Paper Banners

by Jane Miller

A herald of desire, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller’s Paper Banners catalogs the intimate experiences that create a life, hoping that “what will survive of us is love.” A herald of desire, suffering, mortality, and the mission of poetry itself, Jane Miller’s Paper Banners “say the cosmos/ isn’t hostile/ yet strangles a dove /with one hand.” Against this angst, Miller steps outside of history to contemplate voices of love, aging, and artmaking. Many poems are addressed to family members, friends, and young poets, or pay homage to familiar figures taken by time or tragedy, including Virginia Woolf, Osip Mandelstam, and the Song Dynasty poet Li Qingzhao. In clear, short lines, these poems harken to ancient banderoles, or pennants, which announced rallying cries on the lances of knights and mottoes on the flags of ships. Here, Miller’s Paper Banners are made of images of the American Southwest and scrutinize its political and physical landscape. Like skywriting streamed in white smoke, this collection bears its message on the wind, its words addressed to anyone. As Miller catalogs the intimate experiences that make up a life—friendships, loves, dreams, our human connection to the environment— Paper Banners becomes a hope that “what will survive of us is love.”

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

Published November 7, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. This is Jane^Miller.

Reviews

[Peggy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A southwestern setting with an eastern sensibility. Beautifully compressed poetry; image after image after image. An exploration of history, of women, of the struggle to create. I found some stunners in the book, including “Elegy With Last Lines In the Form of Haiku,” “The Missing Apricot Tree,” and “Harmless Ode with Osip Mandelstam.”

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Miller’s latest poetry collection makes an argument. Though it came out last year, it speaks to the rage so many of us feel at this time regarding the world around us, and how that world may become very frightening indeed to groups that will be persecuted under the new regime. Miller argues that poets have an intrinsic responsibility to fight this subjugation with their art. Poetry, for these people, is inevitable and must therefore be put to good use. It must be used to fight. I loved Miller’s spirit and want to use these poems as a springboard to action. It’s meta-poetry, in the least cynical way possible.