Joaquin Miller

In researching my current WIP I’ve come across a name associated with Oregon which rather surprised me. Years ago, way back in junior high (middle school in contemporary language), I found my first writing niche — in poetry! More often than not, it was an endeavor in word wrestling – an obsession with counting, rhyming, and syllable stresses that kept me busy for hours at a time. During these years I read a little poetry, even understood it some, which is why when I read the name of Joaquin Miller while reading about Opal Whiteley, I took a moment to pause my explorations; I recognized that name from long, long, ago.

The journalist, poet, naturalist, international traveler, Joaquin Miller spent some years in Oregon where he grew up to become a lawyer and then a county judge before he went off to travel the world and write romanticized and sensationalized, or fantastic even, melodramatic poetry and prose.

Fantastic. Sensationalized. Romanticized. Melodramatic. Likely, he was a man before his time.

At any rate, he spent some years living in Lane County, same as the heroine in my current work, Understanding Opal. Perhaps he should be included in the work somewhere, though his story in Lane county occurs 50 years before hers. A time, not much different from our own, when those who controlled the printing presses controlled, if not the ideas, then the opinions about the ideas.

Fortunately, Joaquin Miller’s work is still available and I’m setting out after I’ve finished the typing of this post to revisit some. I’ve also learned Miller’d built a park in Oakland in 1919, the same year Opal went to Boston to secure her destiny. Opal Whiteley’s work is available for reading as well, but as far as I know she has no sprawling public park. She does, however, grace the entire side of a building butted by a plaza of lovely foliage – something she’d have loved, and a statue of her at age 10 greets visitors to the Cottage Grove Library and the Knight Library at the University of Oregon, thanks in large part to Steve Williamson‘s efforts to share her story.

Two fantastical Lane County poets, naturalists, journalists, international travelers, meeting with scandal, intrigue, and reaching forward into the future to remind us of our nature.

Is it in the water or the ink?

(Click here to read Steve McQuiddy’s article on Opal Whiteley) and here for an extensive bibliography of everything you ever wanted to know about Joaquin Miller.

Joaquin Miller, 1903, The Poet – photographer C.D. Nichols, Grants Pass Oregon. Public Domain license. Photo from here.

Receive inspiring profiles in your inbox on a regular basis. Subscribe to the Globally Inspired newsletter