Post-: Poems

by Wayne Miller

Overview

WINNER OF THE UNT RILKE PRIZE

The poems of this fourth collection from Wayne Miller exist in the wake of catastrophe, thrumming with pathos and humor, pain and the beauty of living.

Post- coalesces around three primary occurrences: the birth of a child, the death of a father, and the seeming explosion of sociohistorical and political conflict and violence over the past fifteen years. Its world is one populated by rogue gunmen on shooting sprees, where the only inheritance a father has to pass on is his debt, where a car left in an airport parking lot and the coffee cup inside are more immediate presences of the dead. Young rioters leave chaos behind each evening, returning home to watch themselves on the evening news. The unzipping of snow from train tracks evokes the surgery of a family member. Lovers, drinking wine and rowing on a lake, find joy within and without a system that sees them only as consumers.

Beginnings and endings, loss and rebirth, body and spirit: in Post-, Miller processes grief, but also cuts through pain, gorgeously and heartbreakingly, to open up a way forward. Winter permeates these poems—and yet spring is always beckoning in the next.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781571314703
Publisher:	Milkweed Editions
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Wayne Miller is the author of three previous collections of poetry: The City, Our City, The Book of Props, and Only the Senses Sleep. He’s also a cotranslator of two books from the Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo and a coeditor of three books, including New European Poets with Kevin Prufer and Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century with Travis Kurowski and Kevin Prufer. The recipient of the Bess Hokin Prize, the George Bogin Award, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award and the Rilke Prize, Miller teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where he edits Copper Nickel.

Table of Contents

The Debt 3

Post-Elegy 5

Swallows 7

The First Year 9

Inside the Book 11

The People's History 13

House Near the Airport 16

Consumers in Rowboat 18

Post-Elegy 21

Marriage 25

The Next Generation 26

The Mind Sliding 28

Leaving the Hospital 30

A Bit about the Soul 32

The Affair 33

Prayers (w/Answers) 34

Report from the Provinces 37

Image: Postmodernity 39

Post-Elegy 40

On Language 41

A Breath in the Record 47

Allegory of the House 55

Post-Elegy 57

Landings 60

Ballad (American, 21st Century) 69

Hoax Bomb 71

Some Notes on Human Relations 73

Image: Psychotherapy 76

21st Century Museum 77

For Harper, 20 Months Old 79

Allegory of the Boat 81

Post-Elegy 84

On Breathing 86

Envoi 89

Notes 91

Acknowledgments 93

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Post-

Winner of the UNT Rilke Prize and the Colorado Book Award for poetry

"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

“With unwavering insight, Post- breaks free of temporal, spatial, and ideological boundaries to show the thread of common humanity within all of us.”—Pleiades

“Witty and solemn, stoic and nimble . . . Wayne Miller favors brief lines and couplets, but his tercets and quatrains are just as lithe and whipping. . . . In incisive, jolting poems of the here-and-now, he takes measure of debt as a legacy, and the repercussions of constant mass shootings. Shrewdly pithy and nuanced, edgy and commiserating, Miller’s poems are beacons.”—Booklist

“In a fourth book that is as ambitious as his previous work, yet both quieter and sharper, Wayne Miller raises important questions about complicity and responsibility. . . . Miller often probes these personal and social issues in eerie, intimate lyrics. . . . As its plain yet audacious title suggests, Miller’s latest is both a development and a departure, and its best work elucidates contemporary life’s unsettling realities with an uncanny candor.”—Publishers Weekly

"Volumes of Miller’s precise and resonant language flood every space within this book, creating a world of both gritty intensity and thoughtful poise. As a collection, Post- carries significant momentum, as the living spaces within it evolve and change as time surges forward."—The Adroit Journal

“A fascinating and wonderful book . . . The poems have the function of all elegies: to lament, to praise, to console. What is most admirable about them is how they use a minimalist’s eye, bending tone and making the most of economy of language. . . . Post- is a work of serious craft.”—Tupelo Quarterly

“Extraordinary poems, chilling in their incisive witnessing of social issues, wise in their perceptiveness about what it is to be human.”—FIELD

“Recent poets Miller brings to mind include Robert Hass and Louise Glück, and perhaps Czesław Miłosz. . . . Post- stands out among many recent collections.”—32 Poems

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

“A singular figure in American poetry.” —Colorado Review

“Miller remains a poet to watch, and one who strives to ‘separate/ the seeing from what’s seen.”—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

From the Publisher