The Brightest and Best

The Brightest and Best Ix>yal Jones Jim Wayne Miller was a wellspring oftalent and ideas for Kentucky and Appalachia. A native ofLeicester, North Carolina, he had taught German in the Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies Department at Western Kentucky University since 1963. There he was recognized as a gifted teacherwho always hadtime for students, colleagues, and otherswho sought his counsel. He was also known as a prize-winning poet, novelist, and essayist. However, his native Appalachia always claimed a major portion ofhis time and effort. Most of his poetry, short stories, his two novels, and dozens of scholarly essays were about Appalachia. He prepared several anthologies, bibliographies, and course outlines to help teachers ofcourses relating to Appalachia. The latest of these was a two-volume work, coedited with Robert J. Higgs and Ambrose Manning, entitled Appalachia Inside Out, published by the University ofTennessee Press. Jim Wayne Miller was the brightest and best ofthose ofus who have attempted to understand and write about Appalachia. He was the natural heir to Cratis D. Williams, the father ofAppalachian studies. Jim was both poet and scholar, which ofcourse was a great advantage to him. He, like Robert Frost, knew that true creative thinking was the ability to see metaphors —to see two things, seemingly unrelated, that are somehow connected . To me, a good poem is one that helps us see something in an entirely new way. Jim accomplished that often with his poetry and his scholarship. He could relate seemingly disparate people and events to enlightening effect. In both his poems and essays, he brought his metaphoric thinking to help us see things for the first time, or from a different perspective. His training in both German and English literature at Berea and Vanderbilt equipped him to bring world literature and thought to bear on regional studies. He was apt to quote such literary figures as Goethe, Montaigne, Bachelard, Yeats, Robert Perm Warren, Wendell Berry, James Still, Robert Morgan, Wilma Dykeman, and a host of others to great effect , even before skeptical liberal arts faculty. He taught always that all literature is local someplace. Ifso, then why shouldn't Appalachians proLoyalJones , retired directoroftheAppalachian CenteratBerea College, lives in Berea and writes books. 45 duce good literature, and why shouldn't it be worthy ofstudy? Jim Wayne's work with individuals and organizations is well remembered . He was the mainstay ofthe Workshop in Appalachian History and Literature at Berea and ofthe Writers' Workshop at Hindman Settlement School. He taught at similar workshops in several other states. Jim drove thousands ofmiles to visit schools, to speak, to read his poetry, or teach extended courses. He read dozens of manuscripts from aspiring writers and wrote pages ofcarefully reasoned critiques. He was never too busy to take phone calls from those ofus who sought advice or help. James Still said that Jim Wayne "was the master of the Appalachian language." I had the good fortune to help Jim edit CratisWilliams's book, Southern Mountain Speech, and to prepare a glossary. We had a wonderful time discussing mountain words and phrases. Jim Wayne once wrote about the speech ofhis native place, "The country ofcoves and ridges/ lives in their language./ Their talk becomes a landscape where words glint/ like tin-topped barns on September afternoons/ loom dark and thick as a laurel hell/ or clear as a mountain stream." We both loved a good mountain story, and we laughed a lottogether—sometimes at the expense ofsome of you who may be reading this. At his funeral in Bowling Green were former students and protégés from across Kentucky and beyondwhom he had influenced, including these: a school superintendent and poet; a publisher and poet; an English professor and musician; a historian and social activist; a physical education teacher, writer, and farmer; a literature teacher and bookseller; and a settlement school director and organizer ofAppalachian programs. Speaking movingly was his daughter Ruth, a graduate student in San Francisco, who, choosing a field she thought to be far removed from her father's work, kept coming across the name ofJim Wayne Miller. As we say in the mountains, he was a good-un. He served his native region in ways...