American Odalisque Poems

"American Odalisque is Jane Miller's third major collection of poems and establishes her as one of the most original and crucial poets of her generation. Whether the mode is personal, sentimental, or transcendental, Miller is a lyric poet exploring cultural context, breaking up the narrative into sudden metaphoric juxtapositions, utilizing rhetorical concerns to illustrate levels of cognition and dissociation. But like the best lyric poets, she is a poet of love and hope who expresses a tenderness that is quintessentially American. Her language is constantly evolving--sometimes idiomatically conversational, sometimes approaching a high formal style. Story or plot are not the point: her poems cannot be summarized or paraphrased. Working in a tradition that reaches all the way from Sappho to oral cultures of North America, Miller finds the truth of the poem inextricably bound to its musical expression"--Back cover