The World That Isn't There

In The World That Isn’t There, Wil Mills’ luminous posthumous collection of poems, praise and satire, prophecy and valediction turn out to share a family resemblance. This kinship isn’t merely a matter of Mills’ flawless formal control and grace. Rather, the ache, the mingled despair and hope which inflect Mills’ reading of all experience from roadside restaurants to crosswalks to birds crashing into panes of glass, suffuse every poem here; and thus these poems enable us, Mills’ beneficiari...