Sancho

Chris Faiers, winner of the 1987 Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award,
is author of Foot Through the Ceiling.

Sancho is George Miller’s third collection of poetry. His first collection appeared in 1962, the second in 1977. So every decade or so George Miller has decided to publish.

A poet’s poet. No padding, no career building, no personas for publicity. A poet in love with poetry who only publishes his best and who almost makes me wish that poetry was a mainstream, commercially viable enterprise so that maybe he could be encouraged to write and publish more. But then George wouldn’t be the poet’s poet he is. Catch 22.

This collection belongs in my personal poetry library right up there with Acorn. Miller’s poetry makes me want to quit my job and go and buy that log cabin in the sky and put his and a couple of other poetry books on the mantelpiece. If you are a poet, you should own this book.

Miller has been on the dharma road of poetry for some three decades, and his poetry shows it. He is only too aware of what a cruel world we occupy:

We are the fools of history
clowning
at coronations
belching
during the laying on of hands
while they grope each other
during speeches about fathers
of their countries
the temporary necessity of robbery
small murder
vast armies

(From “For My Son.”) But unlike most, Miller has some answers:

and be with me a conspiracy of softness
that we flow around all manner
of hard and hurting things
as mist defeats the harsh line
of the wall

(From “Untitled.”) If you love poetry, buy this book.