Tim Miller
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Tim Miller (born 1979) is an American poet and nonfiction writer.
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[edit] Early Work
Since 1998 he has published two novels and five books of short fiction and poetry. However, in the light of his major work-in-progress, To the House of the Sun, his previous books can now reasonably be described as "early work." These include:
- Ash and Other Poems (1998)
- Suburban Vertigo (1999, poetry in the anthology Illegible Stone)
- Acceleration (2000, poetry/prose collage)
- The Valley of Ashes (2000, short fiction and poetry)
- Death by Water (2001, novel)
- Songs of Innocence (2002, poetry/prose collage, memoir)
- Fusion (2003, long poem)
- Language of the Living (2005, novel)
All of these were, to some extent, attempts at (to use T. S. Eliot’s phrase describing James Joyce's Ulysses) a “continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity”; hence all of them have contemporary settings that are nevertheless supported by religious, mythological, or historical ideas. All of them have been attempts to imbue the modern experience with significance and meaning. The dedication to art as a replacement for his childhood Catholicism is a trait he has in common with many writers--but “replacement” probably isn’t the right word, since, as he has stated, he isn’t after an “artistic” experience of religion so much as a “religious” experience of art--perhaps one could say he is replacing art with religion.
All his books, too, have used short fragments as a vehicle for situation or emotion or character, in lieu of a traditional plot. (He has stated that a recent re-reading of The Book of Genesis has shown him just how powerful a collection of fragments, with little traditional continuity between stories, can be.) This tendency began with Acceleration, where the power of the work is derived from simple descriptions of scenes or persons, or "transcripts" of a monologue, instead of the elaborate structure of a story. This technique seems to shape all his work since, up to and including To the House of the Sun, an epic narrative poem that uses many techniques for getting at the emotional heart, the true center, of what is being explored and expressed in the narrative.
[edit] Six Gallery Press
During the period between the publication of Acceleration and that of Language of the Living, Miller was the editor of the small press he founded, Six Gallery Press. While there, a handful of concerns took up his time, such as drafting a new manifesto for the kind of writing he and others were engaged in; a new "ism" to describe this new school of writing; and of course a new name for their group. But, Miller having recognized very early the importance of writers as disparate as Hemingway and Joyce, no set style reigned at 6GP; hence the variety of authors precluded any manifesto or defined group. In any case, his admitted lack of business acumen, a perfectionist attitude leading to an unwillingness to share the major publishing duties with others, and the huge amount of time he therefore ended up spending on the press that still, however, never brought it close to his models (New Directions or City Lights Books), all finally led him to hand over duties to a collective formed by some of the other authors he'd published. Presently his only connection to the press is as a contributor.
[edit] To the House of the Sun
Around this time the initial idea for To the House of the Sun came to him. Much of this work-in-progress has been published on the internet in preliminary drafts. An epic narrative poem of the American Civil War and expansion West, To the House of the Sun takes up all of the concerns of his previous work and then some. It takes place in a specific historical period (1860s America) and is told through the eyes of a specific young man (of Irish and Catholic upbringing), but the nature of the story itself allows for great freedom, great shifts in tone and style, and the ability to capture as much of humanity as possible within one work. The nature of the writing itself has also allowed Miller to borrow material from every historical period and every religious and mythic tradition, so that hundreds of footnotes blanket the text, all nods to other poets, writers, religious texts, letters and memoirs.
The initial impulse towards this constant and acknowledged borrowing from other writers came from Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey, scholars agree, are the result of years of oral performance, adaptation by countless bards who took up the inherited material, and finally the “Homer” of the texts we have now.
Since beginning work on the poem, Miller has come upon numerous other instances of this borrowing, whether in the most basic sense of the English language itself, which is a conglomeration of borrowings from every language English-speakers have come upon; to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke, who both certainly had Mark at their sides and took and adapted freely from him; to the Old Testament authors, specifically those of Genesis, who (no matter how much or little credence is given to the documentary hypothesis) were certainly working with different strands of an inherited tradition, and made a new work out of them; to the authors of the Arthurian romances of the Middle Ages who freely borrowed from and adapted one another’s work; to the Irish bards of the Tain and the rest of the Ulster and other cycles; to Elias Lönnrot, who compiled the Finnish Kalevala in the 1800s; to Modernist writers like Eliot or Joyce or even Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose works are full of references, direct quotes, or alterations of others’ work.
All this has culminated in Miller's more recent statement that his dependence on previous stories and authors is, in a way, an attempt to truly give himself up to the story he is telling, and to disappear completely, leaving only the work behind. This has come only recently, he says, after a reading of Thomas Merton’s description of the Virgin Mary as the most perfect saint; Merton says her perfection comes from the fact that she is completely anonymous, and nothing is known of her except her immediate submission to God at the Annunciation.
It should also be noted here that while To the House of the Sun is called a poem, and Time & the River a collection of poems (see Other Projects, below), their form in short paragraphs might lead some to believe they are prose. In keeping with no longer seeking a manifesto or theory for his work, and in a general bewilderment with the clichés of academia (cumbersome terminology and all), Miller has stated only that the two works seem to exhibit more aspects of poetry than prose, but even then, they can be called whatever the reader wants. Both, he says, are written for the ear and should be read out loud, so their success comes from their sound, from the occasional similarity to actual or heightened speech.
[edit] Other Projects
As a result of writing To the House of the Sun--which will still require another five or six years to complete--all his other projects, save three, have been put aside. These three are: the companion book to House, called Time & the River, which will comprise a potentially endless series of poems taken from history, religion, and mythology. (The sources of House will, as it were, be given their original context back) The second is his blog, timeandtheriver.blogspot.com, where he posts his notes, reactions, and occasional reflections on what he is reading, or on the composition of House. The third, planned for the further future, will be a nonfiction companion to House and Time & the River, an unspecified work (part encyclopedia, part trove of retellings) on world mythology. Aside from these, and excepting perhaps updated and revised versions of Acceleration and Fusion, all other projects have been put on hold.
[edit] S4N Books
In 2006, he and his fiancée started S4N Books, a publisher of critical editions of long poems, reprints of various biographies and critical works. Biographies of Whitman, St. John of the Cross, and Dante are being considered. The first release is scheduled for January 2008.
