Casting the Lines

Casting the Lines Jeff Daniel Marion 1969 had been a signal year: I had returned to the mountains of East Tennessee following a year's sojourn in the pine flats ofSouthern Mississippi . I had discovered in my time away a yearning for home, for the trout streams ofthe Smokies, the lakes ofJefferson County, early mornings and late afternoons casting for bass or worm fishing for bluegill, hours whiled away meditating on the water. I had discovered, too, that this thirst for home had led me to other wellsprings: the true home oflanguage, poetry. Hundreds ofmiles from the mountains, I found myselftrying to shape my memories in words, awkward attempts at best. My guide in this early apprenticeship was a literaryjournal edited by my former teacher, Stephen Mooney, the mentor who in 1960, while I was an undergraduate at the UniversityofTennessee, opened me to the possibilities ofa life spentworking with words. Imagine, then, my excitement on seeing my first published poem in the spring 1970 isssue of Tennessee PoetyJournal, nestled among a range of voices: William Stafford, Russell Banks, Henry Taylor, William Matthews, and others. And in that same issue was a poem that immediately caught my eye: Girls Sunning Like schooled minnows hanging in green water transparent in light, girls on grass are sunning in front ofthe dormitory. I see something dark circling under the earth, lunging, exploding under them, wallowing some, scattering all the rest, the sun wandering elsewhere. I had never seen work by this JimW. Miller before, knewnothing about him, found no biographical note identifying him. But I knew the world of this poem, its metaphor yoking a common college scene with that ofthe fisherman. I thought ofthe countless times I had watched minnows floatJeffDaniel Marion teaches at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee. He has severalpublished volumes ofpoetry, and edits'The Mossy Creek Reader. 36 ing on lake or creek surface, the scurry and ripple of their disappearing, some larger fish or whatever moving beneath them. And had I not that very spring watched, as I sat on the second floor ofHenderson Hall grading freshman compositions, the girls across campus in Sarah Swann Hall emerging from winter's cocoons to bask in the sun? I marveled at this poem, its ability to join two seemingly disparate worlds, and to do so in a voice quietly observant, sure ofthe perceptions it presented so exactly. It would be a few more years before I met the author, but that poem continued to have its effect all the while. Strangely, I don't recall our first meeting , but it must have occurred around 1974 or '75, for in March of 1977 we began our first work together serving as poets in the schools in Washington County, Virginia. Each March during the week ofour spring break, we traveled the back roads and main roads ofWashington County, teaching four classes a day at Patrick Henry, Holston, Abingdon, and John Battle High Schools. This arrangement continued for seven or eight years and provided the means for our friendship to develop. In the evenings we always had dinner together , long, leisurely times when our conversations roamed across stories from growing up in the mountains, fox hunters, grandparents, and mass migration ofsquirrels, to particular poets whose work we were following, and inevitably to fishing, most frequently fly fishing for trout. Talk of fishing became our touchstone, the base we always began with and returned to, the tight lines that bound us for twenty plus years. Those times together in Washington County also allowed me to learn the habits of my friend: his working late into the night on his many and varied writing projects (early on I assumed Jim required little or no sleep, a factor that led me to believe he was invulnerable, a source of boundless energy), his sometimes unnerving method ofdriving—the more animated Jim's conversation became while driving, the slower the vehicle ran until at some point he would turn loose ofthe steering wheel and face me to finish his point. Somehow I believe Jim thought ofhis car as an old mule hitched to a wagon—and well, hell, ifhe turned loose ofthe reins, didn't it know...