The Devil in the Milk

Rob Griffith’s third book is a tour de force of metrical mastery but, even more so, a moving exploration of the love, faith, and grief that lie at what Yeats called “the deep heart’s core.” From a moving two-part sequence on the doubts and triumphs of Saint Columba in the British Isles of the early Christian era, to quietly powerful poems that explore the losses and rewards of domestic life, Griffith writes with enviable wit, intelligence, and sensitivity. His love poems are unsurpassed in their aching tenderness, their keen awareness of time’s surrounding presence: “as the world/goes dark, a stage that fades to black, we glow.” Readers caught in the glow of these stunning poems will discover a pilgrimage made poignant by doubt and faith—where even the cries of birds are “psalms/that knit your world to mine, the unseen and the seen.” Yet it is the seen world that emerges most vividly here, alive in the “raptured light” of Griffith’s superb command of craft and unflinching vision.

—Ned Balbo

In Rob Griffith’s The Devil in the Milk, he gives us the fishing trips and porchlit lawns of suburban America in conversation with that great Irish fisher of souls, Saint Columcille of Iona. Griffith’s poems channel Yeats and Robert Lowell, with wonderfully wrought forms gem-set with assonance and consonance: “The aster, / thrift, and campion spread across the wrack/in lambent scarves of purple, pink, and white.” This is an Ireland of the past brought powerfully back to life, down to the details of fish and fowl and flora and fauna. And it is an America in search of its spiritual center and seeking to store its angst away in Tupperware and Ziploc bags in the cold white coffin of the fridge and hoping “To learn that death is not the only answer.” Griffith’s spiritual quest and doubt is dramatic and sorrowful and uplifting, but it is also several things beyond: Beautiful, full of heart, intimately crafted and yet simple and direct, poetry of the highest order.

—Tony Barnstone

St. Columba, who figures prominently in these remarkable poems, journeyed from Ireland to save the souls of men, discovering along the way that all prophecy is a death sentence. Griffith, his contemporary heir and assign, ventures from his own house to find and save his own. The adventure may be merely suburban, but “he can feel / the constant wash of days and nights unlived / against his shores.” The question he raises is a timeless one: “Should we ask more of life than life?” The answer is found in the necessary negations that are the springs of joy.

—R. S. Gwynn

Rob Griffith’s latest book, The Moon from Every Window (David Robert Books, 2011), was nominated for the 2013 Poets’ Prize; and his previous book, A Matinee in Plato’s Cave, was the winner of the 2009 Best Book of Indiana Award. His work has appeared in PN Review, Poetry, The North American Review, Poems & Plays, The Oxford American, and many others. He is the editor of the journal Measure and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Evansville, Indiana.