Memory at These Speeds

Jane Miller

Jane Miller is a kind of post-punk bête noire oracle, celebrating the indomitable human spirit amidst the crumbling ruins of a world in perpetual crisis. Memory at These Speeds is a new and selected collection, providing a comprehensive overview of an inventive, daring, and insightful lyric poet. Drawing upon five previous books, Miller’s poetry explores the “American moment,” describing how we live in spirit and place at the end of the century.

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ISBN: 9781556591181

Format: Paperback

Which Religion Vouchsafes

At the end of emotion & description there is a village
there are marriages & funerals there is a trailer
someone without capital works away
half-hidden in the immense open range
a wedding Ford streams crepe paper
flashes & toasts lift the parish hall
nearby a stream waters small fields of beans
onlookers in dressclothes waltz the school gym
self-conscious fabulation on fabulation
one-story adobes with two or three rooms
pitched tin that shines in the sun
long front porches
when they leave their houses they keep an eye out
for stray hens or for dead cedar for post
what I have seen almost everywhere corresponds to the earlier
& true time one has no right to claim
the consequence of this is the only possible one
it is possible that another person is born
of tenderness & fantasy
institutions which daily battle for dominance
at a cattle roundup & rodeo
the value of which is not to be looked into
at the other end of the street screams a slaughterhouse
no one ought to breathe a word of it
free from images & determined solely
by structure the thin white bark of a sycamore
tenders assignations as befitting the time & circumstance
scattered throughout ranch country
the amorous spaces must be seen
as dreams bound & consumed
when they can’t sleep they go out bareheaded
for a cool drink
as apparitions who know carnal love

About the Author

Jane Miller has written twelve books, most recently Who Is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions, and including Working Time: Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel. She has performed her creative work and lectured on literature and the fine arts at universities, colleges, libraries, community centers, and public arts venues for over thirty years. She is the recipient of a Wallace Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Western States Book Award, and the Audre …

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Reviews

“… a marvelously penetrating, synoptic poet, her best moments sublimely diagnostic.” —Threepenny Review

“Reading Jane Miller’s poetry is like channel-surfing on acid: her deliberately interrupted narrative warps and weaves and makes the familiar strange and the strange recognizable.” —LA Weekly

“It’s heartening to see a poet work from the pure energy of language, without apology, as Jane Miller does.” —Boston Book Review