Book excerpt: Winner of the 1984 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Originally published in 1983, Miles's Collected Poems received seven awards, including the Lenore Marshall/Nation Poetry Prize, and was one of three finalists for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. A striking consistency -- of tone, of diction, of purpose -- characterizes Miles's life work. It has been a life well spent. --Publisher's Weekly. Miles is a poet of the first rank whose work might well be compared to that of Williams or Moore ... Collected Poems is a treasury of poetic wit and human understanding that belongs in all poetry collections. --Library Journal. Miles's work is one of the finest and most solid bodies of poetry to be found in this country. --A.R. Ammons.