The End of Childhood

A tender and provocative collection of poems interrogating the troubles and wonders of childhood and parentage against the backdrop of global violence.From the accomplished and tenacious poet Wayne Miller comes a collection examining how an individual’s story both hues to and defies larger socio-political narratives and the sweep of history. A cubist making World War I camouflage, a forlorn panel on the ethics of violence in literature, an obsessive litany of “late capitalism” routines, a military drone pilot driving home—here, the awkward, the sweet, and the disturbing often merge. And underlaying it all is Miller’s own domestic life and two children, who highlight the hopeful and ingenious aspects of childhood, which endures “not // as I had thought / the thicket of light back at the entrance // but the wind still blowing / invisibly toward me / through it.” Wayne Miller’s sixth collection of poems is his most intimate, juxtaposing his fraught youth with his children's cautiously safer one, against insurrection and pandemic, vacation and vocation, art and war. This piercing book spares nothing and no one in searching out a measure of personal truth and benevolence in today’s turbulent, brutalizing world, confronted by a singularly candid and lyrical voice.