Remarks by Joaquin Miller | V2Melody Quotations

“I wrote much as I traveled but never kept my verse, once published.”

Treats print as a release rather than a hoard · Autobiographical notes

Sees isolation as the price of the calling · Preface, Complete Poetical Works

“Better to know of your own knowledge the color, the perfume, the nature, the twining, of a single little creeping vine in the canon than to know all the rocky mountains through a book.”

Values one thing truly seen over a landscape merely read about · Notes from The Hights

“The poet is, must be, as sensitive as a child, and his work wears and wears till his nerves are so threadbare that he dares not take up a newspaper lest he may see something ugly.”

Describes the cost of a temperament that cannot look away · Preface, Complete Poetical Works

“I wear that ring in memory of a great friendship, and also because I love the diamond for its own sake — it symbols infinity, eternity.”

Makes a jewel stand for both a friend and the endless · Conversation, recorded by Elbert Hubbard

“I thought, and still hold, that under right conditions and among a right people anything in literature that is worth preserving will preserve itself.”

Trusts time rather than self-promotion to keep work alive · Autobiographical notes

“Well, let us go and talk with the poets.”

Greets a new city by looking first for fellow makers of verse · First words on arriving in San Francisco, 1870

“If you would have the heart of the world with you, put heart in your work, taking care that you do not try to pass brass for gold.”

Demands sincerity as the price of a reader's trust · Prefatory notes on poetry

“There never has yet been a great poem written of a rich man or gross.”

Links greatness in verse to a life not swollen by wealth · Prefatory notes on poetry

“There never was a poet and there never will be a poet who disputed God, or so degraded himself as to doubt his eternal existence.”

Treats belief in God as inseparable from the poetic vocation · Advice to a young writer

“Is there such a thing as genius, inspiration? I think there is no such thing. Rather let us call it a devout and all-pervading love of the sublime, the beautiful, and the good.”

Replaces mystic genius with a habit of reverence for beauty · Preface, Complete Poetical Works

“Does poetry pay? Aye, poetry pays as nothing on this earth ever paid.”

Measures payment in endurance of a people, not in cash · Notes from The Hights

“That which is best in my works was inspired by her.”

Credits the finest part of his writing to married love · Remark on his wife, later cited in Oregon literature

“Give a man five years, and, with unfortunate exceptions of course, he will find his level on the Pacific, and his place, whether high or low, as naturally as a stream of water.”

Sees the West as a force that sorts character without ceremony · Life Amongst the Modocs: Unwritten History

“My cradle was a covered wagon, pointed West.”

Compresses his origin into a single westward image · Autobiographical prose account of his life

“I am certain that the greatest, sweetest, and the purest poets upon earth are silent people — silent as the flowers.”

Honours those who see beauty without needing to publish it · Conversation at a Rossetti dinner, later recalled in print

“To me every man or woman who loves the beautiful is a poet. The gift of expression is a separate affair altogether.”

Widens poetry to include silent love of beauty · Conversation at a Rossetti dinner, later recalled in print

“The sweetest flowers grow closest to the ground.”

A counsel of humility in subject and style · Advice to young poets at The Hights

“Man reads too much and reasons too little. Great artists are not great readers but great observers.”

Puts looking at the world above living in libraries · Notes from The Hights

“There is no art without heart.”

Refuses technique that is empty of feeling · Notes from The Hights

“True poetry is concrete truth: truth set to music.”

Treats verse as sung fact rather than ornament · Prefatory notes on poetry

“Were I asked to define poetry, I would answer in a single word, Heart.”

Makes feeling the whole definition of the art · Prefatory notes on poetry

“The world is waiting for ideas, not for words.”

Puts substance before verbal display · Advice to a young writer

“The world has no use for two Homers, or even a second Shakespeare, were he possible.”

Urges originality of theme rather than imitation of the great · Advice to a young writer, later reprinted in Oregon Literature

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