Watch
Watch
Strasbourg
The yellow and green rose, and the pink rock,
The chestnuts blooming, the cobblestone square,
Our Lady’s tower rising everywhere,
Dark timbered fronts; the mechanical clock
Whose rooster crows three times for Peter’s flock,
The Apostles, the old man’s and the child’s share
Of time—aspire I’d say to make me stare
And stop. I praise what I might otherwise mock,
The locked contingencies, the stock of losses,
Bright liquidity everywhere channeled,
A storied cityscape of destinies
Averted as when, turning, a young Turk tosses
His hands in the air and my chest’s pummeled,
“My brother, forgive me!” and my thoughts freeze.
In Watch, Greg Miller describes a fresh purposefulness in his life and achieves a new level of poetic thinking and composition in his writing. Artfully combining the religious and secular worldviews in his own sense of human culture, Miller complicates our understanding of all three. The poems in Watch sift layers of natural and human history across several continents, observing paintings, archeological digs, cityscapes, seascapes, landscapes—all in an attempt to envision a clear, grounded spiritual life. Employing an impressive array of traditional meters and various kinds of free verse, Miller’s poems celebrate communities both invented and real.
Praise for Iron Wheel
“Miller demonstrates that what Eliot said about reading a poem may be equally true of writing them: the best thing ‘is to be very, very intelligent’ and intelligence is not the same as erudition. Whether the world is made, found, or named, Miller offers an engaging portrait of things as they are.’’—David Orr, Poetry
Reviews
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
From the Heights
Digs
River
Excess
Not Proud
“Pain’s Required, Suffering Optional”
Gascoigne’s Weeds
Watch
Call
Sens
Shine
Lost
Wake
White (I)
The Future Queen
Regret
White (II)
Sail
In Arles
Water and Light
Le Cheval Blanc (Gauguin)
Caravaggio’s Saint Ursula
Late April Snow
Between Bonnard’s L’Atelier au Mimosa and L’Auto-Portrait
Nocturne
La Vierge de Douleur
Capital Towers
Salvation
Strasbourg
Protection
Common Ways
Pilgrim
Home
Crown
Holy Conversation
Employment
Come Out
Spring
The Lotus Tree
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