Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 6.01 Literature
Presentation #1 Title
Beyond "The Brier": Performance of Self in the Works of Jim Wayne Miller
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Although they are important texts in the development of Appalachian literature, too much attention has been focused on Jim Wayne Miller’s “Brier Poems” in relation to his other work. Because we’ve tended to focus more on those pieces that on his other poetry, essays, uncollected work, or fiction, we’ve missed out on seeing just how complicated Miller’s relationship to his Appalachian identity really was. Why, for instance, were Miller’s mid-80s collections Nostalgia for 70 and Vein of Words, arguably his most autobiographical poems (in the sense that they addressed his work as a teacher and scholar in Appalachia), published with a press outside the region? And what is the relationship between Miller and Robert Jennings Wells, the protagonist of his two novels (Newfound and His First, Best Country)? Moreover, what is the relationship between Wells and “The Brier,” characters who share a unique, sometimes puzzling, intertextual relationship (sections from His First, Best Country find their way, often by wholesale lifting, into the last section of the posthumous Brier Poems). Miller himself once said, of the poems that made up his early book Dialogue With a Dead Man, that “[m]y poems were different before, and would be different after, I wrote [that book].” Miller saw his writing as an exploration of identity, one that was continuously growing, with many stages of development. To understand him, we need to consider all of those stages, not just one.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Matt Prater’s creative writing has appeared in many journals, including ALCAlines, Appalachian Heritage, Floyd County Moonshine, The Hollins Critic, James Dickey Review, Motif, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, and Still: The Journal. A graduate of Radford and Appalachian State Universities, he now works as a composition instructor for Emory & Henry College in Emory, VA.
Beyond "The Brier": Performance of Self in the Works of Jim Wayne Miller
Although they are important texts in the development of Appalachian literature, too much attention has been focused on Jim Wayne Miller’s “Brier Poems” in relation to his other work. Because we’ve tended to focus more on those pieces that on his other poetry, essays, uncollected work, or fiction, we’ve missed out on seeing just how complicated Miller’s relationship to his Appalachian identity really was. Why, for instance, were Miller’s mid-80s collections Nostalgia for 70 and Vein of Words, arguably his most autobiographical poems (in the sense that they addressed his work as a teacher and scholar in Appalachia), published with a press outside the region? And what is the relationship between Miller and Robert Jennings Wells, the protagonist of his two novels (Newfound and His First, Best Country)? Moreover, what is the relationship between Wells and “The Brier,” characters who share a unique, sometimes puzzling, intertextual relationship (sections from His First, Best Country find their way, often by wholesale lifting, into the last section of the posthumous Brier Poems). Miller himself once said, of the poems that made up his early book Dialogue With a Dead Man, that “[m]y poems were different before, and would be different after, I wrote [that book].” Miller saw his writing as an exploration of identity, one that was continuously growing, with many stages of development. To understand him, we need to consider all of those stages, not just one.
