Irving F. Miller was born in 1934, in New York City, and educated at New York University, Purdue University, and the University of Michigan. He taught and administered programs in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering for almost 40 years at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Akron. He has written over 80 refereed articles and book chapters in engineering, over 200 abstracts and presentations, edited and translated several monographs, and received numerous engineering grants and awards. A casual poet for most of his life, he began to get serious about writing in 1995, and after his retirement from engineering education in 2000, his work has appeared in journals and chapbooks, as well as on several websites.
Reviews
"I.F. Miller is a conjurer, a magician, a steadfast witness who works in Moonburn to rememorate a vanished New York City. With pluck and subtlety, he summons middle-class Jewish life in the boroughs in the mid-twentieth-century, and what reemerges—the ghosts of friends, of rabbis, of his father, of a bustling neighborhood—vaults this chapbook into conversation with the work of such luminary writers of Jewish life as David Ignatow, Karl Shapiro, Saul Bellow, and Henry Roth."
~ Seth Michelson, House in a Hurricane
"With skillful use of metaphor and form, IFMiller illustrates the delights and sorrows of life spanning over sixty years. Poignant, funny, and sometimes shocking, his poems sweep across the page without a wasted word and demonstrate that strong poetry is achieved through risks in subject, word use, line break, and repetition. I was intrigued from the first poem, "Heroes," and by the final poem, "Forever," started reading the whole book again."
~ Elizabeth Szewczyk, This Becoming
"Moonburn takes readers on a reflective journey through the enchantment of childhood, sprinkled with the charm of Yiddish blessings and the wonder of Isaac: Father of the Kabala. These poems swathe the soul with love and spiritual beauty, as in “The Uncanny Echoes of the Tao” where “usefulness comes from what is not there,” to the nostalgic desire in “Morning Glory” and the green tendrils on the rails. This is a keen compilation; a smart and witty collection that doesn't disappoint, but leaves readers feeling fulfilled. As “Forever” so poignantly reminds us, “life is sweet.”
~ Carol Lynn Grellas, Litany of Finger Prayers and Object of Desire
Purchase Moonburn here Big Table Publishing.
