Who Is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions

by Jane Miller

"Her lusher effusions gain astringency from an achingly palpable heartbreak, and from an increased awareness of technology, commodity, politics: swoon meets zoom." —Boston Review

"Jane Miller is by far one of our best poets writing today . . . Miller is like the NASA space station of poetry: out of this world, yet of it, and still looking down. From her peculiar and important vantage she blows us kisses in the form of images that hit their mark." —Lambda Book Report

Jane Miller's eleventh book, Who Is Trixie the Trasher? and Other Questions, is a hyper-political and brassy collection of poems that questions authority, sexism, ageism, and romance in the face of mortality. Differing from her earlier poems in their range and urgency, this collection retains Miller's signature lyric voice, personal yet thrilling in its associative leaps. Her intimate language illuminates and soothes our current trauma—especially as experienced by women—where nightmarish reality must answer to human dignity.

. . . Would you ever catch her at home, washing
her panties before dawn, her dishes,
leveling with you in this sexist world
of male gaze and female fuckability, everyone looking
for a little empathy in the end? . . .

Jane Miller is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including A Palace of Pearls, winner of the 2006 Audre Lorde Award. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim fellowship and the Western States Book Award. She currently resides in Tucson, Arizona.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2018

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This is Jane^^^^^Miller

Reviews

[Andy Oram · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose this book because Miller has such a playful way with language, turning everyday speech into the kinds of paradoxes that makes up so much good poetry. Colloquial phrases abound, as when she reports a violent attack and says "What is not apprehended at this time", punning on "apprehend" as both to "understand" and to "arrest" someone. I also love when Miller takes words outside everyday usage for breathtaking expressiveness ("As a dog / scratched a dirt floor, / "we scrape womb-shaped lamps / to plant new bulbs"). As the book's title suggests, questions barge through many of the pieces. The shadow of death (naturally or through war) looms over many of the poems, as well as the inadequacy of poetry. Even love (for partners or for children) is anxious. One poem, Picaresque, is a mini-novella in 9 pages, engrossing but still a bit prosaic and self-conscious.