Category: Kevin Miller

Mike Robinson introduced me to Kevin Miller way back in 2006. I’ve written about him a couple of times, but  I just finished Vanish, his latest work, which is, as it turns out, already four years old. The work begins with a quote from Theodore Roethke, “What falls away is always. And is near.”  The Past falls away, but it is always near, and many of these poems seem devoted to those who have passed away and to recovering memories of them and to death itself.

“Field Work” seems to tie in directly with the Roethke quote that begins the work. 

Field Work 

The five-year-old grandson carries 
the short shovel, says, I am a worker. 
His hands pulse red in the cold, 
and he pounds at the earth 
proud to turn soil. He has no notion 
Of entering the house where brothers 
read and play cars. This one will bury me, 
his brother will know what to say, 
the third will keep mischief alive. 
The girl child from another city 
will stand with the boys, her song 
long on tradition steeped in rain. 
When I threw dirt on my father's box, 
showers softened the knock 
of rocks on its pine door. The windows 
in the house of the dead have no glass, 
the music their lives make lifts curtains. 
The far field knows no distance. 

Roethke’s last volume of poetry was entitled The Far Field and was published in 1964, the year of his death (and the year I was signed up for his class).  It’s a fairly long poem, but these short excerpts seem to refer directly to the last line of Field Work.  

I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever, 
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow, 
The wheel turning away from itself, 
The sprawl of the wave, 
The on-coming water.

…

I am renewed by death, thought of my death, 
The dry scent of a dying garden in September, 
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire. 
What I love is near at hand, 
Always, in earth and air.

I’ll have to admit I’ve never thought of my dead father while playing with my grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but it’s certainly a connection we all consider, particularly as we age. At 83, I like to think my father lives on in me, and I hope that part of me will live on in my grandchildren when I’m gone. 

In Vanish, Miller constantly reminds us of life’s ups and downs and the memories that live with us long after those ups and downs have passed.

Yesterday’s doctor’s appointment and today’s rain finally gave me a chance to finish Kevin Miller’s Home and Away: The Old Town Poems. Kevin, “kjm”, is a Tacoma poet who often comments here so I’m not going to pretend I could take an objective view of his latest book. As it turns out, there were quite a few poems that I liked well enough to mark for re-reading. I decided, though, that I would present this one because it gives readers insight into one of the defining characteristics of his book, empathy for others.

CUSTODIANS
for Jon Graham

The custodian leaves a note:
The storage shed is full.
Each letter distinctly cut,
his mark those typewriter g’s.
He wears a backpack vacuum,
listens to swing on headphones,
skips the poems in his New Yorker,
His keys fail to jangle like a movie janitor,
though he tells me stories about John Garfield.
He lives downtown close to the library.
He’s swing shift. Life restarts here early afternoon.
He shares a recipe with the office women,
and the room smells of ribs simmering,
potato salad with three types of onions.
I hear ice sliding into ice after someone
frees a cold beer from the galvanized tub
as he describes watching the parade from his house.
His voice is whisky and cigarettes,
and I walk into the cartoon of my job
when I accidentally interrupt his smoke
behind the dumpster, caught, and he laughs,
holds the cigarette cupped behind his back
as we both did between classes in the sixties.
Days before he crushes his finger moving tables,
he reviews the remake of War of the Worlds.
He waves both hands, ten digits intact,
as he describes the special effects,
praises non-stop action.
In consideration for my biases, he says,
Anyone could have played Cruise’s part.
On lunch duty, the movie game runs in my head.
Harry Dean Stanton plays the custodian.
He’ll need to put on a couple of pounds.
Today’s scene-the parent phone call:
The custodian called my son a little son of a bitch.
Jeff Bridges plays me-it’s my movie.
JB calls Harry into the office. It’s five p.m.
JB says: Sit. I got a phone call.
Harry laughs, embarrassed.
He says: Sorry, Boss, kid kicked the sink.
The little son of a bitch.
Camera pulls back.
Scene fades with laughter.
The lunch lady snatches a sixth grader’s tray,
he is a dollar short in his lunch account.
She plays herself. It’s no movie.
This is my mess to clean up.

I suspect that my 30 years of teaching high school contributes to my appreciation of this poem. I’ve been called into the principal’s office a time or two for exactly the kind of reaction that got the custodian called in, though I don’t think they always turned out quite like this. You’d have to be much more saintly than I ever was to go through a whole career without pissing off a parent or two.

I don’t think I ever actually went to a party at a janitor’s house, but I certainly empathized with their job since that’s how I put myself through college. And though I doubt any of them appreciated what I was teaching,”skips the poems in his New Yorker,” I always enjoyed visiting with them and more than a few times we saw students’ mistreatment of the facilities through the same eyes, unable to understand how any kid could behave that way.

Home and Away is accessible poetry that most people should find enjoyable. If you liked this poem or ones I quoted from his earlier book, get a hold of a copy, either by buying it or getting it from your public library. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

I still have a few poems left to read in Everywhere Was Far but so far this is my favorite:

Story Problem

How far is across when you remember
three bridges out the front window all your life.
How strong is magic that turns checks
into cash when need is collateral.
How distant is away when the Olympics are morning,
the Cascades night. How new is bravery
after the woman learns to walk at fifty-seven,
praises the cool linoleum, then takes her pain
straight up, neat. What’s common about common
when a man dresses in a suit for six months
to leave for a lost job. What stage of grief runs
a flat line of miles across Montana.
What good is addition when an only child
sixty-one years later dies an only child.
What equals one story told six ways.

I just love the poem‘s title. Nearly everyone remembers how hard it was to solve â€?”story problems.” Of course, it turned out that real life problems are a hell of a lot harder to solve than those story problems, like how to make a living, how to be brave in the face of immense pain, or how to deal with the loss of a job.

There’s also a natural progression from â€?”interestingâ€?” problems to â€?”heart-wrenching” problems in the poem, from natural curiosity like â€?”how far is across” to â€?”What stage of grief runs/ A flat line of miles across Montana?” The same kind of natural progression that most of us face in our lives as we age.

Miller may not offer any answers, but simply recognizing the problems may make them more bearable.

Now that the elections are finally over I can get back to something more interesting and closer to home, poetry. Actually since I gave all the money I was willing to give and voted several days ago, I’ve been enjoying myself in many ways unrelated to politics in the last few days.

On the more pleasant side, I’m finally reading Kevin Miller’s Everywhere Was Far. Kevin’s a local Tacoma poet who I met for breakfast earlier this year after Mike introduced us. Obviously I’m a biased reader, but, as noted many times, I probably always am. Still, it’s more fun finding a poem you really like when it’s written by someone you know.

There are actually many poems I like, but here’s my favorite in the first sixty pages:

In Her Garden

After a good rain, goldfinch string
their music through the serviceberry trees.
My wife thinks she’s Saint Francis.
She charms the cedar waxwing
which lights close enough to touch.
She tells me Francis’ theory of containers,
Take from the full, fill the empty.
This works for her, the music of birds,
a song from Francis, and all those nests
the shape of cupped hands waiting.

Since at times I find myself talking to the birds, I can easily identify with the poet’s wife. Perhaps I like it because it reminds me of a picture and haiku-like poem of Leslie hand feeding a Robber Jay that I posted while we were out cross country skiing years ago. Both seem to celebrate the same quality in someone we love.