“To the House of the Sun”: Review
The historian, medievalist, and poet Jeff Sypeck has just published the most thorough review yet of my long poem, To the House of the Sun. The highlights are pasted below, but I encourage anyone to read the entire review here. And while you’re there, check out the rest of his blog, where he writes about other long poems, and all things medieval. Autographed copies of the book are still available here at a steep discount; simply choose the seller S4N Books. *** […] Tim Miller has joined a select group of quirky poets who feel called to contend with a neglected form, the book-length narrative poem, and what he does with it is brilliant. […] To the House of the Sun evokes millennia of faith, storytelling, and scholarship simply by committing to its orthography: from its first lines, it looks like the typed-up notes of a young scholar seized by inspiration as he transcribes and translates a cryptic inscription. Look closer, though, to see the designs of a careful poet: these lines mark where the singer’s words intersect time; alliteration evokes a sense of place (“the sands of Savannah facing the sea”); and psalmic repetition gives them incantatory power, affirming poetry’s roots in enchantment. This could be Gilgamesh, King David, or Hildegard of Bingen, and Miller honors that ageless mysticism here. To the House of the Sun sounds and feels like an ancient text, layered with fragments of sources and traditions, a […]
