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August Zero
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1993
9 people want to read
About the author
Jane Miller
12 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This is Jane^^^^^Miller
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 27, 2022
I can see the work here. I can appreciate the phrasing, the imagery. But this type of exercise does not move me. Cut phrases out of novels, toss the slips into a lottery bin and pop them out in random order. Ideas, words that start to go somewhere and jettison themselves into another dimension. Lack of meaning doesn't work for me.
One reviewer wrote that reading Miller's work was like channel surfing on acid. He's right but he meant it as praise. Winner of the Western States Book Award. Academic posturing without substance.
A tossup between one star and two. May deserve two but I really dislike this type of "poetry". I disliked it so much that I wrote a poem about it:
THE PERFUMO AFFAIR
A woman last read this book.
I flutter the pages and perfume
lifts from the crevices
and flies on aromatic wings
to my senses.
Faint, lovely, exotic.
Was it you?
Who reads poetry
wearing perfume, dropping
pheromones into the binding.
The author's words are boring,
like reading a dissertation
on fluid dynamics
but the perfume swirls
into my head and caresses.
She crawls into my bed
this lovely succubus of the book.
I inhale her scent
sent into my dreams and forget
those unsynapsed words.
One reviewer wrote that reading Miller's work was like channel surfing on acid. He's right but he meant it as praise. Winner of the Western States Book Award. Academic posturing without substance.
A tossup between one star and two. May deserve two but I really dislike this type of "poetry". I disliked it so much that I wrote a poem about it:
THE PERFUMO AFFAIR
A woman last read this book.
I flutter the pages and perfume
lifts from the crevices
and flies on aromatic wings
to my senses.
Faint, lovely, exotic.
Was it you?
Who reads poetry
wearing perfume, dropping
pheromones into the binding.
The author's words are boring,
like reading a dissertation
on fluid dynamics
but the perfume swirls
into my head and caresses.
She crawls into my bed
this lovely succubus of the book.
I inhale her scent
sent into my dreams and forget
those unsynapsed words.
September 27, 2022
With very few exceptions, this isn't poetry. It's unremarkable prose with line breaks, and it's as boring and pretentious as fuck.
January 19, 2023
"Between one abstraction and another you yourself quietly and fiercely participate in a disappearing place, one you loved and were prepared to enter with great humility"
"Whose fault was it, as far as art was concerned?"
"Language is a cross between an appetite and a mouth"
"A society intent on living in the present tense likes coming home and doing nothing"
"Are we enjoying a false immortality of imagery, the splendor of moonlessness overlooking a sea?"
"Everyone's amphetamine is a complex intent."
"I tried to give the illusion of weightlessness, or at the very least a sense of rapprochement with gravity, whereby my head remained light while my heart suffered and my soul burned"
"She wondered how to make the new faithful to the original. Everything seemed so much itself, and already something else."
"In other words it's a shock to love someone else entirely."
"My idea about love misshapen into a sound, no, into an argument or a story I forget"
"Noise on the brain, habitually tooled to the point it drove us practically insane"
Favorites: Screening, The Impossible, New Body, Marin Headland
"Whose fault was it, as far as art was concerned?"
"Language is a cross between an appetite and a mouth"
"A society intent on living in the present tense likes coming home and doing nothing"
"Are we enjoying a false immortality of imagery, the splendor of moonlessness overlooking a sea?"
"Everyone's amphetamine is a complex intent."
"I tried to give the illusion of weightlessness, or at the very least a sense of rapprochement with gravity, whereby my head remained light while my heart suffered and my soul burned"
"She wondered how to make the new faithful to the original. Everything seemed so much itself, and already something else."
"In other words it's a shock to love someone else entirely."
"My idea about love misshapen into a sound, no, into an argument or a story I forget"
"Noise on the brain, habitually tooled to the point it drove us practically insane"
Favorites: Screening, The Impossible, New Body, Marin Headland
June 29, 2010
I first read August Zero for a course in Postmodern Poetry at Sonoma State University back in 1996. I append the "reader's response essay" I wrote at the time:
“There was this seduction/ by the shells, the stones, the wind, aided by our thirst.” (Blanks For New Things) Jane Miller immerses us in a material world, where the actual substance of things carries a charge. She creates a distinct and dazzling imagery, with little use of metaphor. In Any Two Wheels, she goes even further and actively deconstructs figures of speech, “that pair in the tunnel of love/-and it is a tunnel, and it is love.” She returns the words to their referents and reverses the process of abstraction, wherein “we are/ being made into words even as we speak.” (Poetry) She pierces the mediated experience of late 20th century American culture with the tangible weight of flesh and blood and wood and stone.
Miller successfully calls forth the presence of things in her poetry. She lists and she names; branch, bridge, wood, ramp, ballpark, airport, headlamps, mall, cement, etc. (The Poet) This naming becomes both a chant (an invocation) and a conversation. The interchange initiated takes place both off and on the page, as Miller also chooses a conversational tone when performing her work. She seeks to thus ease her listeners and readers into the more difficult aspects of her poetry (e.g., the many leaps of association and juxtaposition). Hers too are the manners of seduction, refined with music and color, yet based in a language so actual that it is like “the bare earth, packed hard and nailed/ to the tune of the unconscious.” (August Zero)
In Flames Light Up The Rough Walls and Earnest Faces, Miller lays out her mother’s tablecloth for us and reveals our human fate, unequivocally linked to the fate of the material world. Each of us has a stake in the folding and unfolding of the cloth, our hands smoothing the creases, “touching language directly.”(Any Two Wheels) If words can become acts with which we “fiercely participate in a disappearing place” (The Poet) then suggestive words may also be our last defense against the “indifferent men with indifferent plans” (Flames...) who have built the condos wherein beauty can only endure as a treasure passed from mother to daughter. Miller recognizes this subversive potential in language and the poet’s inclination and task, which is to do “the serviceable and natural thing,/ the illegal thing of keeping the language alive.” (Turning Over The Earth)
“We name the world with a word in mind,/ and then locate the thing in the leaves.” (Into a Space My Time Has Gone) The language comes back to life when the process of abstraction is reversed, when ideas are returned to matter. In Sequel, Miller turns our reality around when she says, “Let the illusion of time be a woman racing in heels on smooth stones for a train.” Language is both act and abstraction, however. Thus its alignment with the material world will necessarily be approximate. The word is ultimately not the thing, but evocative language can bring us into the presence of the real. Miller acknowledges that “we can’t touch exactly/ but attempt a profound correlation.” (August Zero) The truth of lovers is also the truth of language.
In her poetry, Miller takes on a certain responsibility, that of speaking “with the least important/ least visited, raped, riddled/ speech in nature.” (The Enchanted Forest) and, in so doing, avoiding the “false immortality of imagery.” (Screening) Hers is an ethics of reclamation, of shoring up, of finding both the words and the acts that will give “every mountain...back pinecones” (Beauty) and that will once again “help us/ spend the night.” (Cast From Heaven) This is fit and arduous work for lovers; lovers of language, lovers of men and women, lovers of this “curve in space.” Jane Miller is doing this work well, seducing us, exchanging with us “the material body of our message/ the joy in true contact/ with things, merciful things.” (The Enchanted Forest)
“There was this seduction/ by the shells, the stones, the wind, aided by our thirst.” (Blanks For New Things) Jane Miller immerses us in a material world, where the actual substance of things carries a charge. She creates a distinct and dazzling imagery, with little use of metaphor. In Any Two Wheels, she goes even further and actively deconstructs figures of speech, “that pair in the tunnel of love/-and it is a tunnel, and it is love.” She returns the words to their referents and reverses the process of abstraction, wherein “we are/ being made into words even as we speak.” (Poetry) She pierces the mediated experience of late 20th century American culture with the tangible weight of flesh and blood and wood and stone.
Miller successfully calls forth the presence of things in her poetry. She lists and she names; branch, bridge, wood, ramp, ballpark, airport, headlamps, mall, cement, etc. (The Poet) This naming becomes both a chant (an invocation) and a conversation. The interchange initiated takes place both off and on the page, as Miller also chooses a conversational tone when performing her work. She seeks to thus ease her listeners and readers into the more difficult aspects of her poetry (e.g., the many leaps of association and juxtaposition). Hers too are the manners of seduction, refined with music and color, yet based in a language so actual that it is like “the bare earth, packed hard and nailed/ to the tune of the unconscious.” (August Zero)
In Flames Light Up The Rough Walls and Earnest Faces, Miller lays out her mother’s tablecloth for us and reveals our human fate, unequivocally linked to the fate of the material world. Each of us has a stake in the folding and unfolding of the cloth, our hands smoothing the creases, “touching language directly.”(Any Two Wheels) If words can become acts with which we “fiercely participate in a disappearing place” (The Poet) then suggestive words may also be our last defense against the “indifferent men with indifferent plans” (Flames...) who have built the condos wherein beauty can only endure as a treasure passed from mother to daughter. Miller recognizes this subversive potential in language and the poet’s inclination and task, which is to do “the serviceable and natural thing,/ the illegal thing of keeping the language alive.” (Turning Over The Earth)
“We name the world with a word in mind,/ and then locate the thing in the leaves.” (Into a Space My Time Has Gone) The language comes back to life when the process of abstraction is reversed, when ideas are returned to matter. In Sequel, Miller turns our reality around when she says, “Let the illusion of time be a woman racing in heels on smooth stones for a train.” Language is both act and abstraction, however. Thus its alignment with the material world will necessarily be approximate. The word is ultimately not the thing, but evocative language can bring us into the presence of the real. Miller acknowledges that “we can’t touch exactly/ but attempt a profound correlation.” (August Zero) The truth of lovers is also the truth of language.
In her poetry, Miller takes on a certain responsibility, that of speaking “with the least important/ least visited, raped, riddled/ speech in nature.” (The Enchanted Forest) and, in so doing, avoiding the “false immortality of imagery.” (Screening) Hers is an ethics of reclamation, of shoring up, of finding both the words and the acts that will give “every mountain...back pinecones” (Beauty) and that will once again “help us/ spend the night.” (Cast From Heaven) This is fit and arduous work for lovers; lovers of language, lovers of men and women, lovers of this “curve in space.” Jane Miller is doing this work well, seducing us, exchanging with us “the material body of our message/ the joy in true contact/ with things, merciful things.” (The Enchanted Forest)
November 28, 2011
Jane Miller hits a high note with August Zero
Jane Miller
August Zero
Copper Canyon Press, 1993
Jane Miller has astounded the world of poetry with her new collection of poems, August Zero. Following her acclaimed collection of poems called Memory at These Speeds; New and Selected Poems, August Zero takes a different setting than the futuristic one and talks about contemporary life and language.
The funny and bizarre thing about Jane Miller’s poetry is that it attempts to take on a language of it’s own. The main focus of this collection of poems is to show how human suffering is born through language. Miller tries to recreate this feeling in her poetry and therefore her poetry becomes very elusive and mysterious at times. She creates weird fragmented sentences and uses a plethora of metaphors and references that allude to meaning that is hidden behind bizarre and fantastical imagery.
Furthermore, what’s important to note is the juxtaposition of her poems and themes. She starts off describing the contemporary life of a poet and then brings in her theme on language and uses love and intimacy as a connection between the two. On the surface, her poems revolve around the love of two women but deep within her poems scream their frustration for the human being and it’s suffering due to language. She brings in key moments like press coverage on the Gulf War to portray the language being used to create the problems of contemporary life.
However, what is most notable is the way Jane Miller writes. I find her writing to be both interesting and exhausting. She writes with such complexity and tries so hard to portray the themes of her collection of poems that the reader becomes lost. It is intentional, or course, and it shows Miller’s insight of how she wanted this collection to look and feel. Her poem Plasma is a great indicator of both her complex writing style and her main point. In one line she describes war, “We hear the explosives destroy the weapons, we see the chemical sky gild the clouds,” and in another line she shows what humanity is thinking and how wrong it is that we think this way: “Mountains the disappear in a calculated flash. We feel like we are saving the globe.” Another example of her weird, awkward writing is her poem Scattered Alphabet. “On a hunt for our parent sun, a whole day, a whole city involved, there’s a sense of overdoing it, a monotone, and when we find it, no longer yellow-never really- looking at it, our headache is someone else’s collapsed in space.” Her words are very elusive and she loves making her poetry sound otherworldly. This adds to the complexity of language and human suffering. It adds to the emotion of trying to understand what is wrong with contemporary life.
Lastly, Jane Miller does an amazing job at conveying her themes through poetry and through the feeling and look of her poetry. She masterfully describes contemporary life with sexual undertones and brings in her universal message with vague and mysterious rants on war and humans in general.
Jane Miller
August Zero
Copper Canyon Press, 1993
Jane Miller has astounded the world of poetry with her new collection of poems, August Zero. Following her acclaimed collection of poems called Memory at These Speeds; New and Selected Poems, August Zero takes a different setting than the futuristic one and talks about contemporary life and language.
The funny and bizarre thing about Jane Miller’s poetry is that it attempts to take on a language of it’s own. The main focus of this collection of poems is to show how human suffering is born through language. Miller tries to recreate this feeling in her poetry and therefore her poetry becomes very elusive and mysterious at times. She creates weird fragmented sentences and uses a plethora of metaphors and references that allude to meaning that is hidden behind bizarre and fantastical imagery.
Furthermore, what’s important to note is the juxtaposition of her poems and themes. She starts off describing the contemporary life of a poet and then brings in her theme on language and uses love and intimacy as a connection between the two. On the surface, her poems revolve around the love of two women but deep within her poems scream their frustration for the human being and it’s suffering due to language. She brings in key moments like press coverage on the Gulf War to portray the language being used to create the problems of contemporary life.
However, what is most notable is the way Jane Miller writes. I find her writing to be both interesting and exhausting. She writes with such complexity and tries so hard to portray the themes of her collection of poems that the reader becomes lost. It is intentional, or course, and it shows Miller’s insight of how she wanted this collection to look and feel. Her poem Plasma is a great indicator of both her complex writing style and her main point. In one line she describes war, “We hear the explosives destroy the weapons, we see the chemical sky gild the clouds,” and in another line she shows what humanity is thinking and how wrong it is that we think this way: “Mountains the disappear in a calculated flash. We feel like we are saving the globe.” Another example of her weird, awkward writing is her poem Scattered Alphabet. “On a hunt for our parent sun, a whole day, a whole city involved, there’s a sense of overdoing it, a monotone, and when we find it, no longer yellow-never really- looking at it, our headache is someone else’s collapsed in space.” Her words are very elusive and she loves making her poetry sound otherworldly. This adds to the complexity of language and human suffering. It adds to the emotion of trying to understand what is wrong with contemporary life.
Lastly, Jane Miller does an amazing job at conveying her themes through poetry and through the feeling and look of her poetry. She masterfully describes contemporary life with sexual undertones and brings in her universal message with vague and mysterious rants on war and humans in general.
December 20, 2009
A strangely intriguing collection of poems that capture the mood of the late '80s/early '90s perfectly. Reminds me of Sharon Olds' mid-career in terms of theme; spirituality, politics, war, death, sex. Every piece in here has such precise focus.
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March 15, 2013811.54 M6485a 1993
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews