About the Book
In my fifth year, after World War II had ended,
I sat in my uncle’s closet with the door ajar and put on his dented helmet, gripping the handle of his bayonet. Armistice Day parades and playing war became a focus of my boyhood. I knew nothing of the maimed, the dead. Serving your country was a tradition in my family; I enlisted in the Marine Corps at eighteen. War, the search for love, and the courage of the blind occupied my mind and heart. Through the years these subjects have become the focus of my poetry.
At eighty, I hope this new volume becomes a distillation of war, love, and blindness. Empathy has been the core of the poetry I most admire.
Michael Miller
About the Author
Michael Miller’s first book, The Joyful Dark,
was the Editor’s Choice winner of The McGovern Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. His third book, Darkening the Grass, was a “Must Read” selection of the Massachusetts Book Award in 2013. His poem, “The Different War,” 2014 Winner of the W. B. Yeats Poetry Society, was anthologized in Yeats 150 (Lilliput Press, Dublin). His poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Sewanee Review, The New Republic, The American Scholar, Ontario Review, The Southern Review, Commonweal, Raritan, The Yale Review, Pinyon Review, and Passager. Born in 1940, Michael Miller served four years in the Marine Corps. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Praise for The Solitude of Memory
I’ve been an admirer of Michael Miller’s work for many years. In his latest book, The Solitude of Memory, he addresses the nuances of this contradictory world. Here, his empathy embraces the pain of soldiers and the poignant lives of the elderly. The book concludes with a long poetic sequence about the dilemma of a man coping with blindness and finding the light despite it. Most moving, perhaps, is when he writes about enduring love. Miller’s poems, each expertly wrought, are radiant.
Nikia Leopold, Ph.D., author of Healing with Shadows
For Booksellers & Media
Miller in the Media
Daily Hampshire Gazette “Book Bag: ‘The Solitude of Memory’ by Michael Miller; ‘It’s Hard Enough to Fly’ by Donald Wheelock”