Borderline Fortune
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A collection that explores inherited trauma on an individual and communal level, from a National Poetry Series–winning poet who “refus[es] the mind’s limits” (Carol Muske-Dukes)
Borderline Fortune is a meditation on intangible family inheritance—of unresolved intergenerational conflicts and traumas in particular—set against the backdrop of our planetary inheritance as humans. As species go extinct and glaciers melt, Teresa K. Miller asks what we owe one another and what it means to echo one’s ancestors’ grief and fear. Drawing on her family history, from her great-grandfather’s experience as a schoolteacher on an island in the Bering Strait to her father’s untimely death, as well as her pursuit of regenerative horticulture, Miller seeks through these beautifully crafted poems to awaken from the intergenerational trance and bear witness to our current moment with clarity and attention.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The National Poetry Series–winning second collection from Miller (sped) emerges from a world where "Truth tempts/ banishment." Full of meditative and sharp lyric moments, these poems are alive with complexity and critique. Acoustically, they enact the swell and crash of water: "the wish/ you'd unwhisper," "friction/ on the flint." Thematically, they prod the undercurrents of society and the expectations of American life, offering the honest statement that "no reward waits/ on the other side of suffering," and refusing easy valorization. Instead, they dwell within suffering, bearing witness from a place where people have been "warped melancholy by our raising." A letter from Miller's great-grandmother, who accompanied her husband to an island in the Bering Strait where he went to be a teacher, appears as well, complicating the story as Miller wrestles with the legacy of colonization and intergenerational trauma, and the "uncertain potential" of humanity. Miller's poems suggest that hearing the truth is hard, and often offers no direct or easy answer at all. These are valuable, urgent poems of witness.
