ENTERING THE DAY: POEMS BY MICHAEL MILLER. (Pinyon Publishing).

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Wars leave scars in the minds of those who serve in any military conflict, and survivors often share their experiences through journaling, drawing, writing poetry, and novels. In Michael Miller’s case, he records glimpses of several wars through his own experience and the engagements of his relatives in military conflict. Although he reflects on other experiences “entering the day,” his accounts of servicemen during several wars are the most arresting poems in this volume. 

In “A Different Time,” Miller reflects on the experience of  a Marine who landed on Okinawa during World War II during his walk across a meadow in Massachusetts, “far from the black sand of that island/Where he left his blood;/His Purple Heart remain[ing] in/the glove compartment of His Buick beside his pistol,…” this poem followed by  “Tide of Blood,” a powerful salute to those whose “lives deprived /Of their future, the letters/He was asked to mail, ‘In case,’/And with each whiskey and cigarette/Another comrade appears, his face/Still innocent across the table.” Although Miller, of course, did not serve in this conflict, he recounts the experience as if he had served alongside the narrator in a convincing unsentimental portrait of a WWII survivor.

Miller’s own experiences in war are encapsulated in Section V, Verse VII, a powerful retrospective poem familiar to many veterans of the Vietnam conflict: “Only once did we visit/The wall, move our fingers/Over the chiseled names,/The Marines we knew./Flowers, photographs,/Letters and crayon drawings/Rested before the wall./No one walked away with/Their head held high.” This poem invoked a poignant memory of an encounter with a Vietnam veteran when I attended The Sixth Day course in upper state New York. A survivor of the Vietnam War stood up among 300 participants at this event where we had been “processing” experiences all night, and as the sun came up, he confessed that he was deeply hurt because he had been maligned as a veteran of that conflict and never properly thanked for his service. The moderator told him to stand up and declared, “In the name of the president of the United States and all U.S. citizens, we thank you for your service and remember all who served in this conflict.” Two weeks later, after we had returned home, we read about the wall going up, and I’ve always believed we had something to do with this commemoration.

Miller does not leave readers suspended with dark reflections and redeems his experiences with a more hopeful poem entitled “On Nauset Beach,” where “beyond [his] limitations of old age…” “he strides through the surprise/Of an unswept morning/On a shoulder of Nauset Beach/Singing to the Atlantic,/The thrashing incoming tide,/the waves breaking onto the shore/Like sleeves of ruffled lace,/The gannets swooping/With black-tipped wings/Beating a welcome…” Here is Miller at his lyrical best, counteracting the darkness of war and old age with his insightful voice and an undaunted heart.

This poet is not without humor and is capable of a comfortable irony in “Morning Song in Amherst” (his home) where Miller encounters a street person, “In July, her hair a tangled nest/No bird would return to/Beside the Dickinson home/A cigarette between/Her dirty fingers…” He suggests that Emily Dickinson would have invited the woman into her home for “a bath and breakfast” and when the woman volunteers that she slept on a bench beside the home all night and no one bothered her, Miller writes that he offered her bath and breakfast, “almost hearing Emily say, ‘Yes, oh yes!’”

In Section IV of Entering the Day, Miller’s poem about Virginia Wolfe entitled “Virginia,” shows that he can achieve that which he believes Virginia was capable of: “…her words/Were meant to be elsewhere,/In perfect sentences she could control.” That capability is shown throughout this volume, Miller’s meditations emerging with crafted control over his phrasing. Here is a true voice devoid of mawkishness in the delivery of difficult experiences — poems without cloying lamentations about the ravages of war and an uncertain future —conditions with which we are confronted in the wake of  Coronavirus, “a language wait[ing] to be heard” that Miller seems to be game for, despite…

Michael Miller has published nine poetry collections, and his first book The Joyful Dark was the Editor’s Choice winner of the McGovern Prize at Ashland Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in The Sewanee Review, The New Republic, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, and many other literary journals. In 2014 he became the First Prize Winner of the W. B. Yeats Society Poetry Award and was anthologized in Yeats 150 (Lilliput Press, Dublin).

I am proud to add that Michael Miller is a good friend and supporter of my work. Salut, Michael! We eagerly look for more. And kudos to Susan Entsminger for the lovely artwork on the cover of Entering the Day: “Protea from the Upcountry Farmer’s Market, Maui.”

Order online or from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose CO 81403

Grandma's Good War Remembered Today

We are battling a virus, Covid-19, today which many refer to as "war." I'm reminded of WWII that happened during my childhood when significant sacrifices were required of all who lived during that time. My book, GRANDMA’S GOOD WAR, A Verse Retrospective of the Forties, published during the Great Recession of 2008, provides a point of identification with a period of reoccurring history that has become an important part of our modern life. One reader wrote about this book, “wherever we lived in this time our lives seemed to be almost identical, even to the knitting for war victims.” The title poem of the book recalls sacrifices of that time reminiscent of today's war against Covid-19 and the hopeful feelings we will experience about victory over this pandemic.

Grandma's Good War
I was a child during World War Two
burdened with adult tasks to do,
in backyard plots planted row after row of garden seed,
cleared away clump after clump of coco weed,
collected scrap iron by the wagonload
and stacks of newspaper, crinkled and old,
the iron to be melted for weapons of war,
the paper recycled and sent afar,
bought war stamps and war bonds from Uncle Sam,
savored lunches of Vienna sausage, tins of Spam,
complained about rations of chocolate kisses and coca-cola,
played thick, black records on an ancient Victrola,
sang “Off We Go” and war songs galore,
in air raid drills, lay stiffly on oily wood floors,
loved to say aloud “Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini,
Okinawa, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima.”
On V-J Day, celebrated war’s end in a dancing crowd,
ignoring the shadow of a mushroom-shaped cloud,
was proud to be a patriot who loved the victorious USA,
remembering WWII as the period of a better day,
at armistice, believed all wars would cease …
and the world would bask in the sun of peace.

Grandma's Good War is the only book among 52 I've written that contains rhyming poetry. Stay vigilant, stay well. Plant a Victory Garden.

CORNER OF BIRCH STREET

Back in 2008, Border Press published a verse retrospective of the 1940’s by me entitled Grandma’s Good War, a collection of poems reminiscent of a time when people felt that WWII was a “good war” because it would end all wars. I enjoyed writing the rhyming verse that I called “doggerel” —rhyming verse that I haven’t felt the need to write again, since free verse is my preferred way of expressing poetry.

Recently, I expanded the idea of a Forties retrospective in a collection of poems that is a mini-memoir of a close-knit southern neighborhood during the 1940’s. It’s entitled Corner of Birch Street and was intended to inspire feelings of nostalgia for young love, games of marbles, paper dolls, five-cent Hershey bars, and Mom and Pop groceries in readers who grew up during this period of American history. Inevitably, the poems also show social changes brought into focus by laws forbidding segregated movie houses, bullying among children, and child molestation.

Poets often mine their dreams for subjects, and many of the poems emerged from dream consciousness. They showcase memories of growing up on a city street where “gangs” of the offspring of blue collar workers instigated outdoor games that had nothing to do with drug wars and street murders.

An excerpt from “Birch Street:”

We were an elemental diversity

Stuck on a plain of asphalt,

Street urchins bonding during WWII,

Security and chauvinism operating

In the shadow of the Big Bomb,

Incaution riding the waves

Of a cold war headed our way.

The artwork on the cover of Corner of Birch Street was designed by my grandson, Martin Romero, and depicts the infamous Ford coupe that carried my family off to Diddy Wah Diddy (California) with … “one last look in the rearview mirror/at a street I will not walk again.”

Available on amazon.com or by ordering from Border Press, P.O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375, borderpress@gmail.com.

WINDOWS: LETTERS TO AYLA

Memoirs have increased in popularity since the 90's, and by the year 2007, publishers were accepting more of them than first novels. USA Today published a statement by Nan Graham, editor-in-chief of Scribner's, that their popularity could be attributed to the fact that memoirs were usually "hopeful and inspiring."

Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado has just published a memoir by Jean Zipp, a great-grandmother in Tucson, Arizona whose record of the important moments of her life takes the form of letters to her great-granddaughter Ayla and attains that description of "hopeful and inspiring." The account celebrates nine decades of a story well worth telling as Zipp shares climatic events in her life in Windows: Letters to Ayla. It's a chronicle about life in a Russian Jewish family that begins in Cleveland, Ohio and takes the reader on Jean Zipp's odyssey from the East Coast to the West Coast, as she lives an ordinary, yet extraordinary, life during some of America's toughest seasons: the Great Depression, WWII, the Holocaust, and a tense period of anti-Semitism.

In an early chapter entitled "Holy," Zipp captures a child's first encounter with prejudice, describing a visit in which she accompanies her father to see the grave of her grandmother in an Orthodox Jewish cemetery. She writes that the encounter still makes her shudder, and readers will do likewise when they read the cogent description of that experience: "My father wanted me to see where my grandmother lay. As we walked toward the cemetery gates, first my father then I to my horror saw a large dead rat hanging by its tail from the cemetery gates. My father was a quiet man who kept his emotions under wrap. He found a stick, large and heavy enough to dislodge the rodent, which he threw into an adjoining field. Without a word, he led me to my grandmother's grave. After a few silent moments, he ran his hand over her headstone and together we walked out of the cemetery. I don't know if my father ever told my mother about this cruel act of anti-Semitism. He never spoke of it to me. It was some years before I was old enough to understand the ugly significance of that event..."

During the Great Depression, Zipp's father, who owns a shoe store, is awarded a contract from the city of Youngstown, Ohio to supply shoes for charity cases, and her mother, a consummate pianist who is a soloist with the Youngstown Symphony, contributes to the family finances by increasing her enrollment of piano students. Zipp's accounts of life at a time when modern conveniences were unheard of evokes nostalgic moments for those readers who grew up with milkmen, bread trucks, ice trucks, ice cream vendors, and cities without supermarkets. She describes teen-age dances sans alcohol and drugs in a "Mansion" outside of town on acres of land where between dances, she "sipped cokes and ate peanuts or pretzels...there was no need for police surveillance; had we seen a police officer, we'd have supposed there had been an accident..."

An arresting chapter about the prisoners who had been sentenced to life imprisonment during the Nuremberg trials and her brother Jerry's involvement as the military person in charge of their care documents the insensitivity of the Army in assigning a Jewish officer to care for Nazi criminals during this period. Her brother's reply to Zipp's query, "Why didn't you ask to be transferred?" was preceded by a long pause. "I thought it grotesque retributive justice," he said.

 During her adolescence, Zipp almost became a part of the WWII effort when she was asked to transpose French code into English for the War Department but was deterred by her mother who claimed that the spy work was too dangerous. At that time, parental consent was paramount, and Zipp didn't argue with her mother. Today, she asks the question: "If that opportunity were presented to a nineteen-year old today would he be apt to defer to a parent? ... I'm not a very good rebel. I wouldn't have brought grief or worry to Mother."

These are only a few excerpts from the notable account of a multi-talented person who led a multi-faceted life as the wife of a serviceman, a devoted mother, owner of a toy store, interior designer for Ethan Allen, teacher's aide, and volunteer worker in a tactile art gallery she helped create and named "Eyes of the Mind."

Zipp has created a memoir of a survivor who has left a large piece of herself behind for her great-granddaughter and for those of us who enjoy reading accounts of memoirists who preserve history by writing about their extraordinary lives in skilled narratives. She has used her memories, experiences, and her imagination to shape a moving and unforgettable narrative.

Available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V 66 Trail, Montrose, Colorado 81403.