Tender the River
Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award
Shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Provocateur Award
Finalist for the Jacar Press Julie Suk Award
Runner Up for Poetry by the Sea Book Award
Finalist for the New Hampshire Poetry Society Book Award
“Damn, this book is good. Matt Miller’s writing brings to mind Richard Sennett’s treatise on the joys and value of making, The Craftsman, wherein he celebrates discipline, commitment, and the time it takes to produce quality work. It also evokes Donald Hall’s famous essay, ‘Poetry and Ambition,’ in which he laments the lack of such seriousness among contemporary poets and the advent of what he calls the ‘McPoem’—cobbled quickly, shabbily, and with very little ambition toward memorability. I believe that both Sennett and Hall would agree with me that Matt Miller is a craftsman of the first order. And his most recent collection, Tender the River, is well-wrought, exquisite, and built to last. Beautiful as a bespoke three-piece, useful as a pair of hand-crafted brogues.”
—John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry
“The poet presents the complexities of a lived place, a loved place, as if they were an extension of himself. Blurred is the line between the poet and the town-river-city-home. The intimacy of his prose lives in the clarity memory, and tempting to believe those memories, they become our own. This brilliant work is a kind of tectonic love, attempting to get at the soul of a place, even when that place seems almost soulless.”
—The Eric Hoffer Award
