Wayne Miller: "We the Jury" (Poetry)
“And this was / the best image we had / of what made us a nation.”
—from Wayne Miller’s poem, “Carillon”
Wayne Miller doesn’t hesitate to probe our insecurities and hopes, but more precisely our assumptions about what we think we understand about our present America in his new book of poetry published by Milkweed Press, We the Jury (March 2021). The title is apt, not only because anyone who has seen a courtroom drama scene knows that this is a statement given before the final sentencing, but because “We the Jury” is a proverbial liminal space between a stark before and after which begs the question, “For all we (both collectively and individually) have done, what will come next? And does it matter whether or not we ‘deserve’ the outcome?” Miller’s title reminds us that we still do not know what the verdict will be, and that the ever-changing present might soon contradict it anyway.
While the humanist speaker grounds the book with moments of reprieve through the interior (“Middle Age”) and within the domestic sphere (“Love Poem”), the question of who exactly “we” is proves slippery throughout. For example, in the poem “Generational,” Miller begins the poem with the following lines:
Open the bays and we fall together
as in archival footage
from the last generation’s war
…
While some might read these lines as I did initially, recalling footage shown in history classes of WWII ally planes dropping bombs over Germany, the reader might be caught in their assumption about the “we” that appears in the first line. This line is in the present tense. The United States possess the “archival footage” of the U.S. War that began in Afghanistan in 2001, but the war is still ongoing, the archive is not yet complete. More recently, during his first month in office, President Biden ordered an airstrike on Syria. This, too, is recent “history.” Instead of posing the question of which generations are indicted in these first three lines it’s more pragmatic to consider which ones are not (if any). But Miller doesn’t slow down, he continues:
…
there’s comfort in this
collectivity we’ll land
together more or less
…
Another indictment is imbedded here that is worth a pause. There is comfort in that we are all complicit participants in this continuation of the Military Industrial Complex while simultaneously acknowledging how often military personnel are often victims when returning home (i.e. the Opioid Crisis and lack of sufficient support and jobs for many veterans). There’s another side to this indictment, too: one of love. We are not alone, and yes, we are navigating the world together now. Wayne stretches what language can do within the scene when he writes:
our impacts giving off
globes of light
becoming one light
…
The horrifically iconic image of mushroom clouds that grew over Hiroshima after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb comes to mind: the monstrosity of the unnatural light that follows a modern genocide. One might hear the echoes of our global anxieties about the future, especially since the bombardiers that appear after this moment on the page have no identifiable home they are returning to. This is not history class: this is the nightmarish nature of a potential future. Who is guilty and innocent in another world war may not matter if no one survives the “economical” machine that is death (“The News”).
Miller demonstrates his craftsmanship in the ways in which he always keeps the collective and personal at the forefront, and the exchanges therein. The nature of the poetic inquiry into a book like We the Jury inevitably asks something of the poet. Miller does not shy away from what the book requires, but perhaps no poem reflects this difficult responsibility quite as much as the complications that arise within the poem “On History.” The poem centers on the problematic personal history of a father’s friend and convict, George Trabing, who among other crimes, murdered a young black woman, Winnifred Jean Whittaker. After serving fifteen years in prison, Trabing would go on to have a successful academic career, and later, teach a young boy and poet how to sail. Miller does not defend or exonerate Trabing of his crimes when he writes:
The family of Winifred Jean Whittaker
must despise George Trabing —
…
… They would be right to say
it was a racist travesty of justice
he became a professor
and remained for the rest of his life
in Houston — their town — walking free
with his title and the prestige it carried.
And here is an American history that many know all too well. Trabing’s freedom is a manifestation of his privilege and is a brutal reflection of America’s own devaluation of black lives and the racist biases within the justice system that still persist. It is a reason, among many, why the largest protest in United States history, The Black Lives Matter Movement, took place after the murder of George Floyd last May. Given Trabing’s horrific history, it’s a shock that any father would allow his son near someone capable of such horrific violence. We experience Miller’s own perplexity of his father’s discernment when he writes
My god, why did my father
let George Trabing take me out
alone on his boat?
This is the moment in which some poets might pivot or turn away from the facts, but Miller does not. Some poets might end the poem with this stanza, perhaps a way to avoid a more complicated conclusion, but Miller does not. And it would be much simpler (wouldn’t it?) to end the poem with an ambiguous ending (as poems so oft love to retreat into when backed into a corner), but again, Miller does not. The poem demands more, and so Miller continues with a working theory to this question:
…
As a teenager, my father
had wanted to be a priest,
though by 1988 he’d long become
an unshakeable atheist. I know George
was his good friend and no doubt
dad thought I would enjoy sailing.
Beyond that, it was a religious decision —
an atavism, a proof of faith —
I’m pretty sure.
Miller offers us something of an explanation here, in an indirect way. Poems and people are not logical, but they have many (often conflicting) reasons for being. And there’s a kind of sense-making of the father’s trust and decision that is occurring within the poem that is drawing both Miller and reader deeper into its’ core. It might be wise to note that this is also a tempting resting spot for some poets who would prefer to end the inquiry here. But again, Miller does not, instead he shares something of a confession:
Dare I say? —
Of the men I spent time with as a child,
George was among the very kindest
and most generous—and he offered
me a respectfulness I didn’t, at twelve, deserve.
While the poem ends a few lines later, it is in this stanza that both Miller and reader have reached the center of the inquiry: a boy’s love. The scene ends with Trabing and boy on a boat that nearly capsizes. But there’s a distinction to be made here: the inquiry’s end is not to be mistaken for Miller’s conclusion of the inquiry; this stanza is a fact that also functions to clear away any false dichotomies of George Trabing. It is a fact that George Trabing murdered Winifred Jean Whittaker, a young black woman and it is a fact that George Trabing once befriended a young white boy and taught him to sail. These are two of the facts of George Trabing, and no excuses, explanations, or justifications are offered to us. It’s also important to note that there is no mention of how the speaker feels about Trabing now as an adult except what is revealed here in the last few stanzas:
…
He is to me both an abstraction
and a very powerful expression
of real. Which is why I’m still here
in the library so late in the afternoon,
retrieving articles from 1961-2
on “George Trabing.”
And here is the only closure the reader is offered: to be human is to be real. Miller reminds us that we all possess the capacity to become agents of change in the lives of others. George Trabing committed a very real hate crime against Winifred Jean Whittaker that killed her, and forever robbed her family and friends, and highlights the systems that allow men like George Trabing to continue to walk away from the consequences of their actions with relative ease. What does the poet do in light of these facts? The answer is surprisingly clear, but not at all easy: to remain unflinching to all existing facts.
—Micah Ruelle
Poetry Intern
Wayne Miller is the author of five collections of poems, including Post- and We the Jury. He is also a cotranslator of two books from the Albanian poet Moikom Zeqo, and a coeditor of three anthologies, including Literary Publishing in the Twenty-First Century and New European Poets. Miller is a professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver, where he edits Copper Nickel.
