Miller Time!

I’ve been excited all week, waiting in eager anticipation for the arrival of “Some Jazz Awhile,” which is a collection of poems by Miller Williams. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to ‘discover’ a new poet. I have every suspicious that Miller will live amongst Stephen Dunn, Billy Collins, and Carl Dennis as one of my favorites. Hopefully.

Finding a poet is so much better than simply finding a great poem. This is because a poet’s life work is so much greater than the sum of all his poems. It’s for the same reason that I prefer albums to singles in music. There’s something to be found in the in-between. Plus, I feel that you have to read the whole book to understand the moral. In fact, few things leave me as unfulfilled as the realization that I only like one poem or song by a given artist.

Miller also has the underdog effect working for him. The other three are well renowned and well decorated. Two are Pulitzer Prize winners and the other is a Poet Laureate. Of course, at the time I ‘fell in love’ with them, I didn’t know they were so well known. In one sense, it edifies my taste, because if all the fancy pants Pulitzer panelists agree with me, I must ‘get it.’ In another sense, I feel like a cheap slutty frontrunner that just goes with the crowd, even if unwittingly.

Admittedly though, these 300 pages have to go a long way to eclipse Dunn for the top spot. Not only is this Dunn an awesome poet, but he used to be a professional basketball player. How badass is that? Plus, I once wrote him an email to ask him some question about poetry (he’s a professor at some school in Jersey) and took the opportunity to confess my man crush for him in not so many words. He responded saying that what I had to say was one of the nicest things he’d ever heard and that it totally made his day. Dude! I made the day of a Pulitzer winner! Forget Stephen Dunn, how badass am I?

Ok, enough of that. Must focus my love on Miller. He’s got a sweet beard, that’s a start. As we all know, people with sweet beards are more likely to be awesome: Nietzsche, Freud, Dunn, my dad, both my grandpa’s, Yetti. The stage is set. Now let’s go buddy, get it done.