“Claire Millikin’s voice in Magicicada is a gift. In this collection, the painful realities of transgenerational trauma are transformed into a poetry that questions, mourns, and ultimately heals. And beneath it all is the wisdom of nature, particularly that of the smallest creatures singing in the periphery of our lives.”
—José Antonio Rodríguez, author of The Day’s Hard Edge

“‘The essence of the cicada,’ Claire Millikin says, ‘is burial and ascension,’ which is also the essence of this stunning book. Grounded in the experience of a young teen’s solitary confinement (for truancy and silence, her only defense against violation), these poems draw on metaphor, and linguistic fluidity to suggest how the mind encounters and resists its own destruction. Seeing in the cicadas an emblem of confinement and release, Millikin says, ‘You don’t spend 17 years buried without the need to make a song.’ And sing she does—a haunting song that draws on all the resources of language, making a kind of litany against the brutality of isolation. It is a song that can’t be written prettily, the poet says. But it can be written with a light touch, with suppleness and complexity, drawing on layers of experience, and wonder as well, until the writing itself becomes a fierce ascension. These brilliant poems are thrillingly alive with a beauty that goes far beyond pretty, a beauty that can break your heart. That is, break it open.”
—BETSY SHOLL, author As If a Song Could Save You

“Early in Claire Millikin’s new collection of poems, Magicicada, she makes clear her goal is to ‘...tell a story that’s neither true nor false / but the edge of it, the place of almost.’ And that is what she delivers in a strong and steady voice. Her use of the magicicada, the southern insect that spends most of its life underground, only revealing itself every 13 or 17 years, is unexpected and brilliant. Magicicada is an unflinching and at times defiant vision of a life in ‘that place of almost’ where cicadas sleep in silence and return to sing.”
—BILL SCHULZ, founder/editor of the Hole in the Head Review, and author of Dog or Wolf

CLAIRE MILLIKIN is the author of eight books of poetry, including State Fair Animals (Unicorn Press, 2018). She is a 2021 recipient of the Maine Literary Award, and teaches art history and American Studies at the University of Maine, at Bates College, and for the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts. Millikin lives in coastal Maine.