What do you think?
Rate this book
Ceremonial
Winner of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize, selected by Carl Phillips
In her debut poetry collection, Carly Joy Miller surprises and enraptures on every page. The visceral poems of Ceremonial figure the body at its most sublime and at its most feral, with equal attention. With an unflinching eye, Miller crafts psalms of petition and praise from the raw material of life.
The poems of Ceremonial disturb in such a way as to make us entirely rethink who we are, and where. Ceremonial offers a post-apocalyptic landscape to be navigated by poems that together become a moral compass—the compass Protean, however, ever-shifting, maybe trustworthy, and maybe not. Here, to bless a thing can mean to put an axe to it; the impulse to save what’s broken competes with an impulse to look indifferently away from it; the topography is one of damage—accident or what only looks, or is meant to look, like accident. And yet there is tenderness, too, and vulnerability. The poems variously revel in, regret, and feel strange compassion for the beast of desire—of restlessness—inside us all: “Still I kiss / his jaw wild with yellow // jackets. I shepherd / too long in his furs.” Part of the power of these poems is the coolness of their sensibility, a refusal to back entirely down: “Don’t blink in disbelief,” we’re told at one point, “Kill from the chandelier with a pearl strand. Swing the lights.” I stand persuaded.
–Carl Phillips, judge of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize
Carly Joy Miller’s poems are wild, restless creatures. They scare me in the best way, balancing between pleasure and pain, and brokenness and wholeness, with lyricism, intelligence, and disarming composure: “Nothing delights more / than his horns. // How they rouge me.” Reading Miller’s thrilling debut, Ceremonial, I’m reminded of what happens when something breaks: there’s a brightness, more facets to reflect the light.
–Maggie Smith
Here is the poet who knows the sensual art of speaking in tongues. […] “To be young and lopsided in faith”—not a kind of prayer one would expect from the young poet in any age, nevermind 2018. And, yet, here it is, the surprise of discovery. The new voice which is instantly recognizable as that rarest of occurrences: the real thing.
–Ilya Kaminsky, from the foreword
The current of language swept me up and carried me with seductive grace. I found myself rereading phrases, sentences, and entire poems, eager to experience again how the words were strung together. This fluid linguistic elegance seems counterintuitive, as there is something unbridled at the heart of these poems. They are peopled with spitfire girls in tune with the wilderness of their surroundings. There’s an edgy magic to these characters and these verses, a fable-like quality that still captures the moxie and fire that simmers underneath female coming-of-age.
–Lauren Kane, the Paris Review blog
In her debut poetry collection, Carly Joy Miller surprises and enraptures on every page. The visceral poems of Ceremonial figure the body at its most sublime and at its most feral, with equal attention. With an unflinching eye, Miller crafts psalms of petition and praise from the raw material of life.
The poems of Ceremonial disturb in such a way as to make us entirely rethink who we are, and where. Ceremonial offers a post-apocalyptic landscape to be navigated by poems that together become a moral compass—the compass Protean, however, ever-shifting, maybe trustworthy, and maybe not. Here, to bless a thing can mean to put an axe to it; the impulse to save what’s broken competes with an impulse to look indifferently away from it; the topography is one of damage—accident or what only looks, or is meant to look, like accident. And yet there is tenderness, too, and vulnerability. The poems variously revel in, regret, and feel strange compassion for the beast of desire—of restlessness—inside us all: “Still I kiss / his jaw wild with yellow // jackets. I shepherd / too long in his furs.” Part of the power of these poems is the coolness of their sensibility, a refusal to back entirely down: “Don’t blink in disbelief,” we’re told at one point, “Kill from the chandelier with a pearl strand. Swing the lights.” I stand persuaded.
–Carl Phillips, judge of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize
Carly Joy Miller’s poems are wild, restless creatures. They scare me in the best way, balancing between pleasure and pain, and brokenness and wholeness, with lyricism, intelligence, and disarming composure: “Nothing delights more / than his horns. // How they rouge me.” Reading Miller’s thrilling debut, Ceremonial, I’m reminded of what happens when something breaks: there’s a brightness, more facets to reflect the light.
–Maggie Smith
Here is the poet who knows the sensual art of speaking in tongues. […] “To be young and lopsided in faith”—not a kind of prayer one would expect from the young poet in any age, nevermind 2018. And, yet, here it is, the surprise of discovery. The new voice which is instantly recognizable as that rarest of occurrences: the real thing.
–Ilya Kaminsky, from the foreword
The current of language swept me up and carried me with seductive grace. I found myself rereading phrases, sentences, and entire poems, eager to experience again how the words were strung together. This fluid linguistic elegance seems counterintuitive, as there is something unbridled at the heart of these poems. They are peopled with spitfire girls in tune with the wilderness of their surroundings. There’s an edgy magic to these characters and these verses, a fable-like quality that still captures the moxie and fire that simmers underneath female coming-of-age.
–Lauren Kane, the Paris Review blog
- GenresPoetry
104 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2018
49 people want to read
About the author
Carly Joy Miller
6 books17 followersCarly Joy Miller is the author of Ceremonial (Orison Books, 2018), selected by Carl Phillips as the winner of the 2017 Orison Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Like a Beast (Anhinga Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 29, 2018
Ceremonial is fairytale, yes, but the kind where children get eaten alive. It's sexy too. It moves within cadence and lyric, and it doesn't bother calling out your name as much as it motions you over with a finger. It harks back to Woolf's Orlando, wherein these bodies are merely the costume for the soul and as such can be removed and transform and are malleable in a way that enables the reader to transform as well, in a single breath. There's a magic at work here that will encourage you to touch the fire, to move towards pain, to move towards duende because what we are on the other side is new, and experienced and frothing at the mouth. This is inspired and eclectic poetry that begs to be read over and over, that wants you to move into a world of uncertainty. It wants you to be the fawn. It wants to take advantage of you. And if you're not careful, you'll find yourself casting spells and praising beasts along with it.
March 20, 2018
Miller has a way of sliding images down the tumbling ramp of syntax, thoughts and pictures morphing fluidly from one to the next, that should be studied in poetry classrooms throughout the English-speaking world. An inventive, affecting, unbridled debut.
April 12, 2018
I love the wildness of these poems. CEREMONIAL hums with bee-song and salt, whispered invocations and shoulder blades and the heat of stars. Carly Joy Miller is an original and unforgettable voice. I’ll be thinking about these poems for a long, long time.
March 15, 2018
My goodness I love this book. Ceremonial is a trove of writing which engages the sensual and the spiritual: where the body intersects with music, with pain, with God. These poems are frenetic and clear-eyed. To Miller, anything can be a verb, anything can be made to move.
"A kiss quicks a valley / of thirst, and Lord, never / let them thirst. / Must I saint / myself at the altar / of your thighs..."
from "Ceremonial Psalm"
I highly recommend this collection.
"A kiss quicks a valley / of thirst, and Lord, never / let them thirst. / Must I saint / myself at the altar / of your thighs..."
from "Ceremonial Psalm"
I highly recommend this collection.
December 17, 2021
Love this dark, wet world. With iced lakes, goat spines, and snaring moss. Dying feels vibrant.
"Dream Ladder" took my breath away.
I admire the structure of this collection, the coming-back of themes.
(Buying this was my last-day-in-NYC treat to myself, found at The Strand after lunch with Paul.)
"Dream Ladder" took my breath away.
I admire the structure of this collection, the coming-back of themes.
(Buying this was my last-day-in-NYC treat to myself, found at The Strand after lunch with Paul.)
January 2, 2019
Breathtakingly lyric raw poems that feed directly into primal needs and desires. This interrogation and celebration of the body is both visceral and light to make for a stunning debut poetry collection.
August 29, 2019
This book is so strange and wonderful and melodious! I loved spending time in the gorgeous lyrical world that Miller has crafted.
August 11, 2021
PHEW! One of the best collections I've read. Ever.
Read
September 15, 2024YO WHY DIDNT I KNOW ABOUT THIS POET!!!
July 4, 2018
This collection of poems is alive, haunted, and haunting. Miller commemorates the war over bodies between the sacred and profane, her speakers often caught somewhere in the midst—protesting, pulsing, participating. “My nakedness is nothing holy,” Miller writes, and throughout Ceremonial all that is divine are small moments lifted high before “ceremonies bitter.” Suspense drives these devotionals to the human, blurring the way a body becomes a contested site: “You’re thinking terror—/you should hope for pleasure.” I was both moved and “too bothered/to move” while reading Miller’s phenomenal collection. I expect to find myself humbled in the same way when I return to this book of prayers.
January 14, 2019
First book of 2019! It's been about a week since I first finished reading it and I keep coming back to it. One of my favorite feelings in the world is when you're reading and just know you got another one - another favorite book! You want to make the book last longer so you purposefully read the book over several days. You're patient and you're rewarded because you spend more time rereading the poems, enjoying the language, the sound, the imagery, the inspiration. Maybe even memorize a line or two!
What a splendid book! I wanted to start the year strong and I just knew that Carly Joy Miller's Ceremonial was the go-to-book to do so. I'm bummed that I wasn't able to attend past readings (especially the launch at Books Are Magic where Keegan Lester, another favorite of mine, read as well - I feel like that was a really special night of poetry) where I could've heard the poet but so glad that Poetry.LA has an amazing reading/interview about Ceremonial on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi_YQ...
Miller beautifully reads three of her poems and has a really cool and informative interview with Lisa Grove where they talk about Ceremonial, the poems "Tikvah", "Simone's Refrain as Apocalyptic Ballad", and "Weathered Porch", and inspirations too - check it out!
What a splendid book! I wanted to start the year strong and I just knew that Carly Joy Miller's Ceremonial was the go-to-book to do so. I'm bummed that I wasn't able to attend past readings (especially the launch at Books Are Magic where Keegan Lester, another favorite of mine, read as well - I feel like that was a really special night of poetry) where I could've heard the poet but so glad that Poetry.LA has an amazing reading/interview about Ceremonial on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi_YQ...
Miller beautifully reads three of her poems and has a really cool and informative interview with Lisa Grove where they talk about Ceremonial, the poems "Tikvah", "Simone's Refrain as Apocalyptic Ballad", and "Weathered Porch", and inspirations too - check it out!
June 11, 2022
Wonderfully dark and playful, very relatable for me. Her stories are of childhood, religion and sacredness, trauma, decay, what it is to be in a body. These poems will invite you in from ice skating on a pond for hot cocoa and then run fingertips down the back of your neck and haunt you.
(* This it is not about content: the size of the book is odd and I liked that, but it formatted the poems in a frustrating way sometimes, too many orphaned phrases and words for my taste)
(* This it is not about content: the size of the book is odd and I liked that, but it formatted the poems in a frustrating way sometimes, too many orphaned phrases and words for my taste)
August 18, 2025
Exquisite!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews