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This week: Joaquin Miller Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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This is poetry from the minds and the hearts of poets on Writing.Com. The poems I am going to be exposing throughout this newsletter are ones that I have found to be, very visual, mood setting and uniquely done. Stormy Lady
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I would like to start out this newsletter with a personal note, I have been here on Writing.com for 15 years now. I have been blessed to meet so many amazing poets throughout these years. Some in person and some only through the wonderful words they have shared with all of us. I am truly grateful for each and everyone of you. Thank you for making Writing.com the best place for me to come to read poetry. Thank you for the reviews and all the things you have taught me along the way.
This month I received an email from a member asking me about Cincinnatus Heine Miller, which I knew little about, so I went to my library and started reading. Once again a wonderful member was opening my world to something new. Here are the poems they liked and what I learned about the poet. Hope you all enjoy.
Columbus
By Joaquin Miller
Behind him lay the gray Azores,
Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,
For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
“Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
“My men grow mutinous day by day;
My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day,
‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
Should I and all my men fall dead.
These very winds forget their way,
For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—
He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:
“This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
What shall we do when hope is gone?”
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
“Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—
A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”
Midnight Pencillings
By Joaquin Miller
I am sitting alone in the moonlight,
In the moonlight soft and clear,
And a thousand thoughts steal o'er me,
While penciling, sitting here;
And the cricket is chirping, a chirping
And sings as I sit alone,
In the tall willow grass around me,
In a low and plaintive tone.
But fancy goes flitting and flying,
And I cannot keep it here,
Though the crickets are singing so plaintive,
And the moon shines never so clear.
Away in the hazy future—
Afar by the foaming sea
I am painting a cot in my fancy—
A cottage, and "Minnie" and me.
Now fancy grows dim in the distance—
So dim in the long since past,
That I scarce can take the fair picture
Of the playmates I spotted with last.
But away in the western wildwood
In the woodland wild and wier,
I relive in fancy my childhood
And sigh that I'm sitting here.
Yet I know 'tis wrong to be sighing
And seeking a future too fair,
Or to call up old hopes that are lying
A wreck in the sea of despair;
I know that the present has pleasures
That I ought to enjoy and embrace,
Lest I sigh for these days that are passing
When the future has taken their place.
Yet, as I sit in the moonlit meadow,
With no voice but nature's near,
Save the chirp and the chime of the cricket
Falling plaintively on the ear,
I cannot control my fancy,
My thoughts are so wayward and wild,
That I ever will dream of the future,
Or wish I again were a child.
On September 8, 1837, Hulings Miller and his wife Margaret Witt welcomed son Cincinnatus Heine Miller into their family. The Millers lived in Liberty, Indiana with their two sons John and Cincinnatus. Hulings was a restless schoolteacher and not long after Cincinnatus was born he packed up the family and headed to a new homestead this was the first of many moves. About twenty months after Cincinnatus was born, his mother had another son followed by a daughter a year later. The family eventually join a group of pioneers and made their way to Oregon in two covered wagons pulled with oxen and horses for each of the boys. Miller finished school in one room schoolhouse in Oregon and set off to become his own man.
Miller attended Columbia College and upon graduation was admitted to the Oregon bar in 1860. In the following years Miller owned a pony express and a newspaper. He, himself wrote many articles for the newspaper. After a suggestion from a fellow writer Miller began writing under the pen name Joaquin Miller. His first book of poems Specimens was published in 1868 and Joaquin et al. in 1869 He wrote two books that were published in 1871, they were Pacific Poems and Songs of the Sierras. Miller traveled San Francisco, there he met and married his first wife Minnie. When San Francisco didn't pan out Miller moved his wife and daughter Cali-Shasta, east. Miller’s life began to unravel and he was accused of fraud and stealing a horses. Minnie’s and Miller’s marriage eventually fell apart. Minnie filed for divorce right as miller was running for Oregon Supreme Court. This ended Miller’s political career.
Miller had failed at being a critic and was now unable to follow a political career so he reinvented himself as a writer, he would from that point on be forever known as "the Poet of the Sierras." He referred to himself at “the Byron of the Rockies.” It was said that Miller married again and once again that marriage failed. Miller spent his later years writing. His other books of poetry included Songs of the Sunlands in 1873, The Ship in the Desert in 1875, The Baroness of New York in 1877, Songs of Italy in 1878, Memorie and Rime1884, and the Complete Poetical Works in 1897.
Miller moved to Oakland California in 1886 where he built his home, a cabin, he called "The Hights." Miller died February 17, 1913 in his home. He asked his friends and family for a simple burial on his homestead, but the public wanted to celebrate him and his life, so his funeral was public.
(In researching Joaquin Miller, there were many discrepancies in his date of birth, Miller often told people he was younger than he was and his exact date has not been verified. It has been said it was in March, then in September and even November the years were between 1837 and 1841. Other discrepancies found were the amount of times he was actually married and whether he had one daughter or two. It seem Miller like to tell stories about himself so few people knew for certainty about his life. I enjoyed learning about Joaquin Miller and thank Monty  for emailing me about him. Here is the poem I enjoyed the most.)
The Yukon
by Joaquin Miller
The moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e'er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared
The fearful meaning, the mad pain,
The weary eyes, the poor dazed brain,
That came at last to feel, to see
The dread, dead touch of lunacy.
How loud the silence! Oh, how loud!
How more than beautiful the shroud
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth
Above the black, slow-moving pall
As at some fearful funeral!
The moon blares as mad trumpets blare
To marshaled warriors long and loud;
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud,
But oh, beware that moon, beware
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare!
Beware white silence more than white!
Beware the five-horned starry rune;
Beware the groaning gorge below;
Beware the wide, white world of snow,
Where trees hang white as hooded nun--
No thing not white, not one, not one!
But most beware that mad white moon.
All day, all day, all night, all night
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day.
Just whiteness, whiteness, ghastly white,
Made doubly white by that mad moon
And strange stars jangled out of tune!
At last, he saw, or seemed to see,
Above, beyond, another world.
Far up the ice-hung path there curled
A red-veined cloud, a canopy
That topt the fearful ice-built peak
That seemed to prop the very porch
Of God's house; then, as if a torch
Burned fierce, there flushed a fiery streak,
A flush, a blush, on heaven's cheek!
The dogs sat down, men sat the sled
And watched the flush, the blush of red.
The little wooly dogs, they knew,
Yet scarcely knew what they were about.
They thrust their noses up and out,
They drank the Light, what else to do?
Their little feet, so worn, so true,
Could scarcely keep quiet for delight.
They knew, they knew, how much they knew
The mighty breaking up of night!
Their bright eyes sparkled with such joy
That they at last should see loved Light!
The tandem sudden broke all rule;
Swung back, each leaping like a boy
Let loose from some dark, ugly school--
Leaped up and tried to lick his hand--
Stood up as happy children stand.
How tenderly God's finger set
His crimson flower on that height
Above the battered walls of night!
A little space it flourished yet,
And then His angel, His first-born,
Burst through, as on that primal morn!
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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The winner of "Stormy's poetry newsletter & contest" [ASR] is:
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The deer settle on country winter
yards like dust
on mantelpiece keepsakes, omnipresent
yet indiscernible
until suddenly, the mass
roams your property with identity.
Big bellies
of pregnant does, driving them to
strip bark
from tender apple trees, ears and tails
twitching in the flux
of tinsel and bells; their scratch and
tinkle tied to the branches, a warning
hunger can now evade, stomachs
aching like empty boxes
tied with ribbon.They stroke
closer to home, snow deep
and tedious, to discover that
just as dust and Christmas
we expected them, and as they bob
our gift apples and sunflowers
from the flakes,
the northern lights awaken, casting
rubies and emeralds across
the last twist of this years skies.
Honorable mention:
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Poetry: December 09, 2015 Issue [#7360]
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