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Lesson in Progress
"This poet writes love poems for the twenty-first century, hip to the digital signals we send, yet fully and fiercely aware that there is still no app or algorithm for the figure a poem makes." —2021 Selden Whitcomb Prize judges
Lesson in Progress (2021) is a collection of nineteen poems written during lockdown in 2020. Each one assures us that time is moving, despite how stuck we feel at times. In the robotic routine of isolation, poetry guides us to beauty where we swore there was none left. These pages make us pay attention to the lesson in progress. This chapbook contains poems about friends, frustrations, power outages, cats, birthdays, and the space-time continuum. It features four poems awarded the 2021 First Place Selden Whitcomb Prize in Poetry.
Lesson in Progress (2021) is a collection of nineteen poems written during lockdown in 2020. Each one assures us that time is moving, despite how stuck we feel at times. In the robotic routine of isolation, poetry guides us to beauty where we swore there was none left. These pages make us pay attention to the lesson in progress. This chapbook contains poems about friends, frustrations, power outages, cats, birthdays, and the space-time continuum. It features four poems awarded the 2021 First Place Selden Whitcomb Prize in Poetry.
Unknown Binding
Published May 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 10, 2022
I thought 2020 was stupid, sad blur.
Then I read Oona Miller’s poems.
They’re arranged chronologically, and each one fixes a moment in time: a birthday, a morning routine, a power outage. Each one offers a freeze frame of turmoil, and then each one delivers an emotional punchline, knocking the year back into focus.
Yet this book never reads like Miller is trying to play historian. Other works from/about 2020 sometimes try to catalogue and dissect the year’s major events and themes, to tie all the threads into a coherent whole. Instead, Miller lets the year be messy and lets the lessons come in fragments.
So if somebody’s kids ever ask, “what was it like, living through 2020?” I’d probably hand them this book first.
Oh, and the writing is wonderful, look—
“Even if every decision ever made and
Each moment of our godforsaken timeline
Was a hammer-blow to shape the world so
We could rinse each other’s hair tonight,
Not a single second went down the drain.”
Then I read Oona Miller’s poems.
They’re arranged chronologically, and each one fixes a moment in time: a birthday, a morning routine, a power outage. Each one offers a freeze frame of turmoil, and then each one delivers an emotional punchline, knocking the year back into focus.
Yet this book never reads like Miller is trying to play historian. Other works from/about 2020 sometimes try to catalogue and dissect the year’s major events and themes, to tie all the threads into a coherent whole. Instead, Miller lets the year be messy and lets the lessons come in fragments.
So if somebody’s kids ever ask, “what was it like, living through 2020?” I’d probably hand them this book first.
Oh, and the writing is wonderful, look—
“Even if every decision ever made and
Each moment of our godforsaken timeline
Was a hammer-blow to shape the world so
We could rinse each other’s hair tonight,
Not a single second went down the drain.”
Displaying 1 of 1 review