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Bryce Milligan "A contemporary Muse poet, a passionate singer of the 'idol at the crossroads.' -- Ed Hirsch

Date of Review:

09/01/2003

Published Work:

Reviewer:

Jeff Biggers

Source:

Bloomsbury Review

Review Excerpt:

Embarking on an ambitious, solemn, and passionate quest into a maze of his own making, the muse-poet in Bryce Milligan’s latest collection of poetry, Alms for Oblivion: A Poem in Seven Parts, enjoins the reader to “put aside the wisdom of one’s own age” in our common search for truth and love. Milligan’s modern muse stands at a timeless crossroads, culling the threads of poetry from our ancestral tracks made by longing goddesses and lusting impostors; his cadenced verses tempt our own journey, like the enchantress Siduri, to cast off our routine lives and embrace the immediacy of our ancient, poetic origins.
Long meditative poems are a rare treat these days; few poets possess the wherewithal to ship off on a quest that has its roots in the pantheon of Enheduanna’s Ur, or Tlazolteotl’s Aztecan empire. With Alms for Oblivion, his fifth collection of poetry, Milligan revels in the complexity of mythological incantations and demonstrates an ease for untangling the riddles of fellow muse-poets. Artist, author, singer, and longtime publisher and anthologist, Milligan is an unusually daring muse-poet for our own time, blessed with Robert Graves’s sense of “her naked magnificence.”