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| Birth Name(s) : Tim Miller |
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Full Tim Miller Biography
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.
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.
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.
In 2006, he and his wife, novelist Jenny Miller, 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. |
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