Miller Williams Was A Poet.
Miller Williams, American poet and my professor in College at Loyola University of the South in the late Sixties, passed away recently. I was thinking recently about my writing, both poetry and otherwise, and remembered what he used to say: "Every word you add dilutes the meaning". He believed in simple, conversational tone, and realized that most meaning derived by a reader comes from their own heart; not from a bunch of words. He also was a gentle soul, and hated war and violence. We once spent two weeks analyzing a single poem, Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner", the last line of which stays with me today: "When he died, they washed him out of the turret with a hose". Miller Williams didn't teach me how to write. He taught me how to live.
For us music fans, he was also the father of Lucinda Williams. Cool that he was your prof.
Posted by: Jay | July 31, 2020 at 08:43 PM
I used to have seminars at his house in New Orleans. She was a young girl.
Posted by: Richard Georges | July 31, 2020 at 09:25 PM