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[Midnights] (By: Jane Miller) [published: January, 2008]
Poet Jane Miller collaborates with artist Beverly Pepper on a highly personal journey through the debris of the poet’s crumbling relationship, and her mother’s descent into illness. Beautifully rendered poems and short chapters of poetic prose combine with Pepper’s chalk and oil drawings to form an intimate and unique meditation on the nature of love, of heartache, of the many midnights we, each and every one of us, live through and carry with us through our lives. “The goal is not to make sense of, but art of this story,” writes poet C.D. Wright in her introduction. “The goal is not to make a story but to experience the whole mess. There are mental sufferings and physical sufferings to go through; to apprehend if one can. There are the spent casings of history to sift through, pick up and examine. Calm-like, hysterical, forensic. This life not just a worn passage.” In the end, the light shines through Miller’s midnights and the rewards of passing through the darkness with her are countless.
- GenresPoetry
Paperback
First published January 31, 2008
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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 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 6, 2011
Miller, Jane
Saturnalia Books
13 E. Highland Ave
2nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19118
Jane Miller’s “Midnights” is almost like a personal journal of the poet. “Midnights” reveals a sequence of events throughout the poet’s own life. The significance of the title is intriguing, “Midnights”, it is the first thing I noticed, particularly, when thinking about the word “midnight”, dark and ominous come to mind, maybe even a last unpromising breath, the title itself is a glimpse into the pages to come. The curtains rise with the first poem:
It is mostly midnight
inhabiting a strange space.
It makes no difference to me
These first words are presented to display the select themes within the cover of the novel, whether the hands on the clock strike noon or four in the afternoon it is midnight that is embodied. The novel deliver’s an assortment of beautifully written poems and short chapters, all of which are poetic prose. Miller’s “Midnights” includes chalk and oil illustrations by Beverly Pepper, creating a unique spin upon the nature of the events that are described within the novel, the heartache of love, and of course the midnights that carry each of us through our lives. The introductory poems to each section are titled, the short chapters title less, which is the second thing I noticed. I liked how Miller used these poems to illustrate her observations on the written events within the book. To me it created a perpetual twist for the reader. While many of the subjects in Miller’s novel seem to lean to the darker side of the spectrum the poets approach remains open and flexible for the reader. The stories within “Midnights” are universal, ranging from Miller’s dying mom, the challenges that come with writing, a lover leaving, and affection for friends. I believe a challenge of Miller’s can be identified through her writings, finding the meaning of the events witnessed and experienced in life; a gift or a curse. Touchy relationships are depicted in the novel, all fingers point to the grief and loss; an example of this is the exert xix, Miller writes about the life of a woman named Virginia Woolf. The ink on the page reads, “Virginia Woolf’s mother dies when Virginia is thirteen. Stella, her half sister, dies two years later. Leslie, her father, suffers and dies a slow death from cancer.” Virginia drowns herself. Miller goes onto suggest that perhaps there could have been a different outcome of Virginia’s life if things were done differently, if she had married someone else, or lived a life without fear. Xix expresses a theme seen multiple times within the novel, the unavoidable. Dying, death, the cause water, engulfing the lungs, drowning haunts “Midnights”; literal and a metaphor for misery. Life can sometimes swallow us whole and pain and fright win. The novel ends with a fresh start for Jane miller, not only has she lived through these events, she’s healing her wounds and moving on, she remembers and puts it on paper. I would recommend this book for someone who is willing to learn about the realities and hardships that can and may occur in ones own life.
Saturnalia Books
13 E. Highland Ave
2nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19118
Jane Miller’s “Midnights” is almost like a personal journal of the poet. “Midnights” reveals a sequence of events throughout the poet’s own life. The significance of the title is intriguing, “Midnights”, it is the first thing I noticed, particularly, when thinking about the word “midnight”, dark and ominous come to mind, maybe even a last unpromising breath, the title itself is a glimpse into the pages to come. The curtains rise with the first poem:
It is mostly midnight
inhabiting a strange space.
It makes no difference to me
These first words are presented to display the select themes within the cover of the novel, whether the hands on the clock strike noon or four in the afternoon it is midnight that is embodied. The novel deliver’s an assortment of beautifully written poems and short chapters, all of which are poetic prose. Miller’s “Midnights” includes chalk and oil illustrations by Beverly Pepper, creating a unique spin upon the nature of the events that are described within the novel, the heartache of love, and of course the midnights that carry each of us through our lives. The introductory poems to each section are titled, the short chapters title less, which is the second thing I noticed. I liked how Miller used these poems to illustrate her observations on the written events within the book. To me it created a perpetual twist for the reader. While many of the subjects in Miller’s novel seem to lean to the darker side of the spectrum the poets approach remains open and flexible for the reader. The stories within “Midnights” are universal, ranging from Miller’s dying mom, the challenges that come with writing, a lover leaving, and affection for friends. I believe a challenge of Miller’s can be identified through her writings, finding the meaning of the events witnessed and experienced in life; a gift or a curse. Touchy relationships are depicted in the novel, all fingers point to the grief and loss; an example of this is the exert xix, Miller writes about the life of a woman named Virginia Woolf. The ink on the page reads, “Virginia Woolf’s mother dies when Virginia is thirteen. Stella, her half sister, dies two years later. Leslie, her father, suffers and dies a slow death from cancer.” Virginia drowns herself. Miller goes onto suggest that perhaps there could have been a different outcome of Virginia’s life if things were done differently, if she had married someone else, or lived a life without fear. Xix expresses a theme seen multiple times within the novel, the unavoidable. Dying, death, the cause water, engulfing the lungs, drowning haunts “Midnights”; literal and a metaphor for misery. Life can sometimes swallow us whole and pain and fright win. The novel ends with a fresh start for Jane miller, not only has she lived through these events, she’s healing her wounds and moving on, she remembers and puts it on paper. I would recommend this book for someone who is willing to learn about the realities and hardships that can and may occur in ones own life.
Want to read
September 16, 2016evocative, powerful!!
August 12, 2008
A great book, pretty front loaded though if you ask me.
April 9, 2023
had to read this book in less than a week for class and because it is so dense (both in text and content) i think i needed much more time to be able to sit with this book properly. with the limited time I had to get through midnights, i was left feeling exhausted and wiped out by the end. it’s full of prose, a few poems, and images that seem to highlight the darkness and intensity of the words. the reality and hardship of life, love, loss, death, and the many midnights we all carry inside of us are explored throughout the book and ends on almost a feeling of relief and hope?
January 8, 2019
"The world of objects and places and colors, numbers and fragments, is shaken free as if a wind has loosened ripe grapes from an old vineyard. Do you hear them come loose? Good night.
Then you must leave, taking me with you? Now that you might know who I am or was, Jane, who are you?"
Then you must leave, taking me with you? Now that you might know who I am or was, Jane, who are you?"
May 22, 2010
Although essentially prose (if what is meant by essence is form)Midnights can just as well (as in, I am doing very well, thank you) be called poetry. If for no other reason than that Miller is best known as a poet. Midnights was published by Saturnalia as number 4 in a series of collaborations between artists and writers. Miller's prose/poetry has been fortuitously paired here with the black and white oil stick drawings of Beverly Pepper. With their hatch-lines and massed shapes, the drawings, while not illustrative, serve well to reinforce/ re-express the emotional intensity (grief, anxiety, pain)of Miller's words.
I bought this book at the University of Arizona bookstore (where Miller is a Prof of English) while on vacation in Tucson and in complement to her A Palace of Pearls, which I purchased in the same bookstore on almost the same vacation a year ago. Such personal details (references) are entirely in keeping with the book itself, which is a weave or relationship of such details: the senile debility of a mother, the shattering breakup of lover and beloved (how one fights for love and mourns for love by tooth and claw, by dream and drug and discipline). Everyone is named in Midnights. No one remains anonymous. Or so we are told. There are the suicides, the precursors, Celan and Woolf. And the famous and the unfamous dead: the girls thrown out of the bed of a pickup; Anne Frank in Amsterdam, 1944; the lover's murdered first love, the "husband"-friend's father's blowing his brains out, etc. But there is much more: art, music, food, too much drink, beaches, hotel rooms and private residences in many locales (Berkeley, Tucson, Amsterdam, Italy, China . . .). There are so many friends.
Miller's self-absorption inlove and loss, however, wears me out.
I bought this book at the University of Arizona bookstore (where Miller is a Prof of English) while on vacation in Tucson and in complement to her A Palace of Pearls, which I purchased in the same bookstore on almost the same vacation a year ago. Such personal details (references) are entirely in keeping with the book itself, which is a weave or relationship of such details: the senile debility of a mother, the shattering breakup of lover and beloved (how one fights for love and mourns for love by tooth and claw, by dream and drug and discipline). Everyone is named in Midnights. No one remains anonymous. Or so we are told. There are the suicides, the precursors, Celan and Woolf. And the famous and the unfamous dead: the girls thrown out of the bed of a pickup; Anne Frank in Amsterdam, 1944; the lover's murdered first love, the "husband"-friend's father's blowing his brains out, etc. But there is much more: art, music, food, too much drink, beaches, hotel rooms and private residences in many locales (Berkeley, Tucson, Amsterdam, Italy, China . . .). There are so many friends.
Miller's self-absorption inlove and loss, however, wears me out.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews