- is a gorgeous and complex book of poems that both startles and soothes." --Ada Limón
About the Author :
Wayne Miller is the author of three previous collections of poems: "The City, Our City" (Milkweed, 2011), "The Book of Props" (Milkweed, 2009), and "Only the Senses Sleep" (New Issues, 2006). He s also the translator of two books from the Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo, and the co-editor of three books including "New European Poets" (Graywolf, 2008) with Kevin Prufer and the forthcoming "Literary Publishing in the 21st Century" (Milkweed, 2016) with Travis Kurowski and Kevin Prufer. The recipient of a Bess Hokin Prize, a George Bogin Award, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry, as well as a finalist for a William Carlos Williams Award and a Rilke Prize, Miller teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where he edits "Copper Nickel."
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Review :
Praise for Post- "In these poems, we see the way the world around us is layered by confrontation, love, and remembrance. And whether it is the birth of a child, the death of a father, the various ways we've found to kill each other, or the aftermath of a riot in response to those killings, we carry it all forward with us, in memory and action, and we give it to those who follow us."--Adrian Matejka
"Part stark elegy where the ghosts we carry are relentlessly tied to us, part unrelenting look into today's world of social media, loneliness, and violence, and part fierce celebration of survival, Post- is a gorgeous and complex book of poems that both startles and soothes."--Ada Limón
"What do we owe the living and the dead? It's a question that confronts all of us, personally and collectively, during our time on earth. In Post-, Wayne Miller engages this question with grim wit and empathy, strong music and imagery, in poems alive to the intersections of the domestic and political. I found myself, chagrined, involved, in every poem--this is a moving, thought-provoking book."--Dana Levin
"This is poetry at its most powerful: instrument of change, defense against the commonplace of mall shooters and hoax bombs, deeply entered wisdom of the body in both birth and dying, and a bastion against loss and forgetting. Wayne Miller's Post- doesn't take this century lying down, it is a ringing rejoinder to those who say poetry does not matter. In Miller's lines, we hear the ancient magic of sorrow transformed to hope, elegy bent back around to ode."--D. A. Powell
"Miller's poems are subdued, restrained. For the engaged reader they move ever so slightly, like plates at a fault line, but that slight movement leads to thundering effects--awesome and demolishing."--American Microreviews & Interviews
Praise for Wayne Miller
"Wayne Miller is among the best poets in the USA at the moment."--Notre Dame Review
"Miller makes a vast impact using the smallest stroke."--The New Yorker
"Miller remains a poet to watch, and one who strives to 'separate/ the seeing from what's seen."--Publisher's Weekly (starred review)
