Garrison Keillor once read a poem by Chuck Miller on The Writer’s Almanac. That’s how I rediscovered Miller’s poems. He writes about nature, his dog (rescued from a dental lab), living in a shack, and continually reminds himself why he’s an anarchist.

Miller built a rough shack in the 1980s, using egg cartons as insulation. It is nothing like Thoreau’s shack.

And I am awed and saddened by Miller’s rough life-style. How? Why? He earned a BS in Science and Math at the University of Illinois, an MA in philosophy at the Southern Illinois University, and an MFA from The Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa. How could he not find a good job?

But I’m here to share my enthusiasm for his book, Northern Lights: New & Selected Poems (1994). The poem “start up the music again” especially resonates with me.

An excerpt from “start up the music again,” by Chuck Miller

but there is a hunger for those other times
when if we were more desperate for everything
we were also more alive
in some other way,
you seek out this sense
without knowing how
exactly you are going about it
but what is it
…the memory of our lost youth…
or something generational
that now seems almost past for us
or that once we struck out against them
and made a life, at least for a while
so completely different
from their own




Chuck Miller, the least silent of poets, was a member of the Silent Generation. When he wasn’t writing poetry, socializing, or rabble-rousing, he was telling truths no one wanted to hear. I saw him at a poetry reading once, and he was very handsome, with a slightly mischievous twinkle. Some of his poems are about sex with various girlfriends, and h sounded, yes, good in bed.

On the back of the book, Miller is quoted by an editor on what he does not want to see printed on the back of the book.

“The thing I don’t want on the back of my book is a bunch of crap about my degrees, or who I studied with, or my MFA from the University of Iowa, blah-blah, particularly since I ended up absolute enemies with the Writers’ Workshop; it would be ironic, galling, and disgusting to be identified as some product  or protege of theirs.”

.Sometimes Miller was dirt-poor:  He writes a poem about almost taking a telemarketer job.  He was desperate, but when he he saw the crowded room of miserable people, being rated, berated, or praised by a supervisor, he left. He decided he was not that desperate.

He also rages against the food stamps program. He’s been getting food stamps for years, and suddenly they change their procedure, in order, he believes, to make it more difficult for the poor and the immigrants. He is told that everyone must watch a two-hour film on what food stamps are before he gets his stamps. Miller explains that he knows what food stamps are. He has to get back to his job: he doesn’t have time for the bureaucracy.

In one poem, he writes about people with dead eyes on the bus, getting out at the supermarket which sells food that he says will kill them: dyed food with lots of additives, and cheap fruit and vegetables imported from Mexico. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be eating American fruit.

But it is the gentler poem, “the memory of our lost youth/ or something generational.” that haunts me. A snapshot fell out of a book the other day, a faded picture that won’t last much longer, ,of my husband and me in our early twenties on a picnic by the river. What makes me laugh: we wore nearly identical jeans and t-shirts (though mine is pink). We could wear the same clothe then. How sweet we were!

Cheers to Chuck Miller and his book Northern Fields, which I really love. He lived a long life, in spite of his life-style. Some people can live like that, others cannot. And he seemed to appreciate his shack and his country walks, so there was clearly joy in his life.