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Publisher:
Fugue State Press |
Release
Date: 2002 |
ISBN:
1879193086 |
Awards:
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Format
Reviewed: |
Buy
it at Amazon |
Read
an Excerpt |
Genre:
Poetry/Literary |
Reviewed:
2003 |
Reviewer:
Carolyn Howard-Johnson |
Reviewer
Notes: Reviewer Carolyn Howard-Johnson is the author of
This is the Place and Harkening |
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Songs
of Innocence
By Tim
Miller
A Poem by Any Other Name
Little Writing from the Mind
And Heart-Truly a Rare Thing
Are
these writings before me on the page poems? Vignettes? Songs? Quotations?
It matters not.
Tim Miller has written a book about
childhood that sent chills down my back from the first moment: "They
chased each other through a field just as the clouds hunted one
another above; they hid among the whispering weeds and crouched
beneath the thick sheets of unforgiving steel
"
If
a reader eschews feeling good, then this book is not for her. If
a reader can embrace Dostoyevsky's quote, "You must know that
there is nothing higher, or stronger, or sounder, or more useful
afterwards in life, than some good memory, especially a memory from
childhood," then it is definitely hers to hold in her hand
and in her heart.
Songs
of Innocence tells short stories (are they stories?) that will make
you laugh or cry as surely as if they were full-length movies or
a novel of that lives through the ages. Each piece of truth (fiction
is it? or truth?) is numbered. The intimate horror of Number 95
is worth the cost of this small volume, enough to shame us, make
the best of us think about what it is that we do, think, and pray
for in this world.
Number
4 is simply a quote from Baudelaire: "Genius is no more than
childhood recaptured at will." Need I say more?
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