Background
Miller, Leslie Adrienne was born on October 22, 1956 in Medina, Ohio, United States. Daughter of Ray Glen and Martha Ann (Ferguson) Miller.
("The voice behind the poems in Miller's first collection ...)
"The voice behind the poems in Miller's first collection is quiet, and intimate, yet observes with an intensity that makes many of the poems come off the page and stay with the reader. There's also a self assurance in these poems that makes even the most ordinary moments unordinary. The first three poems set the tone for the remainder of the book. In "The Monkey,' Miller tells a tale of the first husband's monkey, a childhood memory she got when she 'assumed / his life, his house, his yard and bushes / to trim, I got the monkey too.' In the next two, "Definition' and "That Boy,' a woman comfortable with her body and self, who realizes it takes years to reach this point, looking at her young lover who ' can't throw down his shame/ with his hat, why light . . . ./ afraid, deeply /afraid that I will find a mark, a flaw.' The relationship between the woman and 'boy lover' will continue turning up in subsequent poems, always as an image of a woman who finds affirmation of herself. There is love throughout the book; many of the poems fairly overflow with sensual imagery, from 'Epithalamium,' which mixes girls and horses to "Lost Flamingo.' The wonder of these images is the quietness, the sense of beauty and heat many of them kindle. Even in the title poem, 'Staying Up For Love' the memory of childhood slumber party, with its vaguely sexual imagery, balances beautifully the innocence and the imagined evil. Each of the three sections that make up the book move the reader along in a travelogue of the speaker's experiences, from the intensely personal to the more worldly and universal. All of these moments culminate, though, in the final poem, 'Primary Colors,' which contains some of the more interesting and arresting images, opening with a quote from Adrienne Rich, and using colors and discarding of colors as a metaphor for beginning; interestingly, it's the only poem not in first person, yet it seems closest to Miller's heart. All in all, this is a book that reveals in subtle yet striking moments, with language that compliments both imagery and subject, and to paraphrase the title, it's worth staying up for." (Ohioana Quarterly, Fall 1990)
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( Poet Leslie Adrienne Miller's brilliant and provocative...)
Poet Leslie Adrienne Miller's brilliant and provocative exploration of anatomical texts and historical assumptions about the body Whoever they were, they're still with us, posing demurely in suits of blood and muscle, the bruised shadows of what skin they do have . . . --from "Gautier d'Agoty's Écorchés" "The resurrection trade," the business of trafficking in corpses, is an old trade, one that makes possible the art of anatomy and, as poet Leslie Adrienne Miller discovers, the art of her own book. Miller delves into the mysteries of early anatomical studies and medical illustrations and finds there stories of women's lives--sometimes tragic, sometimes comic--as exposed as the drawings themselves. These meticulously researched and rendered poems become powerful testimonies to women's bodies objectified and misunderstood throughout history. Miller's sensuous and harrowing fifth collection brings a new truth to what she calls "the strange collusion of imaginary science and real art."
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( Reading Miller's poetry has been likened to obtaining t...)
Reading Miller's poetry has been likened to obtaining tickets to exotic places both real and imagined. In Eat Quite Everything You See - the fourth collection of her verse - she offers a wry and compelling series of wanderings through the ever-changing landscapes of Europe. With an inquisitive spirit and a generous sense of humor, Miller investigates the experience of otherness in a foreign land, exploring also the phenomena of human culture, womanhood, independence, desire, and love.
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("This collection of vivid, readable, enticing poems is di...)
"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)
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("Leslie Adrienne Miller's poems are tickets to some fasci...)
"Leslie Adrienne Miller's poems are tickets to some fascinating places-- scary, fantastic places like Indonesia and Berlin and Zanesville, Ohio; the riot-torn country of adolescence; the tough villages of family and friendship; and, again and again, the dark, trackless, lovely forests of desire. Writing utterly from within her own skin, from her specific heart housed in her exact, particular bones, she's a poet also and absolutely of the larger world, of foreign places, foreign tongues, and she writes about the other as intimately as if she shared its blood." Lon Otto
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English language educator poet
Miller, Leslie Adrienne was born on October 22, 1956 in Medina, Ohio, United States. Daughter of Ray Glen and Martha Ann (Ferguson) Miller.
Bachelor, Stephens College, Columbia, Missouri, 1978. Master of Arts, University Missouri, 1980. Master of Fine Arts, University Iowa, 1982.
Doctor of Philosophy, University Houston, 1991.
Director creative writing, Stephens College, 1983-1987; visiting poet, U. Oregon, Eugene, 1991; associate Professor of English, U. St. Thomas, St. Paul, since 1991.
("Leslie Adrienne Miller's poems are tickets to some fasci...)
( Poet Leslie Adrienne Miller's brilliant and provocative...)
("The voice behind the poems in Miller's first collection ...)
("This collection of vivid, readable, enticing poems is di...)
("This collection of vivid, readable, enticing poems is di...)
( Reading Miller's poetry has been likened to obtaining t...)
(First Printing)
Member Modern Language Association, Association Writing Programs, Ohio Library. Association, Poets and Writers, Poetry Society American.