Poetry

The End of Childhood

Poems
By
Wayne Miller
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A tender and provocative collection of poems interrogating the troubles and wonders of both childhood and parenthood against the backdrop of global violence.
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A tender and provocative collection of poems interrogating the troubles and wonders of both childhood and parenthood against the backdrop of global violence.

From accomplished poet Wayne Miller comes a collection examining how an individual’s story both hues to and defies larger socio-political narratives and the sweep of history. A cubist making World War I camouflage, a forlorn panel on the ethics of violence in literature, an obsessive litany of “late capitalist” activities, a military drone pilot driving home after work—here, the awkward, the sweet, and the disturbing often merge. And underlying it all is Miller’s own domestic life with two children, who highlight the hopeful and ingenious aspects of childhood, which is “not // as I had thought / the thicket of light back at the entrance // but the wind still blowing / invisibly toward me / through it.”

The End of Childhood, Miller’s sixth collection of poems, is his most intimate, juxtaposing his own fraught youth with that of his children amid insurrection and pandemic, vacation and vocation, art and war. This piercing book spares nothing as it searches for a measure of personal benevolence and truth in today’s turbulent, brutalizing world—which it confronts through a singularly candid and lyrical voice.

ISBN
9781571315663
Publish Date
Pages
120
Dimensions
8.5 × 5.5 × 0.25 in
Weight
6 oz
Cover Art
Author

Wayne Miller

Wayne Miller’s books of poetry include Only the Senses Sleep, The Book of Props, The City, Our City, Post-, and We the Jury.

Praise and Prizes

  • “Wayne Miller’s sixth book of poems is his most moving and most spooky. Permeated by the damages of history, the brutalities of modernity, and the turmoil of consciousness, Miller’s poems are haunted into a gray lyric radiance. Often situated in wintry aftermaths, the poems have the lapidary quality of last-ditch communications. Still, despite its starting point in what’s dire, Miller’s work longs for the ‘shared breath’ of meaning, even if the only possible meaning is fragmented and oblique. These poems achieve the beautiful, uncanny fusing that Miller defines as poetry itself: ‘One mouth moving / another.’”

    Rick Barot
    author of Moving the Bones

  • “Wayne Miller possesses the range and wisdom of the timeless artist. Like Berryman, he personalizes the genre of cultural critique; like Auden, he historicizes the genre of autobiography. From this book’s opening pages we encounter the ripeness of the poet’s mind and the extent of his delight and disappointment in the world. I am in awe of this collection of poems, from its deft use of syntax to its dexterous lines and stanzas, from its command of both the short and long form to its expert narratives and fully landed endings: these reasons and more make Miller, to my mind, a true poet’s poet, a poet to learn from, emulate, and trust.”

    Kathy Fagan
    author of Bad Hobby

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