I tried to stop reviewing books a few years back because I found it awkward and constraining knowing most of the authors whose books interested me. I've fallen off the wagon a little bit lately because a couple editors who have been good to me have asked for reviews, but I'm trying not to make a habit of it.
If I were still reviewing books, one of the ones I would want to do would be Light for the Orphans (Story Line Press 2002) by Wilmer Mills. First, let me make an aside that would be tacky in a formal review but I can do here in the bosom of friends. Despite the occasional backbiting by the Hezbollah wing of New Formalism, it is fantastic to see Story Line Press back in action. As most of you know, this press has published a significant percentage of essential New Formalist books--the Rebel Angels and A Formal Feeling Comes anthologies, as well as first books by Tim Murphy, Kate Light, David Mason and other underappreciated authors. Story Line went into receivership over a year ago amid much turmoil, and there was considerable doubt that it would continue.
Light for the Orphans is one of the books long delayed by this turmoil. It is a splendid book, and a perfect statement for Story Line redux.
Wilmer Mills is a southern agrarian poet in the truest sense of the term. As regionalism became trendy again in the past decade, there have been many "Southern" writers who remind me of the joke about faux Texans--"all hat, no cattle". The loving detail of Mills' sceneries authenticate his vision, but you can also feel his connection to his culture in his sense, so strong in the rural South, that Scripture helps define reality:
I've thought of wire, and even traps.
The hardware stores have motion lights
That flare when vermin try to eat
Your plants. But now I've given up.
It seems each garden has a way
To keep another creture out,
Like Eden's curse repeated now
And then. ("Last Thoughts, Going To Sleep")
I think of Noah's nightmare-job;
To gather pairs of all the snakes
In Paradise-gone-mad, the ones
He would have killed if word had not
Come down to bring them two by two. ("A Codex For Killing")
The poems that dominate this book are muscular blank verse narratives and dramatic monologues, such as the memorable "Journal Of A Deer Hunter". These poems are reminiscent of Andrew Hudgins at his finest, particular the Hudgins of The Never-Ending. Sometimes the narratives are more formal, as in "A Foster Mother's Thought Of Christmas" or less so, as in the stunning "The Dowser's Ear", but they are almost always powerful.
Given the strong overall flavor of the book, it would be easy to miss a handful of striking poems that are radically different from the most prominent ones. For instance, "The Last Castrato" is a haunting meditation seemingly disconencted from the narratives and monologues except by the skilled use of iambic pentameter.
Mills is not well-known, even in our small formalist community, probably because he is not persistent in pursuing publication. Poems in this collection have appeared in Poetry and The Hudson Review, but a majority of them are previously unpublished. Mills low profile may make it hard for this book to sell, which would be too bad for the author, the reinvigorated Story Line (
www.storylinepress.com) and readers of poetry who would love this book if they knew they should look at it.
Linear Mode
