Post-

This fourth collection from Miller (after The City, Our City) is a fairly general meditation upon loss. From strained metaphors (as when a sonogram is called a "2-D cockpit" or a house's exterior "derma") to pat final lines (see "Inside the Book" and "Post-Elegy"), the work here is self-conscious. The most organic poems (i.e., those that don't rush headlong toward poeticism) are the simple ones, not overwrought but understated, as in "For Harper, 20 Months Old"—"I imagine your sleep/ as a flashlit tent" and "Through the monitor/ you come to us/ aerated/ like tapwater"—or some of the brief aphorisms in "Landings" (e.g., "It is good to remember:/ butterflies/ will sip blood from an open wound"). Those are the poems that get closest to the blurb that likens Miller to Charles Simic, a likeness otherwise absent and thus a poor reference point.