The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1917-03-12
"Joaqu;,," Miller

Ncrcy H. Baynton in the New Republic)
When Joaquin Miller died two three years
ago few people paid any attention to the fact
and some of these little amused that the
Pacific coast took his loss so seriously setting this
down to characteristic native SON" enthusiasm.
The conventional tactics for the eastern people
who did not ignore him altogether was to sme
him the check because he not of the
tribes OF New England, and then to demand that he
present the other for smack because he
wild westerner. Miller swept into the
cngulfng generalization that America has liter
allure because it lacks the sautary consciousness or
a picturesque and primitive past. Yet Miller had
really grown up with the country in both his
and his work had recorded the stirring melodrama
Of frontier life
All through youth ana young manhood he lived
under conditions which lacked everything that is
rcprcssive and sophistcating Somehow
couldn't understand get with my fellow man.
He seemed always to want to cheat me-to get
my labor for nothing. I could appreciate and
ter into the heart of an Indian I think what
l most needed in order to understand, get and
not be misunderstood, long time at school
where my rough points could be ground Off"
Naturalness Miller and more acquired. AL
though he knew and admired the great English
| romantcists. and although he preserved passages
| initiative of them in his later editings-a good deal
in A Song of the South is pure Coleridge-the quail
ity that pcrvades his poetry is simple and
Astounding eagerness to present life in action. The
only author writing today who gives the same
| sense of man at work in the presence of forces
which all but overwhelming is Joseph Conrad.
| AS Miller aged he desired and to give
| soul as well as body to his work Now and again
| he succeeded in writing something which more
than sheery objective. in the various bits in
| which he celebrated the heroism of the pioneer
| whether Columbus the Forty Miner. And to-
| nary degree combined the two ambitions of his old
age. The one to present the vision Of worlds
beyond" and the Other ito leave sound and words
| to the Winds "Amcrcan science has swept time
| and space aside American science dashcs along
at fifty sixty miles hour, but American literature
still numbers along in the old -f;shgioned English
| stage coach at ten miles hour and sometimes
with relocated outrdcr blowing n horn We must
leave all this behind us. When the Messiah
| of American literature comes he will singing.
| SO far may be, in words of a single syllable.'
| The closing stanza in Sappho and Phaon. the last
selection in the Complete Poems, shows how far he
| was consciously attempting to up to his
! own standard.
God is not far; man is not far
| From Heavens porch. where pacnns roll.
Man shall yet speak from star TO star
In silent language of the soul
Non tar-strcWn skies be but a town.
With angels passing up and down.
| Il leave my peace with YOU" Lo! these
His seven wounds the Peiades
Pierce Heavens porch. But. resting there,
! The moon rocks the Christ Child in
Her silver rocking chair.
This is Individually American. The porch and
the rocking chair tempt the Scoffcr to ask why
Il ut Dletr he nct,I with
aim leaf fan and a pitcher of ice water If Miller
| had been asked, he would doubtless have replied
that he omitted the latter American accessories only
| because they did not belong in this particular
| tahleau; that Pullman and Niagara Falls and
| steam radiators and Mount Shasta all lcgti-
mate material for poetry if only they apropos.
| What should rcmcmbcr--what the reader of
| joaquin" Miller cannot forgct--s that his poetry
| is an eloquent and often beautiful evidence of an
aboundingly American youth, manhood and old age
But people cannot know this unless they read
| Miller.