Best Poet of 2007

Okay - its a bit silly to declare someone the "best" of any particular year. Artists are continually evolving and producing work that may have its origins in years past.

Plus, this poet has been posting/publishing work for a while now. I just never stumbled upon it. But I wanted to share some of it with you, and also relate my own personal experience with the work.

When I discovered the poetry of Rebecca F. Miller, I was absolutely stunned. Her honesty and commitment to "bleeding on the page" made me feel like a pretender. There is an urgency and authenticity to her writing that makes you sit up in the middle of the night. Or stop everything on a Tuesday afternoon to listen to your own pulse. It is writing that originates in the South, spilled out through the Kentucky backroads and gulleys in a beat-up Ford with traces of meth in the ashtray. Honesty isn't pretty and there are ghosts of things that never get mentioned at the family picnic. However, in spite of all the bumps and bruises, there is a peace and resolution that settles on the reader of these poems. Read closely. This is no Slyvia Plath. Yes, life is tricky. Life can be absurd. But throughout everything is a thirst for life itself.

And my life was made a whole lot richer in 2007 for her writing. Thank you Rebecca.

Here's a quick example :

SLINGING PALE DREAMS

watercoloring in bed
trying to keep the blue from sinking
underneath my sheets


thighs speckled with the rust colored indication
that somehow i've been in this place before


cutting blood from my sleeves
& wondering why i so easily relate
to a framed butterfly


who cut blood from it's wings
before devouring the nail that pinned it.


you are anticipating a call from the mexicans
who taught you how to sling pale dreams
biting your knuckles white & wondering if they'll ask for the money or the goods


you have neither & i
a remote stirring inside my belly


that says this is not real
this is not happening
this is not what i wanted


in the beginning
when we both played with words


until we came
hot, sophisticated & fluttering
underneath sheets


not marred by some
delicate thing.

(C)Rebecca F. Miller