Under the sway of the indelible storytelling culture of the South, Greg Miller has crafted poems from all that he hears and sees around him. Written in a language rarely heard in modern devotion, the poems in Rib Cage show old communities disintegrating, extended families dispersing, and people in economic or personal distress struggling for dignity and a clear sense of their predicaments. From plain speech to evocative lyricism, from free verse to hymnlike eloquence, Miller deftly gives a voice and a history to the places he creates, places that, in the end, expand to encompass all of humanity.

Greg Miller is the chair of the English Department at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi, and the author of Iron Wheel, published by the University of Chicago Press.