What the Blood Knows, Poems by Peggy Miller
Like
any good scientist, Peggy Miller understands the power of naming, and
in What the Blood Knows she attempts nothing less than a taxonomy
of the world in verse. In her powerful poems, she does far more than name
the things of the world: she embodies them.
"In What the Blood Knows, Peggy Miller marries poetry to science in order to satisfy her ravishing curiosity about the world. To know, and to say, those are the two projects undertaken in this singular collection: 'I'm so hungry to understand / a thing, anything...' she confesses in one poem, which later proposes that theory is 'a casual cognate of theism.'That kind of fine, intellectual wit is at work everywhere and yet her knowing is tempered by a sense of inadequacy in the face of the ineffable: 'My life depends on faculties beyond / the liminal...What does it know with its milligram of wits.' The tension between a love of knowledge and the acknowledgment of how little can finally be known holds this collection together and propels it 'toward the riddle of infinity...never getting any closer' though the achievement of these poems argues the effort is worth it." --Kurt Brown
"A tour de force, Peggy Miller's new collection of poems blazes a way for all who seek to know the universe as it is today, theoretical strings attached. She has taken modern science and contemporary cosmological theory and traced their connections to the humblest phenomenashallots, alfalfa, bananas and bindweed. She touches 'the rumored edge' of the universe, sees the earth pulled by 'a moon who drags / like a three-year-old at her knees,' establishes a foundation of 'material facts / upon which to stack my sleek towers / of speculation,' and writes, always, 'with precision and delicacy.' Her poem 'The Buttercup' is a masterpiece. Do you think I exaggerate? When did you last read how blood in its vessels 'knows // in the black measure of universe whispering / among her corpuscles there is only local time, / brief and brittle, and this is her body'?"--Kelly Cherry
"This new volume from the fine American poet, Peggy Miller, succeeds in revealing harmony in the intricacies of the universe. She explores the many ways we connect to all that lives. Intrinsic to her theme is a confidence that the human spirit will prevail 'in a shower of timeless light.' Miller writes, 'If only at some/ deeper and undiscovered dissection of particle,/ the stuff we're made of is infinitely old.' The reader's mind is exercised and enlightened by this exquisite, sharply focused book. It demands frequent reading, and rewards the reader with broad insights into existence."--Kathleen Bryce Niles
"In these finely wrought poems, Peggy Miller interweaves the sublime with the mundane revealing bonds between the seen and the unseen. Thus, she traces dark matter's 'song' in the 'call of the ivory-billed woodpecker,' and divines the mysteries of being (and un-being), paradoxically, in the 'expanse between atoms.' Seamlessly, Miller unites individual plants and animals with her meditations on mortality and consciousness, thereby illuminating 'what's going on in the universe.' This is a book to read repeatedly for its myriad riches. It's brimming with splendid insights, surprising cross-species affinities, a brilliant wedding of science and soul, and startling, resonant truths about being human, and the miraculous world we inhabit."--Maurya Simon
Peggy Miller leads poetry workshops and is an associate editor for The Comstock Review. She has an MFA from American University. She is author of the chapbook, Martha Contemplates the Universe, Frith Press 1999, and a Greatest Hits chapbook from Pudding House, 2003. Her poems have appeared in Connecticut River Review, Karamu, Lip Service, The Listening Eye, Lucid Stone and many more. She lives in The Villages, Florida with her husband Phil Wolfson.
ISBN: 978-1933456805, 84pages, $17.00