ONLY THE SENSES SLEEP   “The 35 poems and sequences of this mature debut take an intimate look at everyday objects and incidents. [. . .] Miller describes both the visible and the invisible with elegant ease. These poems dissolve the boundaries between things and across time, so that the strangeness of the world is apparent [. . .].  Charting shifting perceptions of an ever-shifting world, Miller’s is a welcome new voice[.]”    ––Publishers Weekly (starred review)   “Gorgeously confident book is proof again of the vitality of poetry in the small presses.”   ––Kansas City Star (ranked one of the Star’s “10 highlight books” among the Star’s 100 Best Books of 2006)    “Only the Senses Sleep is a large-hearted and wise book of poems, one that easily rises above the many piles of debut collections. [. . .] The poems nod to an array of artists and writers, but Miller isn’t a name-dropper. His elegant poems are filled with well-cut sparkle[.] [. . .] Beneath the orchestration of language, contemplation swirls through the dark and light shadows[.]   —Alex Lemon, Bloomsbury Review   “For Miller, the world is radiant—quietly so, but still imbued with a steady, shining energy, even when darkness falls[.] Miler’s subtle rhythms and syntax unfold with admirable ease, and he is capable of self-deflating humor[.] [. . .] For Miller, the present tense is where the poet seeks to dwell, though he mourns––eloquently, compassionately––that only language takes him there.”         —Ned Balbo, Antioch Review   “[Miller’s] ‘decentered’ self [. . .] exists in relation with a wider world and serves largely as a point of departure for exploring perception, memory, and even the limits of language. [. . .] One is hard-pressed to find a conspicuous flaw in this collection.”   —J. D. Smith, American Book Review   “The layered poems in Wayne Miller’s debut collection, Only the Senses Sleep, reveal the poet’s intense desire to pin insight to amorphous bits of recollection, as if he’s trying to orient himself in a diffuse enigmatic landscape. [. . .] The past becomes a film reel projected on any bare wall, running day and night, suffusing the present with fragmentary imagery that is both seductive and disturbing. [Miller’s poems] claim that what we often think of as the rock-solid now is really a fluid thing, and the desire to plant our feet firmly in anything is its own kind of foolishness. There’s nothing softheaded about Miller’s complex thinking. [. . .] Thus this book charms with its refusal to draw finite conclusions. It never closes the door. It invites rereading.”   —Deborah Bogen, Lyric Poetry Review   “Miller’s lyric poems are some of the best this reviewer has read for some years. (And a first book at that.) [. . .] Miller’s sensibility is complex: literally, a European eye for relationships; aesthetically, a mature love of sense; actually, a post-Enlightenment, optimistic, American assumption of possibility, decency, and fair play. [. . .] In Only the Senses Sleep, Miler’s ambition is artfully actualized at every turn. And a huge ambition it is. This is not the ambition of noble, inflated lyrics, but the ambition of striking into the bedrock of the fundamental essence of poetry itself.”   —Scott Hightower, Coldfront Magazine