The Brier Poems

Jim Wayne Miller is a poet of a particular geographical place, yet he sings, he preaches, and just plain talks in a language from the earth. — Edward Field

Brier is a shrewd, well informed, fearlessly outspoken figure. He is like Yeats's Crazy Jane, who offers in terms of folk speech a wisdom that is more than folk wisdom. The Brier poems are the ones that spoke his bluntest concerns most directly. — Fred Chappell

Reading his poems, we confront a writer whose eye focuses not on the exotic but the commonplace, not on the distant but the near at hand. To accept things near and to recognize the continuity between poetry and ordinary speech are two of the central critical principles of Miller's aesthetic. Yet he also achieves his aim of making the ordinary shine with meanings we often overlook. — John Lang

In the voice of a compelling preacher he catalogues the debris and detritus of our society, regathering scattered things, fine points of manners, the bits of the past that define us. But memory here is also a vision of the future. Miller is both bard and prophet, a poet of conscience and informed political consciousness. Rereading his poems reminds us that he is not only a poet of the mountains, but of the planet. — Robert Morgan