“The Observances” is Kate Miller's first full collection of poetry. As its title suggests, with the intertwining practices of watchfulness and remembrance these poems sustain their course. They follow an urge to locate in language, however tentatively, elements of a world that change or fade. Within her landscapes, the attentive eye and ear preserve the subject, fixing it in time and memory, renewing-through compulsive inspection-faith in the unresolved, even-in what Elizabeth Bishop called 'self-forgetful' attention-at the poet's own expense.
