Unrest by Chloe Yelena Miller

These poems rest easily in the world because they are so much of it: family, love and loss, mixed inextricably in the crucible of food, of consideration and preparation, literal and figurative, of artichokes and lemon water, tomatoes, figs, of guava paste on dry toast, foods that seduce and sustain us. Yet the unrest from which she draws her title is, indeed, present—because we are made of that as well. “There is a wanting,” she says, and we know exactly what she means. Miller recognizes the abundance of possibility in “earthly flavor,” and these poems are so precious to her readers because it’s that flavor that “binds us to what we understand.”

–Renée Ashley, most recent book is Basic Heart

Many lines of Miller’s lure me back: a bag coming “unhinged in transit,” a daughter massaging her father’s eyelids “as if petting a goldfish,” and the sore humor of, “She was no one’s first love.” At her side, we manage to navigate a memory without breaking its seal and then painfully must also admit with her that it is indeed we who “haunt the dead to bring them back . . . We write, selfish.” “Haunt me,” she conjures, while the reversals in grammar and syntax this poet enacts come back to haunt us.

–Nicole Cuddeback, author of The Saint of Burning Down

Unrest is the perfect title for this collection of haunting, edgy, spare-to-the-point-of-great-expansiveness poems. This is an exceptional debut by a young poet unafraid of being understood while at the same time writing with utter originality. Read this book!

–Thomas Lux, most recent book is Child Made of Sand

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]