11/05/2020
Adam David Miller, who liked to be called AD in his later years, as he was called as a child in Orangeburg South Carolina, died peacefully in his home, surrounded by family and friends Thursday afternoon, November 4th. He was 98.
AD’s first memoir, Ticket to Exile, remembers, age 19, being jailed for passing a note to a white girl. Too intelligent for the Jim-Crow south, AD was forced to leave, embarking on a long journey though life, ending in Berkeley, California. In his second memoir, Fall Rising, published when he was 95, AD describes how as a naval officer he was sent to college during World War Two, and his struggles afterwards for employment, and his success, taking a Black drama group into the deep south at a time when that was still not done, and an escape from possible violence due to the fortunate appearance of an army convoy.
AD Miller taught for many years at Laney College in Oakland, California while sustaining a correspondence with many notable Black notables. He never threw paper away, amassing a collection of letters, playbills, notes and scripts from his time as a program producer at KPFA. Stanford University acquired his archives.
He was honored at age 90 by the City of Berkeley for his poetic works: Sky is a Page, Land Between, Neighborhood and Other Poems, Forever Afternoon, Apocalypse is My Garden, Adam David Miller, A Sampler of His Poems. His two memoirs are Ticket to Exile and Fall Rising. He edited Dices or Black Bones: Black Voices of the Seventies, and co-edited Fresh Ink VI.
His message to the world:
Keep Sending Love Out
Keep sending love out
where the heart clutches and the soul sings.
keep sending love out,
into the lighted dark, over the fog swept sea,
or where it runs the risk of dying dusty death.
send it where there may not be an echo,
no return. Send love, that magic portent,
that drug of madness, the poet’s bane, some fools’s delight.
Send it where it has never been, a new address.
Keep sending, sending, sending
AD, we will, and so are you sending, sending, sending. On a personal note, my wife Kathleen met you when she was outside gardening and you walked down the sidewalk. I was fixing our foundation and had extra dirt which ended up in your backyard, four blocks away, fittingly in an area of Berkeley called Poet’s Corner.
You had poetry books which you had written, and we eagerly read them, full of observations about life written both with love and humor. You persuaded me to resume writing poetry, something I had neglected during years of earning an income. We went to readings. You became found family and were the elder in the room for our children, imparting wisdom. Your impact on us, as well as countless others, was huge, changing our lives and our tomorrows. What you have left behind are many pieces of you sprinkled over a community. Stanford may have your papers. We have you, inside.
A.D. my friend
one picture tilts a few degrees off the normal plane of things
the room is all memories and pills
a chest rises and falls slowly
there is no perpetual
motion
no eternal – ness is known to one body.
this man
with his perfect uncracked skin
how can he
stop
there is one picture tilted a few degrees off the normal plane of things
this bedroom of memories and pills
Adam you look robust sleeping tired on the pillow
your hands crossed on your lap
as if satisfied
I wonder if you dream
of
South Carolina and a girl
or the span lived,
a longest book you have ever written
the pages are hands
one atop another
we are here.
