Joaquin Miller had many types of careers throughout his life; he was a lawyer, judge, and poet. He was born on September 8, 1837 as Cincinnatus Hiner Miller near Liberty, Indiana. Miller’s parents and he headed to the West in 1852 and lived in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Within two years, Joaquin Miller left for California in search of gold.
He lived among Californian Indians near Mt. Shasta and briefly attended college. In 1868, Miller’s first publication of poetry, Specimens, was published by William D. Carter in Portland. His first book and second book, titled Joaquin, et al., were both largely ignored.
Miller visited and ended up staying in the SF Bay Area in 1870, where he met Ina Coolbrith, Oakland’s first public librarian and California’s first Poet Laureate. She suggested that Cincinnatus take the colorful pen name “Joaquin” Miller. He was inspired by Joaquin Murietta, known as the “Robin Hood of the West,” a Sonoran forty-niner and a vaquero who was a famous outlaw in California. Miller began to be recognized as the “Poet of the Sierras.” He titled a poem to express his love for Oakland.
OAKLAND.
THOU rose-land! Oakland! thou, mine own!
Thou sun-land! leaf-land! land of seas
Wide crescented in walls of stone!
Thy lion’s mane is to the breeze!
Thy tawny, sunlit lion steeps
Leap forward, as the lion leaps!
And thou, the lion’s whelp, begot
Of Argonauts, in fearful strength
And supple beauty yieldeth naught!
Thine arm is as a river’s length.
Thy reach is foremost! Thou shalt be
The throned queen of this vast west sea!
Yet here sits peace; and rest sits here;
These wide-boughed oaks, they house wise men:
The student and the sage austere,
The men of wondrous thought and ken.
Here men of God in holy guise
Invoke the peace of paradise.
Be this my home till some fair star
Stoops earthward and shall beckon me;
For surely Godland lies not far
From these Greek heights and this great sea.
My friend, my lover, trend this way;
Not far along lies Arcady.
Haunts:
- His time in Oakland was spent building his career as a poet as well as planting 75,000 trees on his 70-acre estate. Today he is known for Joaquin Miller Park (3450 Joaquin Miller Road, Oakland, CA 94602), a 500-acre park filled with native species such as oak trees where he had built a home and began constructing odd monuments on his land. There he created a tower in remembrance of General John C. Frémont and a pyramid to Moses as a symbol of his belief in the Ten Commandments. Miller died on February 17, 1913 in Oakland, California. Miller was known to be a very colorful person who used the power of poetry and storytelling, and even for those who were well acquainted with Miller, it was not easy to discover what was fantasy or truth in his life.
~ by Dede Brownfield ~
External Links:
https://www.maritimeheritage.org/vips/Joaquin_Miller.html
