“That which is best in my works was inspired by her.” — Joaquin Miller | V2Melody

“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

About Joaquin Miller

Joaquin Miller

8 September 1837–17 February 1913

Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller on September 8, 1837, and dead on February 17, 1913, lived a life that seemed designed to invite legend. He was a poet, journalist, lawyer, teacher, dramatist, lecturer, rancher, and relentless self-inventor. To admirers in the nineteenth century, he was the “Poet of the…

More by Joaquin Miller

Poems by Joaquin Miller

More remarks by Joaquin Miller

“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

“Don't try to be a poet if you can possibly help it. But if you must, you must; and there will always be plenty who must.”

A blunt warning that the vocation chooses the writer more often than the writer chooses it · Preface, Complete Poetical Works

“To me a poem must be a picture.”

Defines verse by the image that stays in the mind · Essay, The Independent, June 1879