BOOKS


Astronauts cover; photo by Karen Jerzyk
Astronauts

Winner of the 2022 Chad Walsh Chapbook Prize
36 pages
Beloit Poetry Journal, 2022
$12.00
"In the imagistically taut and heartbreakingly compelling poems of Astronauts, Amy Miller chronicles the relationship of two sisters: the older sister who does pills and drinks too much, and the younger sister, the speaker of these poems, whose heroes were all drunks, along for the ride until she’s not, having left for another life beyond her sister’s addictions. In ‘Cop’ the speaker says of her sister, ‘You should have seen her. She was so beautiful,’ and after her sister’s death she asks,‘Will she argue with me in my dreams?’ The answer is yes, and we do see her in the bittersweet trouble and love of poem after extraordinary poem."
—Maxine Scates, author of My Wilderness

“We enter these poems at our own risk, plunging into the author’s deepest inner and outer spaces, her absolute zero of memory, love and loss. Miller’s writing is ferocious and fiercely original. It is rare to feel oneself being changed in the course of reading poems. These will leave you changed.”
—John Witte, author of Disquiet


Cover image by Karen Jerzyk.




The Trouble with New England Girls coverThe Trouble with New England Girls

Winner of the Louis Award
68 pages
Concrete Wolf Press, 2018
$15.00
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"In Amy Miller's The Trouble with New England Girls, love can make you leave, a kiss can make you stay, and floral apologies are so endangered they're illegal but offered anyway. These poems track a wolf through Oregon and track grief across its shifting portraits, but whatever the metaphors pursued here, you never see the end coming. Miller knows what one line can do to another and how an image can make a poem open. Beauty is found in laundromats and pictures of food and from the perspective of drones, in all the places we never expected to find ourselves, and every shadow between ourselves and home."
—Traci Brimhall, author of Saudade and Our Lady of the Ruins 

"These poems brim with keen metaphors and spotlight observations. Intimate descriptions are conveyed like speaking to a friend, and with a humor that animates wide-ranging experiences from lovers to laundromats, even grief. Amy writes with tenderness while wielding metaphors like signal flags. This is assured writing. You will want more. I do."
—Allan Peterson, author of Fragile Acts and Precarious

"I love this book. Sweet/simple/complicated poetry discourse—every poem a story. The whole book is good writing; not one you’ll put down. An upmarket poet here, for sure."
—Grace Cavalieri, Washington Independent Review of Books

Cover image by Laurie Justus Pace.




I Am on a River and Cannot Answer cover
I Am on a River and Cannot Answer

Poetry chapbook, 20 pages
Downloadable PDF
BOAAT Press, 2016
 
Sadly, BOAAT Press seems to have gone out of business, and this chapbook is no longer available. But the entire chapbook, in slightly different form, appears in The Trouble with New England Girls (above)

The twin landscapes of grief and Western rivers are explored through two intertwining sequences of poems in this palm-size PDF chapbook, part of BOAAT Press’ innovative series of free online poetry books. One series of poems examines the mechanisms of mourning through cultural lenses as far-ranging as cruise ships, Western movies, and Star Trek, while the other takes us down an Oregon whitewater river both literal and metaphorical, with flash-scenes of wary locals, battle-scarred guides, dismantled dams, and miraculous wildlife. Exquisitely designed by Meg Willing.




White Noise Lullaby cover White Noise Lullaby

Poetry chapbook, 36 pages. 6" x 9"
Cyclone Press, 2015
$9.00

These 19 poems explore the bonds and abrasions of family and friendships, the effects of sudden tragedy on a small town, and miracles in miniature. With sisters arguing about the afterlife, a chicken who might save the world, serendipitous misspellings, and a pit bull with an ear for music, White Noise Lullaby delves into a universe that, by turns, seems blindly indifferent and achingly beautiful.






Rough House cover screen shotRough House

Online prose poetry chapbook
White Knuckle Press, 2016

From the introduction: “Tolstoy jokes aside, I found that my family was like others: never immune to melodrama, even the most distasteful kind. Writers have a compulsion to arrange these things, to lay them out corpselike and fold the arms and button the collars. You take something you hate to see and you present it. The names have been changed. Everything has changed.” White Knuckle Press has a long line of online chapbooks, specializing in prose poetry.





In the Hand coverIn the Hand

Poetry chapbook, 32 pages. 6" x 6"
Cyclone Press, 2014
$7.00

With vivid brevity, this collection of poems walks the confines of oppression, the wild life of dreams, and the harsh realities of balancing the two extremes. These short poems breathe with ferocity like postcards from an alternate reality where ordinary events and objects—from a nightmarish date to a backyard poplar tree—tell unexpected stories.





Beautiful Brutal cover
Beautiful Brutal: Poems about Cats
(Expanded Edition)

Poetry chapbook, 32 pages, 6" x 9"
Cyclone Press, 2014
$8.00
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“Miller has looked carefully at cat/human relations, the familiar-strange middle ground of contact, done the hard work of close perception and then shaped this coming-to-knowledge into free verse that is effective, informing, at times affectionate, but not sentimental. Time to let the critical cat out of the bag: Miller’s book is not just a good book of cat poetry, it is a good book of poetry.”
Fiddler Crab Review






Several Poetry Boxes - paper cubes with poems printed on themA hand holding a Poetry BoxPoetry Boxes

Art paper box poem
2" x 2" x 2"
$14.00 + $2.00 S/H (U.S.)
Available from author: amymillerediting[at]gmail[dot]com

Poetry Boxes are a hybrid of origami and poetry based on an 18th-century Japanese paper-art form called a temate baku, or “surprise box.” Each box is a poem: The title is printed on the top; the poem is read by turning the box clockwise. There are eight poems in the series, and I use whatever exotic art paper I can get my hands on at the time, so no two are alike. More info and some sample poems are on the Poetry Box page.





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