Into the Bardo

Praise for Into the Bardo Jim Miller’s Into the Bardo reminds us that everything is “tentative and precious.”  After experiencing a harrowing summer of several near-death experiences, it was poetry that Miller summoned, to bear witness to what he learned on this journey. In these poems, readers navigate the sometimes-precarious waters between wakefulness and sleep, life and death, treading in the liminal spaces of uncertainty.  In fact, it was the great Roman poets, Virgil and Ovid, who taught us, Somnus, the god of sleep, was indeed the brother of Death.   It is in this nexus where we find Miller revisiting memories of family and friends, the marvels of travel, the percipience of the arts, and ultimately, his musings on the “interconnectedness of all,” especially as he beckons us to confront the economic and health care disparities that so many still endure.  Miller reexamines a life lived while all along urging us to “feel the multi-grained texture of life / as it flows on ceaselessl