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David Miller’s new book, Bend in the Stair, captures the benchmarks of a life through a surreal lens, heightening each moment with his verbal magic: You made it/past the divorce, then five years/in a gnat-cloud of stillborn lusts. Or in the knock-out opening poem, Retrieving My Father’s Ashes on My Birthday where Miller contrasts his father’s exit-compacted wordless gray grit-with his booming entry into this world: pissing, screeching, astounded. What becomes of our lawn egrets and un-mailed love letters? Where do we go driving away from the end? Miller’s precise, imagistic inquiries spark off the page, then settle deep into the heart. This is a book I’ll return to again and again.-Dzvinia Orlowsky, author of Bad Harvest, Silvertone, and Convertible Night
Bend in the Stair is framed by the poet’s transition from oldest child to oldest member of his birth family, following the death of his father. Reflections on the lives of his parents are woven with seasonal-cycle poems in settings variously suggesting home and the renewals that are always possible in familiar places. Humor is present here, as well as elegy. Broader events, including pandemic and environmental decay, enter the story as they must. What do you do next with what you’ve been given? How do your life’s traces survive? These are among the questions addressed in this collection.
