Iron Wheel (Phoenix Poets)

ISBN: 0226527972

Author: Miller, Greg

Condition: New

Product Description The poems in Iron Wheel are hard won, the product of the clash of cultures: Southern, religious, gay. Miller achieves an intense, disturbing, and singular poetic voice, capable of tenderness, but undaunted when forced to confront the harsh, often violent realities of contemporary life in the South. From Kirkus Reviews paper 0-226-52780-0 This slight volume by the Millsaps College professor, with its semi-formal verse, strikes a generally elegiac tone while brooding over the conflicts of being gay, southern, and religious. Word, in particular, sets the absolutist anti-gay sentiments of the Baptist South in the historical context of justifying slavery, and imagines suicide as one sad solution. Quieter poems create a collage of memories: doing farm chores with his father, his father cleaning corn husks for kindling, dressing chickens with his grandmother. The barnyard violence of Original Sin intrudes on an idyll of drinking fresh milk from the source, and the poet begins his deathwatches for friends and relatives, from stroke, old age, and AIDS. Northern places provide natural solace also, from clam-digging in New England to the image of an abandoned glass house, merging with its surroundings. Homosexuality here means both the sadness of a young boy exploited by his predatory teacher (Poem) and the lusts of an adult for a muscular, bare chested but wild Panhandler. At worst, student-profound, Millers modest verse occasionally rises to a hymnlike beauty. -- Copyright 1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Review Apart A Memory Animals Ariadne: 1 Ariadne: 2 Ariadne: 3 Chain Charm Chore Clay Pots Dark Horse Desire Dialogue The Dresses Farmer's Song Fire Flowers: 1 Fire Flowers: 2 Fire Flowers: 3 Fire Flowers: 4 Fire Flowers: 5 From The Museum Glass House The Golden Gate The Harrow Impediments In A Time Of Plague Insomnia Intensive Caer Waiting Room Iron Wheel Meditation At Land's End: 1 Meditation At Land's End: 2 Meditation At Land's End: 3 Meditation At Land's End: 4 Meditation At Land's End: 5 Meditation At Land's End: 6 Meditation At Land's End: 7 Milky Way New Year Original Sin Painted Desert Panhandler Perspective Phone Call Poem: 1 Poem: 2. A Dream Poem: 3 Revival: 1 Revival: 2 Revival: 3 The Ringing Shield Slaughter Sockets Song Story Stroke Words -- Table of Poems from Poem Finder About the Author Greg Miller is professor of English at Millsaps College. He is the author of Rib Cage and Iron Wheel, both published by the University of Chicago Press.