Blue Rust (Carnegie Mellon Poetry Series)
There's so much kindness and honesty in these poems . . . long spiraling sentences full of used cars and kung pao chicken, umbilical blood and rent money, lentils and sausage and death. . . .Blue Rustis a big beautiful book of poems--moving, sensuous, artful, full of courage and blessings. I love it.--Tony HoaglandThis book is terrific. Whether it's the true grit of blue rust or the true reckoning of the "blue compass needle," Millar's poems show us the verities of our human journeys. This is truly a poet of the people, a voice for our time.--Barbara RasMillar writes about people with grease on their hands, ordinary men and women trying to make it in a hard luck world. His poems always seem to be in motion, arriving or departing, true to the rhythm of our lives. He can be as consoling as a lucky red sweater, and as irreverent as your middle finger. He's a pleasure at every turn of the page.--Peter EverwineJoseph Millar'sBlue Rustis one of the most beautiful books I've read in years. In the tender, unflinching spirit of James Wright and William Carlos Williams, Millar explores the marginal, neglected nooks and crannies of private and public life. These poems combine remarkable simplicity of means with an even more remarkable complexity of effect . . .--Alan Shapiro