James Connally Miller papers

COLL MSS 35

Brief inventory

A more complete inventory is available in the repository.

Box 1-4: Correspondence;
Box 5: Journals & personal papers;
Box 6-9: Drafts of poems;
Box 10: Dave Elegy & longer poems;
Box 11: In the haze was a huntress;
Box 12-15: Writings of Miller;
Box 16: Critical reviews of Miller's writings; collected writings & material on David L. Wright.

Preface to James C. Miller's Papers

by John Mark Sorensen
March 25, 1976

James Connally Miller was born October 12, 1928 in Salt Lake City, Utah and died March 11, 1971 in a Logan, Utah hospital after a long and painful illness. He was the son of James Lacey and Marilyn Denham Miller. His mother preceded him in death. He received his education in Salt Lake, Brigham City, Logan Schools, and graduated from Utah State University. He also attended the University of Utah. Mr. Miller was a member of Sigma Chi Fraternity while in college and was a member of the Academy of American Poets, Utah Poetry Society, the Utah Institute of Fine Arts, and Sierra Club. He was a veteran of the Korean War. James Miller was a technical writer for Thiokol Corporation for the last ten years of his life. He married Faye Brazee, they were later divorced. He later married Jean Christensen Taylor on November 26, 1965.

Miller's poetry began with writings in the Scribble, when he attended USU and ended with a frantic and final effort to put together poems of his friend, David Wright while continuing to write poems of his own until his untimely death in 1971.¹

Miller's poetry is comprised of a combination of an intense love and interest for certain geographical and physical features of Northern Utah and personalities and friends he found to be either hypocritical or wonderful characters (as in the case of his friendship and reverence for David L. Wright or Dr. King Hendricks).

Perhaps James Miller's best works are recorded in his book printed by Golden Quill Press in 1963 entitled East was Always Uphill. This collection contained many titles that had in some cases been published before in other outlets. Miller gives credit to these publications in his page of acknowledgments in East was Always Uphill. David Wright, Jim Miller's life long friend wrote in part of East was Always Uphill saying, "Like all good poetry, Miller says more than can be said about it. The poems speak through the power of images, of that something missing in man's search for cosmic fulfillment. He may sometimes glimpse the elusive gleam in the haunting recollection of childhood insight; he may almost identify it in the whispering of boughs as a tree bends in the breath of wind. But whatever knowledge he may derive from his discoveries, man finds them finally to be ambiguous and leading to greater mysteries. Miller's poetry is faithful to this fundamental ambiguity... it does suggest that people in our time, as in any other, need to reflect more urgently upon,

The scrub of birth and lighter birds

and watch articulate sun webs

captures and rehue the clapping of light

of small assembled leaves.

James Miller's East was Always Uphill and his In the Haze was a Huntress are the best representatives of his poetical endeavors. In In the Haze was a Huntress, D. Eugene Valentine and Miller's wife, now remarried, Jean Showell put together a volume of poetry published again by the Golden Quill Press which contains selected poems Jim had been writing for publication before his death. Valentine's introduction to In the Haze was a Huntress gives considerable insight into the poet and his poetry.

Needless to say Jim's eulogy, Dave Elegy an epitaph to his dead friend represents one of Miller's most anguished and expressive endeavors, and the "shrine be built for his dead friend" River Saints is truly a just tribute to his talented comrade.

James Miller wanted more than anything to be a poet. He sacrificed much to write what he felt was needed and worthy of poetical identification.

His East was Always Uphill, The Story of a Childhood, Dave Elegy, In the Haze was a Huntress, and miscellaneous poems and letters are an important and significant part of our local literature.

Undoubtedly Jim would be proud of the Utah Fine Arts contest he won and the $500 prize that went with it; but his life was inextricably attached to that of another local writer, David Lane Wright, and his efforts to credit David with the acceptance Jim knew David's work to be worth, is a true mark of Miller's generous and sensitive nature. Wright in turn did all he could to encourage Miller to write and write well.

It is of interest that Wright and Miller's lives and letters complimented each other, but their style and work are entirely different, only their mutual intensity for literature is a common factor shared by the two talented local writers.

It is worthy of note that Miller's work on David Wright which appeared in Dialogue.: A Journal of Mormon Thought, "Discovering a Mormon Writer, David L. Wright, 1929-1967", volume V, number 2, Summer 1970 and Miller's, The Town of My Youth, which was also published in Dialogue, volume VI, numbers 3 and 4, Autumn - Winter 1971 and later appears in In the Haze was a Huntress are important exposures to both Miller's and Wright's talent.

After James Miller's death in March 1971, two beautiful poems were written about the poet. Ira N. Haywards, In Memoriam, David L. Wright and James C. Miller, and a lovely poem In the Parlor, written by Veneta Nielsen to Vosco Call as he was delivering James Miller's funeral eulogy. These excellent verses say more than any essay can about two artistic beings whose tragic lives did bring light to other "searchers".

A fitting end to this rambling might be to quote some lines from another poem, by Veneta Nielsen, Outside for James Miller which appears in the Spring 1972 edition of the Crucible, published at Utah State University.

...... Consider Jim

Those three Jims, one a Poet, one a Philosopher,

one a Rebel, at the ways to us of-him.

Those three Jims, phosphorescent figures in a dream

gone off with the familiar stranger.

Come back stock actors in our tragic comedy.

How similar their voices tenor the whole play!

They mute the orchestra.

.......

Stalking his cell Keats learned graffito

When the stone was coldest

He scratched a star.

Bring me to Keats Jim, outside now

forever taken off on viewless wings

Bring me to Plato, you

my self-taught lamp singing brother.

Bring me to God himself, you can

you other unregenerate Jim.

The James Miller papers contain his correspondence received and also his correspondence sent to other people. There is a section which contains correspondence not sent or received directly by Miller. Materials also contained in the collection include Miller's Journals, poems, writings, critical reviews, writings by other authors, magazines, David L. Wright materials and Miller's two books of poetry--East Was Always Uphill and In the Haze was a Huntress.

This collection would be useful to anyone who is interested in James Miller's personal life or in his writings and poetry. It is also of interest to anyone who wants to learn how to write poetry.

The James Miller papers contain the story of a northern Utah writer who struggled to write what he felt.

¹Logan Herald Journal, March 11, 1971, Obituary.

For more information: 435/797-2663; Manuscript Librarian.
Special Collections & Archives, Merrill Library, Utah State University Libraries, Utah State University 84322-3000

Last modified on: Thursday, 1 November, 2001.