Kingdom

Kingdom extends Joseph Millar's articulate devotion to the astonishments of daily life-their mingled beauty and pain. As in his first three books, Millar, like the late Philip Levine, has a keen eye for the hardscrabble details of working-class lives-from California's wheat fields to the Lehigh Valley to the rooftops of Paris and a host of other locales "down here on earth in the kingdom." Perhaps more fully than any recent book, this one calls to mind Dylan Thomas's assessment that the best poems "show us that we are alone and not alone in the unknown world, that our bliss and suffering are forever shared, and forever all our own." Kingdom shows Millar working at the height of his powers, sifting the "rag and bone shop of the heart" for songs and stories. It's his best book yet.