The O:JA&L Masters Series
Poetry: All forms & styles
Cowboy Poetry
Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
SADDLE WORK & THE UNFINISHED WEST
Interview With Rod Miller
Cowboy Poet, Historian, and Commentator
ROD MILLER (WRITER ROD) is an award-winning cowboy poet, historian, novelist, and essayist dedicated to chronicling the American West. Immersed in cowboy culture from birth, he drew early inspiration from his time on the intercollegiate and PRCA rodeo circuits. Miller has authored numerous historical books, novels, and poetry collections, including Things a Cowboy Sees. His diverse commentary and historical insights frequently appear in western periodicals and anthologies. A four-time winner of the prestigious Western Writers of America Spur Award, Miller seamlessly blends authentic western heritage with refined literary craft.
To explore or download Rod Miller’s chapbook in the O:JA&L Masters Series, follow the link below:
The Dally Post Press Masters Series: Cowboy Poetry from Rod Miller
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
In this wide-ranging interview, Associate Editor Jeff Streeby speaks with Rod Miller about the lived experience, craft discipline, and historical conscience behind a career devoted to the American West. Miller reflects on cowboy roots, rodeo culture, advertising and journalism, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and the responsibilities of telling Western stories truthfully. The conversation moves from language and performance to myth, memory, research, revision, and the stubborn vitality of Western writing. What emerges is a portrait of a writer shaped by work, place, reading, curiosity, and a lifelong commitment to getting the details—and the deeper truths—right.
COWBOY ROOTS, RODEO EXPERIENCE,AND WESTERN IDENTITY
Jeff Streeby for O:JA&L: You grew up in a cowboy family among horses and cattle. What parts of that upbringing still shape your ear, values, and sense of story?
Rod Miller: While our cow herd was small in number, it was enough to require all the regular cowboy work—calving, branding, moving pastures, winter feeding, and the like. And we regularly broke and trained horses for others. Dad was a top hand and working cow boss and respected for his abilities with livestock, and he tried to instill those skills (with limited success) in me. So, from his influence and that of other stockmen we worked with, I was exposed to the real thing. It allows me, I believe, to get it right in my writing.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How did riding bareback broncs in high school, college, and PRCA settings influence the way you write about risk, pride, pain, and humor?
Rod Miller: The language and mannerisms of rodeo cowboys are in some sense unique and esoteric. By living that life, I learned the lingo and gained insights into cowboy characteristics in all their varieties.
Streeby for O:JA&L: When people use the word “cowboy,” what do they often romanticize or misunderstand?
Rod Miller: To many people not of the West, the word “cowboy” lacks definition. To them, anyone in the Old West—lawmen, outlaws, gunfighters, gamblers, explorers, settlers, and so on—gets lumped into the category. While the West included all those types and more, cowboys were (and are) a definite and distinct occupation and subculture that deserves authentic and honest depictions in art.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Do you think of cowboy culture as a tradition to preserve, a living culture to question, or both?
Rod Miller: Both. For many, their understanding of “cowboys” is based on the myths they were exposed to in Western movies, television shows, and novels. It was not a black-and-white world of constant conflict between good and evil, between white hats and black hats. Cowboying was and is an occupation and culture that continually evolves and adapts to changing conditions while maintaining strong roots in the past.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What did working around rodeo stock and behind the chutes teach you that spectators rarely see?
Rod Miller: For spectators, rodeo is entertainment, a show. But for rodeo contestants, it is a way of life that involves much more than the few seconds of exposure in the arena. Camaraderie, cooperation, and competition are ever present, good humor and emotional intensity fill the air, and it all gets stirred up into a cowboy subculture that is more than a sport or a show.
FROM JOURNALISM AND ADVERTISING TO LITERATURE
Streeby for O:JA&L: Your degree was in broadcast journalism, and you later spent decades in advertising. What did those fields teach you about compression, audience, timing, and voice?
Rod Miller: The subject of “writers block” often comes up in discussions of creative writing. Both journalism and advertising are deadline driven, so that malady does not exist—either in the work, or when the writer moves on to creative writing. When something needs to be written, it gets written. Seldom, if ever, does the writer’s voice enter into it. The voice is that of the objective observer in journalism, or the product or company behind the advertising. Economy of language, conveying information clearly, and, in advertising, being convincing and persuasive are necessary skills that transfer to creative writing. However, the necessity of brevity that becomes ingrained in the journalist or copywriter can make the prospect of writing an entire novel intimidating.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How does a copywriter’s discipline—clarity, persuasion, economy—show up in your poems or fiction?
Rod Miller: To the careful and caring copywriter, language is not only a tool but a plaything. Convincing people to stand still long enough to allow you to pick their pocket requires engaging them in ways that are entertaining as well as informative and persuasive. The ability to put every word to work, to be colorful while conveying ideas, to chart a course leading toward a conclusion are skillful, or artful, uses of language that carry over into other forms of writing, particularly poetry but also prose.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Was there a point when writing about the West moved from side interest to vocation?
Rod Miller: I have always been a reader—occasionally topping a hundred books a year—and reading about the American West has always been a big, the biggest, part of that. But not until I was in my mid-forties did writing about the West even occur to me—I was a copywriter, not a writer. But once I thought to give creative writing a try, first with poetry, then magazine articles, then short fiction, and books of both nonfiction and fiction, I eased away from advertising into retirement and writing (and still reading). The American West, both past and present, has been constant throughout.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What did advertising help you understand about the myths Americans buy—and resist—about the West?
Rod Miller: Repetition can overcome many things, including critical thinking. That’s why big companies with big advertising budgets get bigger. In a larger sense, frequent exposure to just about anything—including lies—will eventually overcome resistance and lead to acceptance, or at least ambivalence. Even when it comes to things that somehow, somewhere, deep down inside we know to be wrong. But it’s easier not to think about it, to ignore reality and go along with the fantasy. For decades, and continuing today, Americans have been fed a constant diet (less constant today, but still on the menu) of a simplified, simplistic version of the Old West. It’s all good guys versus bad guys, white hats versus black hats, “cowboys” versus Indians. And in the traditional horse opera, the good guys always win.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Do you approach nonfiction, poetry, and fiction with different “briefs,” or do they begin from the same curiosity?
Rod Miller: For me, it all starts in the same place. Something happened to someone, and that leads to a story. Sometimes what happened comes from history or is happening today, and that can prompt a nonfiction piece or a work of fiction or poetry. Or, that something that happened to someone may occur only in my imagination, and likewise inspire a poem or story.
COWBOY POETRY: TRADITION, PERFORMANCE, AND CRAFT
Streeby for O:JA&L: You began writing cowboy poetry in the mid-1990s after long admiring the form. What finally made you try it yourself?
Rod Miller: Taking up the pencil (or keyboard) to write a poem was not a considered decision. It just happened. I wondered if I could do it. But I knew nothing about how to make poetry, having never taken any kind of class beyond the cursory exposure to poetry you get in high school English classes. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it well. So I set out to educate myself about the art and craft and learned what I could through study and reading, and through trial and error in writing.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What separates a strong cowboy poem from a nostalgic one?
Rod Miller: This is a tough one. For starters, I would not use the word “nostalgia” as there are many strong cowboy poems that are nostalgic. I would brand the weaker sort “sentimental.” As Oscar Wilde said, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.” Good poems can spring from feeling or sentiment as well, but in general those emotions and the resulting poems tend to be shallow and predictable, without much poetic technique involved. Such poems are popular with many cowboy poets because they work in performance, where audiences will respond and shed a tear in all the expected places.
But to me, such poems are like cotton candy—the taste is intense but of short duration. The audience will forget a simplistic sentimental poem based only on feelings almost as soon as the lights come up. On the other hand, a well written nostalgic poem with strong poetic chops and deep meaning (Bruce Kiskaddon’s “When They’ve Finished Shipping Cattle in the Fall,” and Buck Ramsey’s “Anthem” come to mind) while maybe not as immediately affective, will find a place in the mind and heart and remain there, sometimes forever.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Your poems range from traditional cowboy verse to broader Western subjects. How do you decide when a poem needs rhyme, meter, narrative, or a freer shape?
Rod Miller: I wish I knew. It seems to me that the poem decides how it wants to be. As it develops, it may seek a strict metrical pattern, one more casual, or none at all. Same with rhyme schemes and stanza forms. And all that may shift and change as the poem gets worked over.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How important is oral delivery to your drafting process—do you write first for the page, the ear, or the room?
Rod Miller: Poetry, it seems to me, is always written for the ear—but that does not equate with “the room,” by which I assume you mean the audience for a recitation. The important ear, I believe, is the poet’s own. Hearing the music of the words, the interplay of sounds, the rhythm, are where the poetry begins. But the page is where it plays out. Oral delivery and performance are talents of a different kind, talents which I do not possess, so how a poem would play to a live audience is not a consideration for me, as I would not know how to make that judgment.
SIGNATURE WORKS:
POEMS, STORIES, NOVELS, AND WESTERN HISTORY
Streeby for O:JA&L: Books such as Things a Cowboy Sees, Goodnight Goes Riding, and Buckoffs and Broken Barriers suggest a close attention to what working people notice. What makes an observation worth carrying into a poem?
Rod Miller: For me, it depends on whether or not I see a larger meaning related to the subject reveal itself. While the subject sometimes seems (or is) trivial in itself, it can carry greater weight through implied, unspoken, or metaphorical linkage to larger thoughts, feelings, emotions, relationships, or other aspects of life.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Your fiction and nonfiction return repeatedly to Western places, conflicts, and communities. How do you decide whether a subject belongs in a poem, a short story, a novel, or an essay?
Rod Miller: Sometimes when a subject comes to mind it suggests the medium by which it will come to life. Some subjects, such as my ongoing obsession with the Massacre at Bear River, want to be told in many ways. I have written about it in nonfiction—both chapter length and book length and magazine articles—fictionally in a novel and short stories, and in poems and lyrics for a song.
Streeby for O:JA&L: When writing historically grounded work, what balance do you seek between research, invention, and moral responsibility?
Rod Miller: History is never settled, and there are differing points of view. I always study a subject with enough depth and breadth to ground myself in a workable understanding of the subject. In nonfiction, of course, you adhere to known and documented facts, and acknowledge any departures. When using history as a basis for fiction there is always invention involved for dramatic purposes. Creating characters, inventing dialogue and thoughts, altering timelines and the like are all part of telling a story. But even then, I make every effort to stay true to the time and place and the facts of the matter.
Streeby for O:JA&L: If a first-time reader wanted one doorway into your work, which book or piece would you hand them, and why?
Rod Miller: That’s a tough one. My poems and stories and novels vary a lot, from lighthearted and humorous to thoughtful and contemplative to dark and gritty. Characters are all over the place and there is a good deal of variety in subjects and stories, some based on history and some invented. For fiction, a collection of short stories such as Black Joe and Other Selected Stories would give the reader a taste. For poetry, Goodnight Goes Riding and Other Poems offers the most variety, both in subject and style, in my attempts at versifying. Nonfiction and history afficionados (and others) might try The Lost Frontier: Momentous Moments in the Old West You May Have Missed for its treatment of a different subject in each chapter.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What subject in the American West still feels unfinished for you as a writer?
Rod Miller: The American West as a subject, like the American West itself, will never be finished.
THE AMERICAN WEST: MYTH, MEMORY, AND REALITY
Streeby for O:JA&L: You write about the West’s people and places, past and present. What Western myth most needs complicating today?
Rod Miller: There is a widespread belief among many Westerners that we are somehow superior to folks in the rest of the country, even the world. The proverbial “pioneering spirit” that led to the settlement of the West has trickled down through the generations to create Westerners, particularly the rural variety, who are more honest, upright, reliable, neighborly, moral, and altogether a cut above ordinary people. Truth is, the West has—and has always had—its fair share of unprincipled, unscrupulous rascals, liars, thieves, assorted criminals, and other nefarious characters. And, as with the rest of the world, the good guys in white hats Out West don’t always win the day.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you keep affection for the West from becoming sentimentality?
Rod Miller: By telling the truth. We can honor and celebrate the good things about the West without ignoring the darker side of our past and present.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What responsibilities come with writing about Indigenous history, settlement, ranching, violence, and memory?
Rod Miller: We must realize that manifest destiny was neither manifest nor destiny, but a deliberate choice—many choices. We must be honest in portraying what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and the consequences.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Do you see the modern West as continuous with the old stories, or as something those stories sometimes prevent us from seeing clearly?
Rod Miller: I believe there is still a superiority complex of sorts among many Westerners. The one-sided history we all learned, and perhaps to a lesser extent is still taught today, results in a heroic view of the past. So, our perceived superiority is based on misunderstanding. And there is, and always has been, resistance to seeing a clearer view of how the West we live in came to be.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What place in the West has most changed the way you write?
Rod Miller: Having lived on both rims of the Great Basin and in two places on the Snake River Plain, as well as traveling widely across the West, I suppose I am influenced by it all. But if I had to choose just one place it would be Elko, Nevada. The place and the surrounding area enjoy a rich history as a railroad town, a cowtown and ranching community, a mining town, and the home of modern cowboy poetry. In attending the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering there many, many times as a spectator or reporter, I obtained an education in Cowboy Poetry that exposed me to poets, storytellers, and singers from all over the West and around the world. I witnessed recitations of more forms and styles of poetry than I ever imagined, and learned that poetry, like the West, is wide. And the education I got there has spilled over into my approach to fiction and nonfiction, as well as poetry.
AWARDS, RECOGNITION,
AND THE WESTERN WRITING COMMUNITY
Streeby for O:JA&L: You have received multiple Spur and Peacemaker honors across genres. What has recognition changed in your working life, and what has it not changed?
Rod Miller: On a personal level, recognition offers encouragement that you can actually do this. On a professional level, it creates something of a reputation that may create additional opportunities to write and publish. But it has not changed the way I go about writing, nor has it affected my bank account in any appreciable way.
Streeby for O:JA&L: Does winning awards create pressure to write toward expectation, or does it free you to take larger risks?
Rod Miller: Winning awards is always a surprise and is unpredictable, so you can’t write to win one. I have always felt free to write whatever I wanted.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How would you describe the current health of Western writing—poetry, fiction, history, and commentary?
Rod Miller: Western writing is still limping along, and I believe there will always be a place and appetite for it. While it does not enjoy the dominance on pages or screens that it once enjoyed, it lives on. In my experience, the prognosis for the future of Western writing—accompanied by a lot of hand-wringing and angst—is always worse than the reality.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What kinds of Western stories are still underpublished or misunderstood?
Rod Miller: Honest stories—whether in verse or prose, fiction or nonfiction—that reveal the warts and all about the West, are often met with resistance. Some readers, who seem to have an all-or-nothing view of the world, consider such honesty unnecessary, unpleasant, hateful, even unpatriotic.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What do younger writers entering Western literature need most: craft discipline, historical knowledge, lived experience, or freedom from genre rules?
Rod Miller: All young writers need to read. A lot. Beyond that, I believe young poets should immerse themselves in craft discipline. Once they understand the tools of creation and the mechanics of making poetry, they can free themselves to experiment and write real poetry, rather than just spinning out stories that rhyme. For fiction writers, I would suggest gaining historical knowledge, of both the distant and more recent past. Understanding how things happened and the people that made them happen leads to honesty and accuracy in writing. A greater benefit is that history offers a fountain of ideas for stories.
COMMENTARY, ESSAYS, REVIEWS, AND PUBLIC VOICE
Streeby for O:JA&L: You write essays, book reviews, articles, and commentary as well as creative work. What changes when you speak in a more direct public voice?
Rod Miller: Thoughts and ideas are often dangerous, and conveying them through writing always carries the risk of upsetting someone, perhaps everyone. It is important to support your opinions with evidence and logic, which can diffuse disagreement to some extent, or at least make the argument about ideas rather than making it personal.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you decide when a subject calls for argument rather than story?
Rod Miller: Essays, opinion pieces, and book reviews are usually written by request or assignment, so the subject is given to you. As you immerse yourself in the subject, the nature of the argument reveals itself.
Streeby for O:JA&L: As a reviewer, what are you looking for in contemporary Western writing beyond accuracy and entertainment?
Rod Miller: Beyond accuracy and entertainment, a book or story—whether fiction, nonfiction, or poetry—ought to offer the reader good writing, inspired use of language and words, and make complexity understandable (which is not to say there is no place for ambiguity). Good writing allows—even requires—the reader to participate on some level. Finally, the story should not end with the last word on the last page—it should linger in your mind, haunt your thoughts, and occupy a place in your memory forever.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you handle disagreement with readers who may come to Western subjects with strong political or cultural expectations?
Rod Miller: I believe that friendship and kindness come first. In almost every instance, they are more important than politics or history. If someone disagrees or disputes what I write, that is their prerogative. Even in disagreements, I try not to offend. At the same time, I do not believe that everyone is entitled to their opinion if that opinion is based on ignorance (for example, I am not entitled to an opinion on how to perform brain surgery). Such arguments are like the old saw about trying to teach a pig to sing—it offends the pig and wastes your time.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What can commentary do that poetry or fiction cannot—and what can it never do as well?
Rod Miller: In commentary, I believe it is best to be straightforward and direct. You present the subject, voice your opinion or premise, then support it with evidence. In fiction or poetry, you tend to let the subject reveal itself. You can circle around it or sneak up on it, rather than approaching or addressing it directly. The end result may be similar, but arriving at that place involves following different paths.
TEACHING, WORKSHOPS, READINGS, AND AUDIENCE
Streeby for O:JA&L: You often lead workshops, lectures, readings, and presentations. What do writers most often misunderstand about cowboy poetry or Western writing?
Rod Miller: Few of the people I have encountered in workshops who want to be cowboy poets care much about poetry. They do not think it necessary to understand the literary techniques that underlie poetry, and care little about understanding the mechanics of form and meter. They seem to believe that cowboy poetry is nothing more than telling stories and jokes in rhyme (that is often rough, inconsistent, and unmetrical). The best cowboy poetry has always demonstrated an awareness of the mechanics of the art, but many aspiring poets do not see it or look for it.
Many aspiring Western writers should be aware that there is more to the West and its stories than simplistic plot-driven tales of black hats and white hats fighting it out. It is also important to know whereof you write—be accurate in detail and faithful to the history of the time and place.
Streeby for O:JA&L: When you teach the craft of cowboy poetry, what is the first habit you try to build in writers?
Rod Miller: I emphasize the importance of the interplay of sound, the use of assonance, consonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia, and internal rhyme, even in free verse, and to rely on more than sing-songy end rhymes in traditional rhyme-and-meter forms.
Subtlety is also something I often address—to let readers discover the meaning in the poem, not to spoon feed it to them. And to use symbolism, imagery, metaphor, allusion and the like to provide a richer experience for the reader.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How does a live audience alter the meaning of a poem or story once it leaves the page? What have audiences taught you about humor, timing, and emotional truth?
Rod Miller: Reciting memorized verse in front of audiences has turned cowboy poetry into a performance art. I do not possess the skills required to do that well. While I often read poems in lectures and presentations, the relationship with audiences in those settings is different from reciting purely for entertainment. Among the many things that I am not, “entertainer” would be high on the list.
WRITING PRACTICES: RESEARCH, DRAFTING, AND REVISION
Streeby for O:JA&L: What does a good writing day look like for you now—research, drafting, revision, reading, or correspondence?
Rod Miller: How I spend my writing day depends on what needs doing that day. But I will always do something. It may be reading for background or research, responding to or writing emails, writing or posting something on my websites or blog, working with an editor or copy editor, approving cover designs, and other such behind-the-scenes stuff. Most days include actual writing time on the novel in progress, a magazine article, or working on a poem.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you move from a historical fact, anecdote, or remembered phrase into a finished piece?
Rod Miller: My approach, once an idea comes to me or something inspires me, is to start writing and let the story come to itself. I do very little planning and no plotting in the traditional sense. Each day’s writing builds on the last, and the story builds as it goes along, sometimes in unexpected ways. While I may have a vague notion of what’s to come, it is the surprises that come along, and wanting to see what happens next, that keep me writing.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What is your strongest revision tool: cutting, re-ordering, sharpening sound, deepening character, or testing the truth of the piece?
Rod Miller: When working on a poem, I always look for ways to sharpen sound—a better word, a more melodious combination of words. Sometimes this happens within the strictures of a form (maybe one I’ve made up), sometimes in service to sound and rhythm in a free verse poem.
When writing prose, I read and reread and find better words, work to make the language better, to strive for more clarity, and to make sure what I have written rings true.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you know when a poem, story, or essay is finished?
Rod Miller: In a sense, nothing is ever finished. But at some point you have to accept what is there and move on. Otherwise, nothing will ever get written, never mind get published.
HISTORY, WITNESS, AND RESPONSIBILITY
Streeby for O:JA&L: When writing about events such as violence, displacement, or forgotten Western history, how do you avoid turning tragedy into spectacle?
Rod Miller: Tell the truth. Lay it out with the whys and wherefores and the outcome, even if it involves discomfort, which may be necessary.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What obligations do writers have when family memory, community memory, and documented history do not agree?
Rod Miller: First-person accounts, diaries and journals, newspaper reports, oral histories, government and military reports, and other documents often—almost always—disagree in whole or part when it comes to recounting history. The writer has to evaluate the sources of information for bias and for nearness to the events or people under study in order to determine what is most unbiased and objective, then rely on those sources. The best sources must be compared to find where agreement can be found, which is usually where the most truth will be revealed. In your writing you should always attempt to tell the truth that is revealed, and support it with documentation, logic, and explanation.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How do you write about Western conflict without flattening people into heroes and villains?
Rod Miller: Always remember that the people involved in history are real people, more like you than not, and are imperfect. Good guys aren’t all good and bad guys aren’t all bad.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What does historical honesty require from a writer who also loves the region he writes about?
Rod Miller: Tell the truth. Accept the fact that people are imperfect, that history is complicated and not always pleasant.
CAREER ARC, COMMUNITY, AND THE LONG VIEW
Streeby for O:JA&L: Looking across poetry, fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting, and reviewing, what through-line best explains your career?
Rod Miller: It has always been driven by curiosity and wonder. I started writing about the things that interest me because I wondered if I could do it.
Streeby for O:JA&L: How has your understanding of “Western writer” changed since you first began publishing?
Rod Miller: It changed before I ever started writing, when I read Wallace Stegner’s statement that he was a Western writer, but not a writer of Westerns. When I joined Western Writers of America as a barely published novice, that idea was and has been reinforced. In addition to getting to know writers of Westerns, I have also had opportunities to meet Western writers who departed from the formulaic good-guys-versus-bad-guys approach to reach for richer, deeper stories. The same held true with poetry, as I got to know and learned from poets who surpassed the typical rhyming tales to use words and language for a higher purpose.
Streeby for O:JA&L: If you could revisit one early poem, story, or nonfiction project, what would you change now?
Rod Miller: Once a piece is in print, I seldom look back or reread my work unless for a specific purpose. When I do, there are often little things that could be improved, but for the most part I am pleased with what’s there, and often surprised that I actually wrote it.
CLOSING QUESTIONS: WHAT COMES NEXT
Streeby for O:JA&L: What are you working on now that feels like a new challenge—formally, historically, or personally?
Rod Miller: There’s another novel in a series that is just getting started. The challenge I find when I write in a series is to keep the character consistent, while finding fresh conflicts to challenge and deepen the character.
Streeby for O:JA&L: What question do interviewers almost never ask you, but should, given your life in rodeo, advertising, poetry, history, and commentary?
Rod Miller: In a world where it seems that almost everybody thinks they have a poem or a story or a novel in them, why did it take nearly 50 years before I wondered if I could be a writer?
Either that, or what kind of arrogance led me to think anyone would ever care to read what I wrote.
Streeby for O:JA&L: For emerging Western writers or cowboy poets, what practice builds the deepest craft: reading aloud, research, listening to working people, memorizing tradition, or something else?
Rod Miller: There is one thing every writer or aspiring writer should always do: read, read, read, and read some more. The more good stuff you read, the more likely you will absorb by osmosis what makes good literature. I believe that reading has done as much or more for me than the education in creative writing that I did not get might have done. Beyond reading for enjoyment—although all reading can be enjoyable—read for research, into both history and craft, so you can learn do it right and do it well.
Streeby for O:JA&L: To absorb more good stuff from Writer Rod Miller, we encourage our readers to follow and engage through these convenient links:
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER:
JEFF STREEBY is an American poet, editor, and educator with over 30 years of experience teaching English language and literature at secondary and university levels. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from New England College. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, his widely published poetry and haibun have appeared in over 40 literary journals globally, including Rattle and Whiskey Island. Streeby is also a recognized cowboy poet and horseman. Since 2017, he has served as the Senior Associate Editor for OJAL Arts Incorporated, managing its prominent publication, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprints Buttonhook Press, HOT BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Issues, and HIGH BUTTON PRESS Contemporary Art, supports writers and artists worldwide.
The O:JA&L Free Presses Masters Series
The O:JA&L Free Presses Masters Series (from OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters) gathers acclaimed writers for concise, downloadable chapbooks that pair fresh work with candid reflections on craft. Each installment—often framed by an interview with an associate editor—opens a window onto how masters of poetry, prose poetry, flash fiction, and related hybrid forms build voice, compression, and surprise. Designed as a reader’s invitation and a writer’s toolbox, the series celebrates literary art that moves fast, cuts deep, and lingers long after the last line.
Click on the titles below to explore or download the free PDF chapbooks.
Prose Poetry and Flash Discourse
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Brian Clements on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Mark Budman on Flash Discourse
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Ray Gonzalez on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Michael Martone on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Roberta Allen on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Master Series: Peter Conners on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Maxine Chernoff on Prose Poetry
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Pedro Ponce on Flash Fiction
With an Interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Kent Dixon on Flash Fiction & Nonfiction
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
MIixed Forms: Haibun, Haiga, & Tanka Prose
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Roberta Beary on Haibun
With an interview by Associate Editor Pamelyn Casto
Experimental Discourse
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Jim Meirose on Experimental Discourse (XP)
With an interview by Associate Editor Warwick Newnham
Poetry: All forms & styles
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Poetry from Bruce McRae
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
The Buttonhook Press Masters Series: Poetry from Richard Widerkehr
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
The Dally Post Press Masters Series: Cowboy Poetry from Rod Miller
With an Interview by Associate Editor Jeff Streeby
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