Miller Williams

Thanks for mentioning this. I’ve been reading his collection “Some Jazz a While” and will be interested to read what has followed. I like how work very much.

By the way, here’s a bit of language trivia that caught my eye while reading one particular Miller Williams poem recently. In his daughter’s “Little Angel, Little Brother” there’s this great metaphor:

I see you now at the piano, your back a slow curve

It’s an unusual phrase that I associate with baseball. The metaphor is perfect, conveying a sense of athleticism and a setup for the explosion of action in the image (“Playin’ Ray Charles and Fats Domino”) that follows. But it is an unsual phrase.

That’s why it caught my eye in Miller’s poem “Late Show” (a wonderful poem, by the way) in the collection entitled “Distractions”:

He sits on the bed, his back a slow curve …

The shared usage is something that just looks as if it ought to have at least a little story behind it.

– Kent