Jacob Miller first emerged as a young poet in the 1970's after winning a Hopwood Poetry Award, studying briefly with Allen Ginsburg, then working with the Nobel Prize Laureate, Joseph Brodsky, in classical verse forms for years, while also working with the American Poet Laureate, Robert Hayden, in more economic free-verse. During this period he also launched the literary and arts journal, Empyrea, and published his work, Sublimity vs. Circulation, urging librarians nationally to more aggressively seek out new writers, which was awarded in the Best of Lit. Series and published first in Library Journal and later by The Scarecrow Press.
Then he fell off the map. For the next 30 years, Miller became a reclusive poet and author who did not aggressively pursue publication and stopped doing public readings, but never stopped writing, refining his craft, pursuing his own new hybrid verse form, alternately living abroad (mostly in Italy) and New York, while making ends meet as a teacher. In recent years though, he resurfaced, was the recipient of support from the New York Foundation for the Arts for this collection of poems, Lines from a Canvas, as well as his novel, Leviathan.
