What stuck me about “Cage” when I first saw it among the previously
uncollected work in Josephine Miles’ Collected Poems 1930-83 was its
lyricism. Although Miles wrote lyric poetry all her life, she is
generally recognized as a poet more engaged with speech and ideas
than with song. Her interest in the American vernacular, from people
yelling at each other in traffic to bureaucratic jargon, informs her
most well-known pieces. These include thoughtful observations on
academic life in Berkeley, where she was a professor from the 1940s
through the 1970s (no poet is better on teaching and learning);
explorations of philosophical paradoxes; quirky takes on
neighborhood life; and clear-eyed portraits of a childhood marked by
the arthritis that would leave her disabled—all with her distinctive
qualities of concision, wry humor, and an ear for the way people talk.
But “Cage” evinces a strand in her work that has largely been
overlooked, something more song-like and emotional.