The Book of Props

The narrators in this mesmerizing collection often desire to hold time still — in moments of love, yes, but also when feeling fully located in a particular place or experience. Yet they also acknowledge that to hold time still would mean the death of love, the death of experience. Thus, the grounding and locating sensory images that surround us — and the eye that apprehends them — become greatly important. At the heart of the book is “What Night Says to the Empty Boat,” a sequence of lyric poems in which the three main characters — Justine, Clarence, and Andy — drift to and from, together and apart, viewed through the dispassionate lens of the unspoken fourth main character. An artistic and philosophical endeavor to place oneself in the world, this stunning collection is a wholehearted embrace of being, where technique and subject come together in a remarkable combination of personal lyric and formal innovation.

Wayne Miller is a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Bess Hokin Prize, Miller currently lives in teaches at the University of Central Missouri.