“Michael Miller’s view of the cycle of life is personal. Language in phrases building into lines without the benefit of punctuation becomes sentences in the clearest definition of the word—noun, verb, declaration. The speaker parses his life’s sentence in music and color and the interrupted light of his context—the warmth of his mother, a neighbor runaway’s poster in the midst of a “city spread(ing) like its own shrugging evidence.” There is tenderness in the yearning to signify. There is care for the line that narrates accidental then intentional life as preparation for the “first fleeting touch down” of one he hopes will follow.”
—Susan Davis
“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
“An understated beauty of gothic measure achieved with diamond clarity, The First Thing Mastered moves through the reader with something wonderful and unique. It has style.”
—S.A. Griffin
