Rib Cage (Phoenix Poets)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226528006 ISBN 13: 9780226528007

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2001

Under the sway of the indelible storytelling culture of the South, Greg Miller has crafted poems from all that he hears and sees around him. Written in a language rarely heard in modern devotion, the poems in Rib Cage show old communities disintegrating, extended families dispersing, and people in economic or personal distress struggling for dignity and a clear sense of their predicaments. From plain speech to evocative lyricism, from free verse to hymnlike eloquence, Miller deftly gives a voice and a history to the places he creates, places that, in the end, expand to encompass all of humanity.

About the Author:

Greg Miller is the chair of the English Department at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and the author ofIron Wheel, published by the University of Chicago Press.

From Publishers Weekly:

In Rib Cage, Greg Miller (Iron Wheel), chair of the English Department at Millsaps College, paints a tender but incisive social portrait of Southern culture, individuals, relationships, families. "Whenever they lay down, he couldn't sleep/ without his back turned toward her, so she left," he writes, recounting complicated events without judgment or fuss. In the soft cadences and syntactical and adjectival particularities of Southern speech, Miller's stories are quiet, understated and revealing of human complexity.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.