"Writer is a marvel of talent, energy"
Column by Cary Clack, San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 29, 2008
By the time the sun sets this evening there are any number of thing that
Bryce Milligan may have done. He could have written a chapter or two of his new
novel and, if he gets stuck, switch over to a poem that's not quite complete,
maybe do a book review, start a new play or children's book or, if suddenly
inspired, whip up a song for the CD he's working on.
If the guitar or drums he's playing don't sound right, he might begin making
a new guitar or drums before editing the manuscripts and designing the covers
for the dozen or so books by other writers his publishing company will publish
over the next few months. If he gets bored he may build a new bookshelf and, if
he has a spare hour before going to bed, he may indulge his love for science,
especially astronomy, by scoping out the stars.
So what did you do today?
The time we're given on this Earth is uncertain and the talents we're blessed
with are often untapped. But time, like talent, is what we make of it.
You won't find many people who make better use of their time and talents than
Milligan, one of San Antonio's best-known writers and a literary godfather in
this community.
The scope of the 55-year-old's career and the range of things he's done are
fascinating. To sum up that career, he either is or has been a novelist,
essayist, short-story writer, poet, essayist, folk singer/song writer, musician,
instrument maker, carpenter, a rare book bibliographer and appraiser, a college
English and creative-writing instructor, arts administrator, book and magazine
publisher, book designer and publisher and — the least impressive of his jobs —
a newspaper columnist.
"Bryce Milligan is the kind of guy you'd like to hate," says award-winning
writer Robert Flynn, whose short memoir, "Burying the Farm" was published
earlier this year by Milligan's Wings Press. "Not only can he do anything you
can do and do it better, he can do things you can't do. I asked him if he could
play a musical instrument — I can't — but at least it would be something he
couldn't do. Not only can he play a musical instrument, he sings songs that he
has written, accompanying himself on instruments that he made. That's hard to
like."
For his part, Milligan says, "I'm sure a lot of people think I'm creative but
I'm just trying to pay my bills."
At the center of his creativity is his passion for books and the written word
that was ignited as a child while reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
in a tree in his backyard home in Dallas. The poetry and criticism he's written
for adults and the fiction he's written for children and young adults earned him
the title of "literary wizard" from Bloomsbury Review.
"Books are everything," he says. "Everything you can do you can learn from
books."
Much of what he does begins at the Southtown home he shares with his wife,
librarian and writer Mary Guerrero Milligan. It's a neighborhood where, every
Christmas season, the Milligans celebrate the Mexican religious Christmas
tradition of Las Posadas as Milligan, guitar in hand, leads "pilgrims" door to
door in song before ending up at their home for plentiful food, drink and
holiday cheer. It's the home where they raised their two children, Michael, an
astrophysicist and astronomer, and Brigid, a communications manager for Morgan
Stanley in New York.
Milligan's office is out back in a blue carriage house, on a second floor
that's a writer's delight with bookshelves holding most of the 20,000 books that
he owns. On the walls throughout the several rooms are letters and poems to
Milligan signed by the likes of Seamus Heaney, Stephen Spender, Joy Harjo and
Robert Bly. There's a thank you note from J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tucked in a corner in one room is a recording studio he's built and where
he's recording a CD of folk songs. In the room where he writes are two of his
guitars, a music stand with a songbook, and, at his desk on his computer screen,
next to a bottle of Jameson Irish whiskey, is Milligan's latest literary
project.
It's a simple little thing, really: a series of novels about Enheduanna, a
woman who was the first-known writer in the history of the world. It's a project
Milligan prepared for by spending several years learning cuneiform writing and
the Sumerian language of 2,300 B.C. Milligan, fluent in Spanish, also reads in
several other languages, including Latin, Greek, Welsh, Norse, Anglo Saxon
English, Middle English and Old Irish.
"I want to learn Finnish but it's too far out there," he says.
Even the novel he's writing and the desk he's writing it on are a
cross-fertilization of his creativity. Last spring, while working on the book,
he took a break to retrieve a cedar tree cut down across the alley and made his
new desk out of it.
"Everything is related to creativity," says Milligan. "When I can't write,
I'll build something."
In addition to his own work, Milligan edits,
designs and markets the publications produced by Wings Press, his highly
respected publishing company, which was profiled last year in Poets &
Writers Magazine. He can only publish a very small number of the 60-70
submissions he gets each week. He calls some of the manuscripts he has to
turn down "wonderful stuff" and calls what he does at Wings Press "necessary
work, especially for young writers, non-writers and people of different
ethnicities, faiths and perspectives who wouldn't make it into the
mainstream press.
"I'm attracted to people who are creative," he says.
Writer Flynn says of Milligan, "He's every writer's friend, not just as a
friend who can do anything you can and not talk about it, but as moral and
morale supporter.
Milligan's Renaissance qualities are rooted in believing in himself. "I never
thought that I couldn't do something," he says.
And yet . . .
Recently, Milligan was showing off the gazebo he built over the summer. The
gazebo was marvelously crafted but then Milligan looked with disappointment at
his yard and said, "I can't grow grass."
Aha!
Cary Clack's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. To leave him
a message call (210) 350-3486 or e-mail at cclack@express-news.net
About Bryce Milligan
Born in Dallas, Texas, Bryce Milligan has lived in San Antonio since 1977.
Among other things, he has been a folksinger, a maker of guitars, drums and
dulcimers, a carpenter, a rare book bibliographer and appraiser, a college
English and creative writing instructor, a poet-in-the-schools, an arts
administrator, a book and magazine editor, a book designer, and a publisher. As
a writer, he has been a newspaper columnist, a freelance journalist, a scholar,
a novelist, a poet, a playwright, and an essayist. It has been an interesting
life.
Milligan
is the author of five historical novels and short story collections for young
adults, including the award-winning
With the Wind, Kevin Dolan (Corona Publishing, 1987), which was recently
republished in Germany.
Milligan is also the author of four collections of poetry, Daysleepers &
Other Poems (1984), Litany Sung at Hell's Gate (1991), From Inside
the Tree (cassette, 1990, 1994) and
Working the Stone (Wings Press, 1994). In The Texas Observer,
critic A. E. Mares compared Working the Stone to the poems of Seamus
Heaney and Donald Hall. Milligan is also the author of five locally produced
plays and well over 1,500 articles, essays, and reviews.
Milligan holds a M.A. in language and linguistics (Anglo-Saxon and Old Irish)
from the University of Texas at Austin.
He has written extensively about Latino/Latina literature. Milligan is the
primary editor (co-editors are Angela de Hoyos and Mary Guerrero Milligan) of
the anthology
Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry
(Putnam/Riverhead, 1995, paper1996). He is also one of the editors of a CD Rom,
American Journeys: The Hispanic American Experience (Primary Source Media,
1995). A second major anthology, ¡Floricanto Sí!- U.S. Latina Poetry,
will be published in the fall of 1997 by Penguin USA.
The founding editor of Pax: A Journal for Peace through Culture
(1983-1987)and Vortex: A Critical Review (1986-1990), he became in 1995
the publisher/editor of Wings Press, one
of the oldest continually operating small presses in Texas.
Milligan was the book critic for the San Antonio Express News from
1982 to 1987, and for the San Antonio Light from 1987 to 1990. He has
taught English literature and composition, creative writing, and education
courses at the University of Texas at San Antonio and at Palo Alto College. For
three years he worked with the San Antonio ISD as a poet-in-the-schools.
In 1985, Milligan co-founded (with Sandra Cisneros) an event which evolved
into the San Antonio Inter-American Bookfair. Currently, Milligan is the
director of the literature program at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San
Antonio. Activities directed by Milligan include the biennial "Hijas del
Quinto Sol: Studies in Latina Identity" conference (co-hosted by St. Mary's
University), the annual San Antonio Inter-American Bookfair and Literary
Festival, the Lumbre reading series, a series of Summer Master's Classes in
creative writing, various community outreach classes in creative writing and
Latino literature, and an annual PBS-televised poetry slam for young adults.
Milligan and his wife of 22 years, short story writer and librarian Mary
Guerrero Milligan, live in a 110-year-old house in downtown San Antonio with
their two children, three cats, and 15,000 books.
From The Critics
"Milligan is a real poet, with the real poet's sure voice, richness and
variety, technical skill, and above all, delight in risk. . . He pulls out all
the stops, and because he knows so surely what he's talking about, and has an
ear so unerring and an eye so partisan yet unblinking, he gets away with it.
Reading him is a joy."— John Gardner
"Here is an ancient intuitive vision and unity brought to the modern
experience. Here is a poet who will delight those who revere the word. "—
Daisy Aldan
"This is poetry that blends academia and real life. . . and generates
solid realms of surprise."— Dallas Morning News
"Truly exceptional work. Milligan makes clear the potential for visionary
poetry in Texas."— Dave Oliphant
"Here is a life lived &on the strength of words / and the memory of
blood." Poems wise as clouds. Poems as witness, as testimonio. Milligan is one
who casts his luck, echa su suerte con los pobres y los muertos. A drumsong, a
bellsong, to set free the paper cranes in all our hearts."—
Sandra Cisneros
"The
first work by Bryce Milligan I read was
Working the Stone in the mid-1990s. I was moved then by the lyricism of
his language, his aesthetic commitment, and the honesty of of his political
stance. Subsequently, I have read more of his work, heard him read his poetry,
heard him sing songs he has written, and heard him play musical instruments –
Milligan is a true bard-poet, in short a troubador." — Sudeep
Sen
Milligan is the author of four historical novels and short story collections
for young adults, including:
- award-winning
With the Wind, Kevin Dolan
(Corona Publishing, 1987)
- Battle of the Alamo (Texas Monthly Press: 1990, re-issued by Eakin
Press, Spring 1999)
- Comanche Captive (Texas Monthly Press: 1990. Out of print. To be
re-issued by Eakin Press, Fall 2000)
- Lawmen: Stories of Men Who Tamed the West (New York: Disney Press, 1994)
Milligan is also the author of five collections of poetry:
In
The Texas Observer, critic A. E. Mares compared Working the Stone to
the poems of Seamus Heaney and Donald Hall. Milligan is also the author of five
locally produced plays and well over 2,000 articles, essays, and reviews. In
September 2002, Milligan's first illustrated children's book, Brigid's Cloak:
An Ancient Irish Story, was published by Eerdmans in Sept. 2002, and gained
a starred review in Publishers Weekly.. In March 2002, Holiday House published
his second illustrated children's book, The
Prince of Ireland and the Three Magic Stallions
,
which garnered a starred review in the American Library Association journal,
Booklist.
On Reputation
More than any individual I can think of, Mr. Milligan has been intensely
active and supremely successful in fostering both a public awareness and
involvement in the humanities in Texas. . . . There are many notable people I
have seen and known who have passed through the literary rhythms of our state.
Some have been remarkable in terms of energy and quality of vision. Mr.
Milligan, however, stands out above those noble figures for several reasons: the
fine quality of his work and the genuine effectiveness of his efforts.
— Prof. James Hoggard, Poet Laureate of Texas
No male scholar in this country has done so much for Latina writers as has
Bryce Milligan. His support for us — in newspaper articles, book reviews,
scholarly articles, community activism and publishing — began thirty years ago.
The very first review of my own book, The House on Mango Street, to appear in a
major newspaper came from Milligan's typewriter. I cannot even express to you
how far ahead of the curve he was in recognizing the importance of that slim
volume. Consider that he single-handedly created the first annual academic
conference dedicated to Latina literature Ð and he didn't even work at a
university. His anthologies have proven to be of ground-breaking importance. His
assistance to younger Latina writers over the years has shown a depth of
commitment that has earned him a level of trust we do not usually accord to
mainstream males.— Sandra Cisneros, novelist, poet
Books By Bryce Milligan
- Poetry
- Daysleepers & Other Poems (Corona, 1984)
- Litany Sung at Hell's Gate (M&A Editions, 1990)
- From Inside the Tree (Calberg Productions, 1990, 1994)
-
Working the Stone (Houston: Wings Press, 1994)
- Historical Fiction for Young Adults
- Lawmen: Men Who Tamed the West (Disney Press, 1994)
- Battle of the Alamo (Texas Monthly Press: 1990)
- Comanche Captive (Texas Monthy Press: 1990)
-
With the Wind, Kevin Dolan (Corona, 1987, 1992)
- Edited
- ¡Floricanto Sí — U.S. Latina Poetry (Penguin, 1997)
-
This Promiscuous Light: Young Women Poets of San Antonio (Wings
Press: 1996)
- Corazón del Norte: Writing by North Texas Latinos (Wings Press &
Bath House Cultural Center, 1996)
- Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry
(Putnam/Riverhead Books, 1995, 1996)
- American Journeys: The Hispanic American Experience (Primary
Source Media, CD ROM, 1995)
- Linking Roots: Writing by Six Women of Diverse Ethnic Origins
(M&A Editions, 1993)
- And the Ground Spoke: Poems and Stories by Cecilio Garcia-Camarillo,
Joy Harjo, E.A. Mares, and Jim Sagel (Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center,
1986)
