History – Tim Miller

29 Nov 202128 Nov 2021Tim Miller

Laurie Sheck: 13 Poems from “The Willow Grove” (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. It is also available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other readings of my favorite poetry :

27 Nov 202127 Nov 2021Tim Miller

Happy Black Friday (podcast)

24 Nov 202123 Nov 2021Tim Miller

Walt Whitman Affirms the World (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other Podcasts of Walt Whitman’s Poetry: Listen to these episodes on Whitman’s life, and Peter Zweig’s biography, Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet

23 Nov 202122 Nov 2021Tim Miller

William Wordsworth’s Immortality Ode, & 3 Other Poems (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other episodes on creativity:

22 Nov 202121 Nov 2021Tim Miller

Lee Harvey Oswald (podcast)

21 Nov 202120 Nov 2021Tim Miller

First Person: Pompeii (AD 79) & San Francisco (AD 1906) (podcast)

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19 Nov 202118 Nov 2021Tim Miller

A Story of Depression from 1809 (podcast)

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18 Oct 202117 Oct 2021Tim Miller

Beethoven on His Deathbed (podcast)

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15 Oct 202114 Oct 2021Tim Miller

Poetry & Education in Eighth-Century England (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to my podcast here. Other episodes from poetry & history:

12 Oct 202111 Oct 2021Tim Miller

Working (podcast)

9 Oct 20218 Oct 2021Tim Miller

Shakespeare, Wordsworth & a Guy from Pittsburgh (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other episodes on creativity:

5 Oct 20214 Oct 2021Tim Miller

George Orwell on War (podcast)

You can subscribe to my podcast here. Other George Orwell episodes:

3 Oct 20212 Oct 2021Tim Miller

First Person: A Waitress in Chicago, 1960s (podcast)

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1 Oct 202130 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Ted Hughes: Ten Early Poems(podcast)

30 Sep 202129 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Walt Whitman: “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (podcast)

29 Sep 202128 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Poems: Unfinished Michelangelo (podcast)

28 Sep 202127 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Loneliness (podcast)

27 Sep 202126 Sep 2021Tim Miller

William Wordsworth: “St. Paul’s” (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to my podcast here. Other readings of my favorite poetry :

26 Sep 202126 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Myths & Lies (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other episodes on creativity:

23 Sep 202122 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Ezra Pound’s Advice to a Young Poet (podcast)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Cast, Amazon Podcasts, Breaker, Overcast, Radio Public Other episodes on creativity:

22 Sep 202121 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Walt Whitman: “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun” (podcast)

20 Sep 202119 Sep 2021Tim Miller

2 Poems for the Holocaust (podcast)

19 Sep 202118 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Story: “Isis in Old Age”(podcast)

16 Sep 202115 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Ted Hughes: 7 Poems from “Season Songs”(podcast)

15 Sep 202114 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Poems for a Lonely & Creative Night (podcast)

14 Sep 202113 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Walt Whitman: “I Sing the Body Electric” (podcast)

13 Sep 202113 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Poems: Travels through Orkney (podcast)

Listen to a poem from my 2018 book, Bone Antler Stone. You can subscribe to my podcast here. Outside the US, order here Listen to other readings from Bone Antler Stone

11 Sep 202110 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Ted Hughes: 3 Poems from “River”(podcast – with corrected links)

Please consider subscribing to the podcast here. Other Podcasts of Ted Hughes’s Poetry:

8 Sep 202110 Sep 2021Tim Miller

First Person: Vermont, 1940 (podcast)

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7 Sep 20216 Sep 2021Tim Miller

Poem: “Chauvet, Lascaux, Altamira” (podcast)

Listen to a poem from my 2018 book, Bone Antler Stone. You can subscribe to my podcast here. Outside the US, order here Listen to other readings from Bone Antler Stone

3 Sep 20214 Sep 2021Tim Miller

First Person: Visiting a Poor Poet in Paris, 1895 (podcast)

You can subscribe to my podcast here.

26 Aug 202126 Aug 2021Tim Miller

First Person: Paris, 1785 (podcast)

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23 Aug 202124 Aug 2021Tim Miller

“Cauldron & Drink” (poem)

Listen to a poem from my 2018 book, Bone Antler Stone. You can subscribe to my podcast here. Outside the US, order here

5 Aug 202113 Aug 2021Tim Miller

“Song to the Smith” & “A Song to Stone”: 2 Poems

Listen to two poems from my 2018 book, Bone Antler Stone. You can subscribe to my podcast here. Outside the US, order here

28 Jul 202130 Jul 2021Tim Miller

Human Voices Wake Us (podcast)

After 150 episodes, I figure it’s time to mention my podcast here, Human Voices Wake Us. I started it last October. It is available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and elsewhere. There will also be a tab on this website with the ten or so most recent episodes available for listening. Please subscribe if you’re interested, […]

25 Sep 202024 Sep 2020Tim Miller

Images: Edward Hopper

I had heard of Edward Hopper before, but it wasn’t until a summer or two after high school, when I was working the overnight shift at a gas station, that I was hooked. I saw his painting “Gas” and was shown how even my lonely hours at BP could become the subject of art. He […]

18 Sep 202017 Sep 2020Tim Miller

Images: Gustave Courbet

Take a look through some of the best paintings of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Is the general claim true, that in his landscapes, portraits and self-portraits, that what we call modern art, began here? Click on each image to enlarge, or watch the video below.

27 Aug 20209 Aug 2021Tim Miller

Reading 3 new poems: The Harvest of 1665, The Historian, Mr Cassian’s 54th Dream

On 8/26/20, a virtual book launch was held in London to celebrate three new titles published by Dempsey & Windle. As part of the reading I read the following poems: “The Harvest of 1665,” on the harvest following the plague of London in that year “The Historian,” on the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh “Mr […]

25 Aug 202024 Aug 2020Tim Miller

Images: Jean-François Millet

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) was a formative influence on artists as diverse as Salvador Dali and Vincent van Gogh (his famous sower was lifted from Millet). Looking at two dozen or so of his best paintings, I understood why. Click on any image to enlarge:

23 Aug 202010 Aug 2021Tim Miller

The Internet will Get You Too

A post from a few years ago that is worth revisiting: I began this blog in earnest almost six years now, with a post called “Silence in London,” which offered a handful of photos from a recent trip to England. I only made that post, though, because during the trip I left a long comment […]

3 Aug 20209 Aug 2021Tim Miller

“Albert Einstein” – New Poem at the Jewish Literary Journal

Many thanks to editor Aaron Berkowitz, who just published my poem about Albert Einstein in The Jewish Literary Journal. Check the poem out, as well as the other fine work there.

9 Jun 20209 Aug 2021Tim Miller

“Caedmon Comes to Singing” – new poem at Londongrip

Many thanks to Michael Bartholomew-Biggs, for publishing my poem “Caedmon Comes to Singing” in the new issue of Londongrip. Many will remember that Caedmon, who lived in seventh-century Northumbria, is credited with being one of the earliest English poets; I suppose we can all learn from his half-mythic example, of living most of his life […]

25 Oct 201924 Oct 2019Tim Miller

Laurie Sheck, “Pompeii”

Laurie Sheck, “Pompeii” Covered with lapilli we crouch preserved as we were on that first day The last one of our lives Our bodies black marginalia beneath the sky’s unstable searchlight They have unearthed the House of the Fawn the House of the Silver Wedding And the Surgeon’s House Our bread still in our ovens […]

19 Aug 201914 Jul 2019Tim Miller

William H. McNeill – History as Myth

A few years ago, the great historian William H. McNeill died. I still have surprisingly endearing memories of reading his A World History one winter, in the middle crowded New York City Wendy’s, surrounded by high school kids just done with their day, his narrative silencing every one and every thing. His obituary can be […]

1 Aug 201921 Jul 2019Tim Miller

Walt Whitman’s Letter to Parents Whose Son Died in the Civil War

Washington August 10 1863 Mr and Mrs Haskell, Dear friends, I thought it would be soothing to you to have a few lines about the last days of your son Erastus Haskell of Company K, 141st New York Volunteers. I write in haste, & nothing of importance—only I thought any thing about Erastus would be […]

30 Jul 201914 Jul 2019Tim Miller

The Past is Not Dead: There is Only Continuity

from Peter Ackroyd, at the end of his first volume of the history of England: Other forms of continuity are also evident. Modern roads follow the line of old paths and trackways. The boundaries of many contemporary parishes follow previous patterns of settlement, along which ancient burials are still to be found. Our distant ancestors […]

29 Jul 201915 Jul 2019Tim Miller

The Popular Press in 1918 was Garbage Too

From Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, published just over a century ago. Our bad relationship with information and disinformation didn’t start with cable news or Twitter: … Man does not speak to man; the press and its associate, the electrical news-service, keep the waking-consciousness of whole peoples and continents under a deafening drum-fire of […]

23 Jul 201914 Jul 2019Tim Miller

History is An Accident

from Peter Ackroyd, at the end of his first volume on the history of England: When we look over the course of human affairs we are more likely than not to find only error and confusion. I have already explained, in the course of this narrative, that the writing of history is often another way […]

16 Jul 201914 Jul 2019Tim Miller

Manet the Mystic

Manet’s 1862 painting The Old Musician is a great human riddle. Just what everybody is doing here, and why they’re gathered together, is a mystery. Yet it’s a puzzle more emotional than academic. Held in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., you can read their page about it here, or the Wiki page.

14 Jul 20199 Jul 2019Tim Miller

Death in Ancient Egypt

Here, Erik Hornung refutes the old cliché that ancient Egyptian religion was “death obsessed,” or that constructions like the pyramids are nothing more that huge tombs. In fact I can think of few religions both more anxious to deny death and affirm, somehow and some way, the continuation of life: For the Egyptians even […]

4 Jul 201926 Jun 2019Tim Miller

Heat & Light at Lascaux

The environment in which some of humanity’s first–and still best–works of art, in the cave of Lascaux nearly thirty thousand years ago, is described here by Randall White: Plant materials, especially wood, would have been important fuel for cooking, heating, and light. Again, the excellent preservation at Lascaux indicates that certain species of trees […]

3 Jul 20191 Jul 2019Tim Miller

Walking on Two Feet: The Evolution of Bipedalism

from Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind: The evolution of bipedalism had begun by 3.5 million years ago. Evidence for this is found in the anatomy of A. afarensis, and, more dramatically, by the line of australopithecine footprints preserved at Laetoli in Tanzania. The most likely selective pressure causing the evolution of bipedalism was […]

30 Jun 201926 Jun 2019Tim Miller

Jews & Muslims on Pilgrimage Together in the 1300s

From Mark Cohen’s Under Crescent & Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages: An aspect of Jewish-gentile sociability under Islam that seems to lack a counterpart in the Jewish-Christian world is the world of shared popular religious practices… particularly in the joint worship of saints. Here, interdenominational religiosity has its basis in the fact that […]

24 Jun 201910 Aug 2021Tim Miller

The Melancholy of William Blake

No matter how poor he got, and no matter what of his belongings he had to sell to get by, William Blake always held onto a print of Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 work, Melencolia I; it was found in his workroom when he died. And so it is worth looking in detail, again and again, at […]

20 Jun 201920 Jun 2019Tim Miller

The Earliest Photographs of Paris

Among the earliest photos taken of Paris were those of Eugène Atget, beginning in the late 1800s. Here is only a sample:

19 Jun 201920 Jun 2019Tim Miller

Claude Lorrain’s Nostalgia for What Never Was

I first came across Claude Lorrain’s fantasies of classical Greece and Rome on the cover of an old paperback of the Aeneid. These are my favorites, but there are many more of them here. Click on each image to enlarge:

16 Jun 201910 Aug 2021Tim Miller

Primo Levi’s Hardest Thoughts on the Holocaust

From Primo Levi’s 1986 book, The Drowned and the Saved, remembering the concentration camps: On Levi’s own—and others’—guilt at having survived the concentration camps: At a distance of years one can today definitely affirm that the history of the Lagers [from Konzentrationslager, concentration camp] has been written almost exclusively by those who, like myself, never […]

3 Jun 201910 Aug 2021Tim Miller

Who are These Faces & What are Their Stories?

At an antique store a few years ago, I spent $10 on an envelope of old photos. I love to imagine their stories, and thought others might too. And perhaps someone out there knows them? Click on the slideshow to begin:

24 May 201922 May 2019Tim Miller

Sleepwalking into World War One

From Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914: Do we really need to make the case against a single guilty state, or to rank the states according to their respective share in responsibility for the outbreak of war? In one classical study from the origins literature, Paul Kennedy remarked that it […]

23 May 2019Tim Miller

Images: Watch Picasso’s “Guernica” Emerge

Scroll through this selection of preliminary studies & photos of the canvas as it was worked on & completed. Pretty astonishing, & all done in about five weeks.

17 May 201915 May 2019Tim Miller

The Hooded Lady of Brassempouy

from Randall White’s Prehistoric Art: The best known of the statuettes from Brassempouy is the 25,000 year-old “dame à la capuche” (hooded lady), carved from the dense, homogenous interior core of a mammoth tusk. She was found immediately below a fireplace and was covered by a small limestone slab. Although she has frequently been imagined […]

10 May 20193 May 2019Tim Miller

How Picking Fleas Led to the Evolution of Language

From Steven Mithen’s Prehistory of the Mind: The anthropologist Robin Dunbar looked at the size of the brain of H. habilis [2.1 – 1.5 million years ago] from a very different perspective. Recall that we have already referred to his work regarding the relationship between brain size and group size—living within a larger group requires more […]

9 May 20199 May 2019Tim Miller

The Earliest Human Communities

From Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind: There is good circumstantial evidence that H. habilis [2.1 to 1.5 million years ago] would have been living in larger groups than his ancestors. If we again look at modern primates, there appear to be two ecological situations in which primates choose to live in larger groups, and […]

8 May 20191 May 2019Tim Miller

We Were All Animals Once: The Beginning of Anthropomorphic Thinking

from Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind: This propensity to think of the natural world in social terms is perhaps most evident in the ubiquitous use of anthropomorphic thinking—attributing animals with humanlike minds. Consider the Inuit and the polar bear. This animal is highly sought after and is “killed with passion, butchered with care […]

6 May 20195 May 2019Tim Miller

On Beethoven’s Deathbed

Here are two passages from Beethoven’s life. The first finds him on his deathbed, and is recorded in the memoirs of one of his friends. Beset by his final illness, the composer is rejuvenated for the last time by an astounding gift: the complete scores George Frederic Handel. The fact that Beethoven, so close to […]

5 May 20195 May 2019Tim Miller

Understanding Religious Fundamentalism

I am always thrilled to reread these two passages by Erik Hornung, and to find in them just about the wisest things I’ve ever read about religion in general, and fundamentalism in particular. Although he hopefully assumes (the book was first published in 1971) that just because fundamentalism will become increasingly “inhuman” it will lose […]

3 May 20193 May 2019Tim Miller

Humanity’s Earliest Rituals

Three passages on prehistoric religion from the book Becoming Human: One of the pervasive themes of [this book] is that spirituality and materiality cannot be separated. The roots of religion are to be found in ritual practice. And ritual practice, as documented by the material record goes back before the Franco-Cantabrian “explosion”, back indeed […]

1 May 20191 May 2019Tim Miller

The Archaeology & Mythology of Caves

The archaeologist Jean Clottes writes that, besides the more famous paintings in the ice-age caves of France and Spain, it has also been observed that “various objects have been either deposited or stuck into cracks of the walls, or even stuck into the ground. Those apparently non-utilitarian gestures have been noticed from Asturias in Spain […]

30 Apr 201930 Apr 2019Tim Miller

Oswald Probably Did It

It took 9/11 to show me the real damage conspiracy theories can do. Since then, the gleeful and gullible ability of many to believe any and all conspiracy theories has convinced me that Lee Harvey Oswald probably did kill John F. Kennedy, and probably alone. The reason for our desperate need for conspiracy theories hasn’t […]

29 Apr 201929 Apr 2019Tim Miller

Neanderthal Compassion, Neanderthal Burials

from the book Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture: Caring for severely disabled members of the community must be one of the indicators of respect for the individual and for human life. It is clear that Neanderthals fed and looked after severely handicapped members of their communities who were too disabled to […]

26 Apr 201926 Apr 2019Tim Miller

Did Neanderthals Have Language?

from Richard Klein and Blake Edgar’s The Dawn of Human Culture: The Neanderthals are fascinating because they were so much like us and yet so different. Before we abandon them completely, we want to address one well-known speculation for what could explain the difference. This is the possibility that they possessed only a limited […]

25 Apr 201925 Apr 2019Tim Miller

Eleanor Roosevelt Finds Herself

From Geoffrey Ward’s biography of the Roosevelts comes this moving account of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Dickensian childhood, complete with neglectful mother and alcoholic father. Following the early death of both parents, the intervention of an aunt changes her life: …[Eleanor’s father] Elliott was delighted at her birth, and called her “Little Nell” after the relentlessly […]

24 Apr 201924 Apr 2019Tim Miller

The Invention of Harmony

from two essays on the origins of the aesthetic impulse in Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture: The earliest current evidence for handaxes comes from West Turkana, Kenya, dated to 1.65 Mya [Million years ago]. Similar finds have been made at Konso, again in Ethiopia, dating to 1.5 Mya. These tools […]

4 Jan 20194 Jan 2019Tim Miller

“Bone Antler Stone” reviewed in the Big Windows Review

Many thanks to Tom Zimmerman at The Big Windows Review for his review of Bone Antler Stone. I’ve pasted an excerpt below, and you can read the entire review here. Excerpts and reviews from the book are here. “… [Bone Antler Stone] is an act of powerful sympathetic imagination that forges a connection between lost cultures […]

20 Dec 201820 Dec 2018Tim Miller

“Bone Antler Stone” on NPR

Many thanks to Bill O’Driscoll and Pittsburgh’s 90.5 WESA for interviewing me about Bone Antler Stone. You can listen to an audio interview, with a longer story on their website, here. Excerpts and reviews from the book are here.

22 Aug 20189 Aug 2021Tim Miller

Silence in London II: The Internet will Get You Too

I began this blog in earnest almost six years now, with a post called “Silence in London,” which offered a handful of photos from a recent trip to England. I only made that post, though, because during the trip I left a long comment on a poetry blog, and found that it made me want […]