ANGELS, THIEVES, AND WINEMAKERS. By Joseph Mills. Press 53. 88 pages. $12.
"It's like listening to music by moonlight," Somerset Maugham's character, Isabel, said in The Razor's Edge, speaking about Joseph Mills' poetry.
Oh, wait; those words were actually about zubrovka, an exotic vodka. But, then, Maugham had never read Mills' poetry. At the risk of exaggeration, there is a musical quality to Mills' lines; there's also a sense of contemplation and wicked insight that one guesses Maugham would have enjoyed immensely.
Mills, who teaches at the N.C. School of the Arts and is also the author of the poetry collection Somewhere During the Spin Cycle and co-author of A Guide to North Carolina's Wineries (with his wife, Danielle Tarmey), seems to have spent a significant amount of time pondering wine. He has not just looked at its dulling, depressive effect or temporary cheer; he has meditated on the deeper implications of fermentation, aging, knowledge (as opposed to wisdom) and intoxication. He has examined details in the craft of producing wine, giving voice to local vintners who may have turned the tobacco fields of 20 years ago into today's productive vineyards. He also has a few words to say about drinkers, abstainers and the religion that unites them.
Being about wine, the volume touches on truth, sex, family, patience, tradition and salesmanship. There's emotion and sentiment; logic and laughter. (Or maybe that's just the wine talking.)
Mills' writing is clear and mostly effortless. There's a tendency among some to think that it's not a poem if it doesn't rhyme or contain abundant alliteration, but Mills has arranged his words and ideas as carefully as if shelving his private stock, providing bits of information that unite to show a comprehensive whole. The themes in the poems unfold as if Mills is telling a story, progressing from callow youth to mature temperance.
There's also a good bit of humor, in such poems as "Standing Next to a Stranger at a Wine Tasting" ("He contemplates his glass, swirls, sniffs ... ") and "Introductions Made Easy" ("If only people wore labels, their foreheads clearly displaying their appellation, their varietal, their alcohol content … ")
A couple of poems, apparent experiments with shape, do seem corked: "Dirt," printed in the shape of a champagne glass, and its accompanying "Coupe," suggesting that wine glasses could be formed from the curves of celebrities, itself in a particular identifiable shape. But these are exceptions.
Mills is not ignorant of the deleterious effects of intoxication, but neither is he afraid of it. As he writes in a section of "Wine's Beautiful Illusions," "Opening a bottle of wine is an act of optimism. ... Each time we pull a cork, it's as if we're saying, Here, I think this will help make things a little better."
Opening this book will make things a little better.
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