Woe & Awe

"Throughout Woe & Awe, her debut poetry collection, Lisa M. Miller invokes the voices of female ancestors, physical and spiritual, who dare to suggest, "What if adversity has always been/essential?" Sustained by their spirit, Miller wrestles intergenerational and personal trauma in poems of vision, wit, and fierce clarity. Woe & Awe spans a lifetime, addressing personal crises, cultural history, and the Jewish diaspora. By the end of the volume we've seen the poet rendered whole, daughter and mother, deep in the joy of her own daughters, carrying her darkness and bearing the care of others who've been damaged. This is a shadowed book, never free of the certainty of suffering, but equally intent on embracing healing. Woe & Awe speaks back to shame. Whatever damage the past has done, "Leave it. Leave it again. / The pulse of you depends / on a deliberate Yes." Woe & Awe is a brave book, a book we need now more than ever." -Leatha Kendrick, author of And Luckier