I’m enjoying writing these spotlights for Memorious. Here’s number 2.
Tongue Lyre (Southern Illinois University Press, 2013) is contributor Tyler Mills’s first book of poems and the winner of the Crab Orchard Series of Poetry First Book Award. Stories and legends permeate the collection as Mills weaves in lines from Joyce’s Ulysses, references to Homer’s Odyssey and also Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Philomela appears as a college student who finds herself unable to speak of her own rape. Circe buys meat hooks at the hardware store. The sirens lure pilot whales into shallow water, while the tornado sirens, with voices like wolves, call out to a child.
As Mills blends the mythological with the modern, Picasso, M. C. Escher and Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz also make an appearance. The collection is full of deft, interesting poems such as “Cyclops” and “Nestor,” which first appeared in Memorious 18.
Tyler Mills is a doctoral candidate at the…
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