{"id":35956,"date":"2006-04-21T12:06:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T19:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=35956"},"modified":"2025-02-21T09:26:55","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T17:26:55","slug":"online-exclusive-a-conversation-with-joseph-millar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/online-exclusive-a-conversation-with-joseph-millar\/","title":{"rendered":"Online Exclusive: A Conversation with Joseph Millar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Willow<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Works in Willow Springs <\/em>79<\/a>, 86<\/em> <\/a>, and 58<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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April 21, 2006<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Jeremy Halinen and Zachary Vineyard<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A CONVERSATION WITH JOSEPH MILLAR<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n
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\"Joseph<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo Credit: dodgepoetry.org<\/em><\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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RAISED IN PENNSYLVANIA, JOSEPH MILLAR RECIEVED <\/strong>an MA from Johns Hopkins University in 1970, after which worked a variety of jobs, including telephone installation and commercial fishing. His writing includes two books of poetry from Eastern Washington University Press, Overtime<\/em> (2001) and Fortune<\/em> (2006), as well as two chapbooks, Slow Dancer<\/em> and Midlife: (Passionate Lives: Eight Autobiographical Poem Cycles)<\/em>. In 1995, Millar was awarded first place in the Montalvo Biennial Poetry Competition, judged by Garrett Hongo, and won second place in the National Writers’ Union Competition, judged by Philip Levine. His work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including the Alaska Quarterly Review<\/em>, Ploughshares<\/em>, Poetry International<\/em>, and Prairie Schooner<\/em>. He has also been the recipient of fellowships from the Montalvo Center for the Arts and Oregon Literary Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yusef Komunyakaa has described Millar as a \u201cpoet we can believe,\u201d because his poetry is not only involved with commonplace jobs, possessions, and emotions, but to his voice is an authority for these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We met over lunch with Millar at the Palm Court Grill in Spokane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JOSEPH MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m warning you right now that I read the interview with Gerry Stern and he is a hell of a lot smarter than I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ZACHARY VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you\u2019ll be funnier right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, OK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gerry came and visited me at my house one time. He didn\u2019t know I had a back porch because he hadn\u2019t been to the house. And the bathroom is right next to where he was sleeping. So he wakes up in the morning and he has to piss like a racehorse, and right out on the front porch he\u2019s standing there, peeing. And the front porch is like eight feet from the sidewalk. And he said two people went by, they were very polite. He said they never looked up at him. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can imagine him out there with crazy hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s a wild man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to beat up the tone of the interview, but do you consider yourself the speaker of the poems in Overtime<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the thing about poetry with me. I can\u2019t get out of it. I know people who write from different perspectives, you know, who write persona poems and stuff, but I think the subtext to all poems\u2014I mean the really good ones\u2014is that the author is the speaker. They\u2019re in there. One of the best poets who acts as a speaker in her work is Louise Gluck, in Wild Irises<\/em>. You know she\u2019s in there. All those needling little observations she makes, and the short discursive statements about life that aren\u2019t very salutary\u2014that\u2019s her. And anybody who writes a persona poem can\u2019t really inhabit the persona they\u2019re writing about, it’s just, it\u2019ll be a shitty persona. It won\u2019t have any juice. I didn\u2019t even try and write persona poems for Overtime<\/em>. The first-person speaker in there, I\u2019m afraid, is the dreaded I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s obviously important to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the best thing about writing, when it\u2019s working, is that you somehow figure out how to have it be direct, like it\u2019s what you mean.  You know how that is? You get a poem going and say, \u201cOh, that\u2019s how it was. That\u2019s how it was. There\u2019s that old man standing there by the railroad station with the paper blowing in the streets and that\u2019s how it was that day\u201d and it\u2019s coming back to you and you\u2019re getting it down. And you go, this is hella cool. To me, you have a real piece of life that you\u2019ve lived and you\u2019ve got it down on paper in some way.  And when that happens, it\u2019s magical and it makes you feel great. So people that say, \u201cOh the I sucks, get the I out of there it\u2019s all so boring and everything\u201d they\u2019re just doing a bunch of smoke and mirrors to me, bunch of misdirection. If the I really isn\u2019t in there, What are they doing it for? That\u2019s a question you\u2019ve got to ask yourself when you read a poem. If you have to ask yourself why the person wrote it, that basically means the poem bites. Pretty much. You can say, \u201cThis poem, I don\u2019t know why the guy wrote it.\u201d The next statement is, \u201cBecause I don\u2019t care about it and it doesn\u2019t seem like they care about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you tend to generally write from memory or do you start from something from the present moment? How do you get a poem started?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memory, mostly. And I have short lists in my notebook of stuff I mean to write about someday. Because I\u2019ll forget it. So I write it down in notes. When a woman has a flat tire, or something like that. And I can\u2019t always make a poem out of it, but I come back and give it a try a lot of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you usually find yourself writing in the same kind of vein?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, that was Overtime<\/em> because when I wrote a lot of those poems, my life was changing a lot. In \u201997, I quit working on the trades, and now I\u2019m like, kinda fat and blah. So you think that I would be writing poems with gratitude, which is really how I feel a lot of times. But what happens when I sit down and go write the poems are angry, sad poems, a kind of poems that are not so cheery. So, I\u2019m not real proud of that, but I don\u2019t know what to do about it because that\u2019s the kind I\u2019m getting so I\u2019m taking them and I say thank you and keep going. Sometimes I read wonderful praise poems. The whole tradition of praise poetry, from Hopkins on, and before him, Wordsworth, Shakespeare. Praise poems. Praise the world. Even the neos and Adam Zagajewski, and the poets captured that lived through the war, they\u2019re writing praise poems. And here I am just this gringo American, you know, had to work for a living for a while and raise some kids and all I can do is piss and moan. What\u2019s the matter with me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your poems have a great deal of attention to sound, and I wondered if that comes right away as you\u2019re writing or if that\u2019s something that you pay attention to in revision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You know I think I sort of have a natural ear for language in that way and especially internal rhyme. I do a lot of that. And the phrases occur to me that way. And of course when I go back to revise if I can think of a way to amplify that, I do. That\u2019s one thing that I do pretty good naturally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you consider writing poems to be work or play or somewhere in between?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s work, but you know, it\u2019s probably like you guys consider it. It\u2019s work. When you\u2019ve been doing it for even the amount of time I\u2019ve been doing it, which is longer than you guys, it gets more like \u201cI\u2019ve got to go back in there\u201d and then sometimes I put it off. And poetry, you don\u2019t get to go back to the same one like a fiction writer does. The poem\u2019s over. So when you go back in there, you have to start over again. And sometimes I\u2019m like, \u201cI might have forgotten how to do this, how did I do that? Can I still do that?\u201d And then I\u2019m thinking, \u201cI can\u2019t do this anymore.\u201d William Stafford has this one poem where he\u2019s trying to climb up a cliff, and it ends up where he goes, \u201cI made it again.\u201d That\u2019s the last line. And that\u2019s what it\u2019s like. It\u2019s always coming from some place where you can\u2019t exactly tell how you did it. The ones that are good, especially. So to me, it\u2019s messing with that thing that I can\u2019t make work yet or whatever it is. But then after I get workout, or starting a run.  You\u2019ve got to stretch, and you\u2019ve got to get out there and it\u2019s raining, and goddamnit. But then you get going a little bit, and you\u2019re going oh yeah, okay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you know that later on you\u2019re going to forget this process, like it\u2019s just going to go fleeting out the window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, and it\u2019s going to be over, and you\u2019re going to over and you\u2019re going to be a greedy bastard and go I want some more. There\u2019s never enough. It\u2019s like sex, there\u2019s never enough. And that\u2019s the thing about poetry, there\u2019s magic like that. So it\u2019s work and play and magic and it\u2019s frightening. Sometimes when I don\u2019t write for a long time I get anxious. I want to pick a fight with somebody, I want to break something. But, I live in a house with a family. I can\u2019t go around doing that, obviously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s it like being married to a poet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, well, being married to my wife, especially, it\u2019s all good. It\u2019s mostly a good deal. There\u2019s times when it\u2019s not such a good deal but mostly it\u2019s a good deal. Because I can show her my stuff and she doesn\u2019t lie to me. She risks me getting pissed off at her, which I do. \u201cI\u2019m not changing that! That\u2019s the whole goddamn thing, right there! What do you mean change that?\u201d and the thing is, most of the time it\u2019s right. So I really trust her. But it\u2019s hard sometimes because we\u2019re both writing in the house and the phone rings and you say, \u201cI answered it last time.\u201d So that\u2019s there. Who\u2019s going to do this, and who\u2019s going to do that. We\u2019re got the chores of living divided up so it\u2019s pretty even. And we\u2019ve both been married before and we know what some of the pitfalls of a relationship can be. A lot of times there\u2019s certain things, if you\u2019re married with somebody, in a relationship with them, that you should never say, and I think people, and this is a little of a digression, sometimes people think in the name of honesty, of really having a really good, really honestly grounded relationship, you should be able to say anything to each other. And the thing is you can\u2019t. You can\u2019t say anything you want. You could say something to somebody and you\u2019ll never be able to take it back. And this is my experience. And the damage is done, and it\u2019s never the same after that. Because when we\u2019re intimate with one another, we know things about each other nobody else knows. So there\u2019s a rule of decency that comes in there. Poetry for us, and when we\u2019ve had an argument talking something about poetry and it\u2019s like a neutral ground. You\u2019ll say something like, \u201cI saw these translations of Transtromer\u201d or something and the other person will say, \u201coh yeah?\u201d and you start talking again about this thing that you both. . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

INTERVIEWER<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You both have wide respect for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, yeah. Something like that, you know. So that\u2019s a good thing that it does, being married to a poet. It gives us a way of relating that\u2019s real personal, yet it\u2019s impersonal, too. Because there\u2019s an impersonality about art. There\u2019s an impersonality about it. There\u2019s a story about Miles Davis, where somebody in his family, I want to say his sister but I\u2019m not sure, said \u201cListen, I want you to use so and so, somebody\u2019s cousin, I want you to use him as a drummer,\u201d and Miles said, \u201cWell I\u2019ve played with that guy already, and he ain\u2019t that good.\u201d And she goes, \u201cYeah, but come on, but he\u2019s our friend.\u201d And Miles says, \u201cMusic doesn\u2019t have friends like that.\u201d And that\u2019s the way poetry is, too. It doesn\u2019t have friends like that. Now you know you don\u2019t always play bad. If you look around you at the poetry scene, that thing is not always evident. Sometimes you see in somebody or in somebody\u2019s friend, they\u2019re getting over a lot and they\u2019re not that good. But it doesn\u2019t change the thing of the poetry. As Keats looked at it or Shakespeare looked at it, or Dante. It\u2019s upon here and you\u2019re bringing your little flowers to it. In our case they\u2019re kind of like dandelions. But, you know, you\u2019re bringing your little flowers to it. In our case they\u2019re kind of like dandelions. But, you know, you\u2019re bringing it over there and it\u2019s what it is and they\u2019re as good as you can make them. And no matter who publishes the book or who writes on that back of it, it\u2019s as good as the poems are. And sometimes you\u2019ll read poetry in the big houses and you\u2019ll go, \u201cyou know. That guy shouldn\u2019t have published this.\u201d It\u2019s got maybe five good poems in there and about thirty that are pretty mediocre. So you can\u2019t tell and there\u2019s an impersonality to it. And that\u2019s part of the thing about it that\u2019s cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever co-written a poem with Dorianne or have you ever thought about doing that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything that comes out of our house is co-written in a way because we look at each other\u2019s stuff and pencil it up and sometimes give each other lines and give each other images. But, no. I don\u2019t have anything against it collaborations. But collaborations on poems, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not that thrilled with the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VINEYARD<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Especially if you\u2019re writing from your perspective, the I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dreaded I. Plus, you\u2019re not going to make any money at poetry, co collaboration doesn\u2019t help out much. The most money you\u2019re going to make is if you get really big and successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Howell, in an interview with Tod Marshall, said that poems written during Vietnam forced people to act, and since then poems haven\u2019t accomplished that same type of \u201cmotivation.\u201d How much power to do think the individual has to bring about positive change to such complex problems, and how do you see the poet\u2019s role as a means toward bringing those changes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I was your guys\u2019 ages, and the war was going on, there was a good chance the government would reach in, grab your ass, and send you to the jungle to be shot at by the Vietcong. So, there was a galvanizing effect in the country. We didn\u2019t have all these \u201csmart bomb\u201d things they have now, where you can invade a country from the air. So, in other words, the poets against the war in the 60s, I agree with Chris, did motivate people to speak out. I remember watching Robert Bly read and being very inspired by him. Abby Hoffman was reading right before the war in 1969, back when the Chicago Seven were up for trial, and he talked about flying into Washington D.C. on the plane, and he said you could see the Patomic River going out like a big leg, and another river in D.C. going out the other way like a big leg, and then the Washington Monument sticking straight up between them like a big cock. [Laughs]. I just thought this guy was hella cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, that whole time was, you know, different. The government could put hands on you personally, in a way they couldn\u2019t do before. There was a draft. That had a lot more to do with it than Bly, Levertov, Stafford, and Kinnell going around reading poems. Although that was a great thing, I don\u2019t think it was the poems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social injustice toward black people during the 60s was also a motivating force behind poetry. There\u2019s a book by David Hilliard called This Side of Glory<\/em>, and he was the minister for information for the Black Panthers. He talks about the beginning of the Black Panther party, which was him and Hewey Newton and Bobby Seal getting together to read a bunch of communist literature, getting all amped-up about it, and deciding that they would get some guns and patrol Oakland. If they saw the cops unfairly shake someone down, they were going to break loose. And, too, they were going to have this free breakfast program for children. They were going to do things in their community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lived in a much more fascist state during Vietnam. We were thinking, back then, that there was going to be a revolution. We were really thinking we were going to have an end to racism, and other things. Compared to 1954, racism was a lot better, so anyone who said they wanted to go back to the way it was before the 60s was crazy. Now they try and discredit the 60s by saying it was just a bunch of drug-induced kids running around. Bullshit. We stopped a war. But it wasn\u2019t the poems. Poems can do more now\u2014and I know this is a long fucking answer. All I know is I like the idea of having peace in your life, and not being an asshole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You got anymore artistic questions? That was too political.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALINEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a book that\u2019s primarily about work, why did you choose to include love poems?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MILLAR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh easy. Work is the other side of love. Work is what we do, and you have to have a good attitude about that. Work is love made manifest. As I think Freud said: You have a lot more work ahead of you after your mistress is fucking around. [Laughs.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAISED IN PENNSYLVANIA, JOSEPH MILLAR RECIEVED an MA from Johns Hopkins University in 1970, after which worked a variety of jobs, including telephone installation and commercial fishing. His writing includes two books of poetry from Eastern Washington University Press, Overtime (2001) and Fortune (2006), as well as two chapbooks, Slow Dancer and Midlife: (Passionate Lives: Eight Autobiographical Poem Cycles). In 1995, Millar was … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9086,"featured_media":2525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpo365_audiences":[],"wpo365_private":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35956"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36836,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35956\/revisions\/36836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}