Carolyn Miller
Carolyn Miller
CAROLYN MILLER is a book editor, writer, and painter living in San Francisco. Three limited-edition letterpress books of her poetry, most recently a chapbook, This Is Mine (2004), have been published by Protean Press.
She is also the author of Savoring San Francisco: Recipes from the City’s Neighborhood Restaurants (Silverback Books, 2005). She leads writing workshops in San Francisco and France.
Light, Moving (2009)
“Carolyn Miller is a poet of the world as it is, but when she looks outward she sees marvels: ‘dark lamb’s blood/of dogwood,’ for instance. Or, in a lovely trope, seeing carrots from below, ‘underground, bright . . . torches.’ Or primroses ‘cheerful / as crayons.’ The world—shot through with delights, shadowed by death, freighted with its vicissitudes—undergoes transformations through the poet’s language and perception. The result is a resolute, unqualified joy in being.” —Frank X. Gaspar, author of Night of a Thousand Blossoms
After Cocteau (2002)
“In (Carolyn Miller’s) poems of sensual celebration . . . we are comforted by the voice of a mature poet equally talented in handling ekphrasis, the elegy, and the lyric, as well as narrative and persona poems. With . . . a painter’s passion for detail and imagery, she invites us to discover a ‘sense’ in which language can do what so many poets have wanted to do: make us hear and see. Generous and intelligent, this book is vibrant with emotional integrity and grace. —Laure-Anne Bosselaar
Praise for Light, Moving
Ted Kooser chose Carolyn’s poem “The World as It Is” for his American Life in Poetry column 269.
Philip Levine selected Light, Moving for his contribution to “The Editors’ Shelf” in the Winter 2009–10 issue of Ploughshares: “A woman goes about her life; she completes those common tasks she needs to stay useful and alive. She remembers the past, those she loved, those she failed to love enough. She puts it down in poems that never claim more than they deserve, and in the end they deserve all the attention the reader can bring, for they come as close to beauty and wisdom as poems come these days. While it’s true Ms. Miller is a Bay Area poet, these are neither New Age nor Language poems. Their music and vocabulary draw their strength from the best that has endured in poetry in English from Wyatt to Williams, and while they are original, they are also as ordinary as bread or wine.”
Garrison Keillor read Carolyn’s poem “A Warm Summer in San Francisco” on his program The Writer’s Almanac on July 5, 2009, and her poem “Rose Garden, Summer Solstice” on July 6, 2009.