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The Mountains Have Come Closer by Jim Wayne Miller - INSCRIBED

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Jim Wayne Miller (1936-1996) is my favorite poet and one of my favorite people. This book includes my favorite poem - "The Brier Sermon." Check out these lines from that poem:

"I'm tell you, every day you're leaving/ a place you won't be coming back to ever./ What are you going to leave behind?/ What are you taking with you?/ Don't run off and leave the best part of yourself."

Jim Wayne grew up in Leicester, North Carolina. He lived on a farm where his maternal grandparents were tenants of his paternal grandparents. His father commuted to work at the Firestone Tire Shop in Asheville. He graduated from Berea College, completed a doctorate at Vanderbilt, and taught German at Western Kentucky University throughout his career. One of his poetry books is entitled, Nostalgia for 70 because he disliked Jimmy Carter's 55 mph speed limit since he traveled from his home in Bowling Green to the mountains so often to lead workships, give readings, and attend conferences. He served a President of the Appalachian Studies Conference, and is one of a bare handful of people who can be credited with establishing Appalachian Studies and Appalachian Literature as fields of study. Every reading Jim Wayne Miller gave, he read more poems by others - well-known and obscure - than anything he wrote himself!

Boone, North Carolina: Appalachian Consortium Press, 1980. 64 pages. Hardback with pictorial cover.