“It’s no crime to be tired of the sun,
to be secretive, hiding your pain.
We peer now into the choppy rooms,
the windows wavy with age and rain.”
– excerpt from “Kiski Flats” by Joseph Millar
Asked once how he discovered poetry, writer Joseph Millar said, “I started out wanting to write fiction, but I could never think of plots. I was good at description, though, and making statements of feeling.” Millar’s gift is creating pictures in words so vivid and heartfelt that his imagery stays with you long after the read. His third book of poetry is a force of emotion, more edgy and nuanced than ever.
The title, Blue Rust, suggests aging, neglect, retrospection and decline – but the lyric inside balances the dark with tremendous hope and light. Millar’s style is clean, unsparing, and inviting. By focusing intently on the very personal, he paints wonderfully communal lifescapes. It’s rusty love and loss that best connect us.
Millar has won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a Pushcart Prize. His work has appeared in such magazines as DoubleTake, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, APR, and Ploughshares. Millar teaches in Pacific University's low-residency MFA.
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