​WAYNE MILLER's WE THE JURY: A RECKONING, BY MARISSA AHMADKHANI

            Clouds of language fill our rooms. 
            the neighbors think— 
            who really knows? Air branches 

            and unbranches inside us, this laden air 
            that fills our time. Then 
            the floor opens and we never land.

So ends the first poem in Wayne Miller’s fifth full-length collection, We the Jury. In this expansive collection, Miller touches on the personal and the political, delving into his own life experiences as well as American history and that of the people who came before us. At times heartbreaking, but always beautiful, We the Jury is a collection that does not shy away from the realities of life—those of aging, of politics, of violence, or of loss. 

From the very first poem, Miller grounds this collection in the often-dark realities of American history. In the opening poem, “On Progress,” Miller describes the execution of Rainey Bethea—the last person to be publicly hanged in the United States. Here, the speaker—who may be the poet himself—describes their grandmother as one of the spectators of this infamous execution. This poem simultaneously touches on Bethea’s very violent, substantiated crimes while also highlighting the equally inhumane nature of public executions—not only this one but also recent ones, including the hanging of Saddam Hussein in 2006. In Miller's description of the video that depicts Hussein's execution—which can be viewed online—he writes: 

            The trapdoor drops 
            and the body pulls down against the life 
            that, since birth, has lifted its weight.

The complexity of this first poem hints at what is to come. As the poem explores the topic of public executions, the speaker also explores his grandmother’s own history of loss and mental illness. In this way, much of this collection manages to weave together larger human issues with the intimacy of personal experience. 

With very precise and detailed settings, Miller deftly grounds readers in the world of his poems. In “After the Miscarriage,” which explores the emotional states of the speaker and his partner after the loss of a pregnancy, the poet writes: 

            We sat in the car 
            —snow coming down— 
            just to get out of the house. 
            I lowered the window 
            sometimes to stop the snow 
            from sealing us in. 

Right away, Miller pulls readers into the still, stifling scene and barren landscape as snow engulfs the car. With this detail, the physical setting parallels the speaker's internal grief and overwhelm. “Two Thousand and Nine” then touches upon the financial crisis that took place from 2007-2009 through the description of a family losing their home. Again, this poem showcases Miller’s ability to craft a setting that seamlessly aligns with the emotional reality of the speaker. He writes: 

            Those months we were no longer 
            making payments we felt 
            as if the rooms would stay ours 
            just because we moved through them.

Written first in retrospect, this poem moves from past to present, as the speaker recalls life during the loss before then shifting into present-tense and looking at Google Earth images of his old neighborhood on his laptop:

            I scroll the streets 
            yard by yard, enter the shops on 75th

            as if the past were a sealed room 
            that still exists. From one angle, 
            there’s you on the porch

            —face blurred out— 
            in a bright blouse I no longer 
            remember you owning.

Indeed, so much of the writing in this collection focuses on memory, the passage of time, and looking back at history and hardship. Often, Miller’s writing highlights that—while things change—so much of our present is shaped by memory and experience. In two poems entitled “Middle Age,” he focuses on aging and the physical changes that occur within our bodies, writing: 

            Then I was in the dark of our room

            with you, love, stirring,
            and I eased back into this headlong

            forward hurtling
                                                            that’s a kind 
            of stillness.  

In these lines, readers see a focus on the unknown—how time passes and the future mimics a dark, unknowable room. The speaker's feeling of “headlong forward hurtling” is only remedied by the grounding of the “love” stirring beside him. In fact, so many of the expansive, overwhelming explorations in We the Jury are tethered by love. In “Mind Body Problem,” Miller explores both the physical body and the mind of his beloved: 

            But your heart is not your mind.
            The curve of your hip; the soft 
            skin of your wrist is not your mind. 
            The tumor growing in your brain 
            is just your brain, I say. 

With unflinching directness, Miller explores the nature of love, unexpected change, and the fear of loss. With the description of a tender, familiar scene between the speaker and his beloved, Miller shifts into a straightforward address of the reality that the two face—"the tumor growing in your brain." Much of this collection embraces this direct tone and asks the reader to also face the aspects of life that are difficult to accept. In “Parable of Childhood,” Miller tells the story of a boy grappling with the notion of death. In it, the boy repeatedly digs up the buried box containing the body of his beloved dog, unable to grasp the separation of the physical body and what gives life. Miller writes: 

            The dog was gone—that was clear.

            But the dog was also right there, just below the surface,
            packed in darkness. The boy could bring her back inside 
            whenever he wanted— 

So much of We the Jury explores the parts of life and of humanity that are difficult to understand. Steeped in history—both personal and societal—this collection focuses on existence, violence, love, loss, and ultimately acceptance, all while maintaining a voice that is clear, strong, and hauntingly beautiful.  Indeed, much like the flowers he compels to open in “Notes: History,” Miller compels readers always to continue exploring, continue understanding, continue opening.  ⋆

NEXT

Marissa Ahmadkhani (Assistant Editor) holds an MA in English from Cal Poly SLO and splits her time between the Bay Area and Costa Mesa, CA. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Southern Indiana Review, the minnesota review, Radar Poetry, and poets.org, where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2015 and 2017. Currently, she is pursuing an MFA at the University of California, Irvine and serves as Assistant Editor of The West Review.
​
Wayne Miller is the author of five collections of poems, including Post-, The City, Our City, The Book of Props, and We the Jury. He is also a cotranslator of two books from the Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo, and a coeditor of three anthologies, including Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century and New European Poets. He is the recipient of the UNT Rilke Prize, the George Bogin Award, the Lucille Medwick Award, the Lyric Poetry Award, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Bess Hokin Prize, and a Fulbright to Queen’s University Belfast. His work has been named a finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award and the PEN Center USA Award in Translation. Miller cocurates the Unsung Masters Series with Kevin Prufer and is a professor of English at the University of Colorado, Denver, where he edits Copper Nickel.