Ungodliness (Carnegie Mellon Poetry)

"This collection of vivid, readable, enticing poems is divided into three parts: Temples, Idols, and Relics. Temples deals with acts of rebellion with a push-pull reaction to, for example, the speaker's father: 'I am still / seething because my father beat me to all / that was lovely in the mouth and well in the world.' When she views William's undershirts she reflects that 'this / is not more to me than a man I've watched from a distance.' Idols reveals an eighth grade substitute teacher who 'had / a baby, but never a husband.' Miller also gives us insight into 'Blues' music that 'don't describe our lives anymore'; a college dormitory on fire, 'white bedsheets lifting a little / before the flash.' She also sees, without straining, meaning in flowers pressed in a book, photos of her grandmother's boyfriends, and riding a swimming horse. Leslie Adrienne Miller presents a series of ordinary images which seem to roll along smoothly until, almost casually, they zap the reader with more intensity than once at first thought. She makes us see anew." (Ohioana Quarterly, Fall 1995)