College Town
Tebot Bach, 2010
60 pages
"In his extraordinary first collection, Michael Miller
wrings a spare and astonishing beauty from the most
ordinary of settings. His finely crafted poems pull us
into a dreamlike kaleidoscope, bombard us with image
and nuance. We travel his 'city awake on tea and
subtitles,' walk his frayed neighborhoods and back
streets, wander his desert, are captured by intense
glimpses of his characters. In College Town, the sound-
track is blues, playing faintly in the background as we
read on: loneliness etched with love, the tenderness of
ashes." -- Ricki Mandeville
The First Thing Mastered
Tebot Bach, 2013
93 pages
"Tracing an arc from infancy to adulthood, Michael
Miller's The First Thing Mastered meshes individual
experience with larger philosophies of causes, effects
and aftereffects. From an infant studying a crack on the
ceiling to a boy clearing a backyard of Santa Ana wind
debris to a pre-adolescent growing up in 'a house of
unsmiling men,' Miller finely crafts lines expressive of
poetry's capacity to preserve and transform reality.
From the nuanced art of these poems I learn how
different patience is from movement, and yet, how like
patience certain repeat movements can be." -- Irena
Praitis
Angels in Seven
Moon Tide Press, 2016
72 pages
"Angels in Seven brims with humanity. Like the
woman with pad and pen sketching the neighborhood
in one of his poems, Michael Miller traces 'the slim
bones of the surroundings' throughout this collection,
'the outlines of gathering, / the compulsion to touch
and not drink alone.' ... Whether simple gestures done
with no one looking or shared intimacies, Miller's
work reveals the struggles and glimpses where we find
meaning. And so this proves to be, ultimately, an
optimistic collection, 'an incantation against silence,
solitude. One rich with memorable lines. One that
deserves a closer look." -- Grant Hier