Scholar Hour featuting E. Ethelbert Miller

About the books:

How I Found Love Behind the Catcher's Mask: Poems (2022)

One can watch many baseball games before seeing a triple play. With this book E. Ethelbert Miller completes his baseball trilogy. How I Found Love Behind the Catcher's Mask is a collection of poems that celebrates baseball by putting a spin on how the game brings meaning to one's life.

Well known Washington, D.C. poet, former Howard University professor, and literary activist, Ethelbert Miller is personal and political when writing from the batter's box or pitching mound. Here are poems that tip their caps to Joe DiMaggio, Ken Griffey Sr., and Emmett Ashford.

Miller's book does not duck from examining the Black Sox Scandal, the career of Glenn Burke or the tragedy of Carl Mays. Miller's own life at times is a playing field for sadness and what

Ellington called "mood indigo." But his love for baseball is a complete game and continues to reflect the hard heat of pleasure. After If God Invented Baseball and When Your Wife Has Tommy John Surgery and other Baseball Stories, this book, like a triple play, is a thing of beauty.

"Baseball should create a new position, poet laureate, and give it to E. Ethelbert Miller. In his third collection of baseball poems ('a double turning into a trilogy, ' as he writes), Miller weaves knuckleballs and pickoff throws with universal themes of family, race, relationships--and the issues of our time, like rioting and voting rights. With allusions to Monbouquette and Giacometti, Henderson and Danticat, How I Found Love Behind the Catcher's Mask will make you laugh, think and feel a whole new way about baseball and the world around it."--Tyler Kepner, national baseball columnist for the New York Times and author of the best-selling K: A History of Baseball In Ten Pitches

"Ethelbert Miller is one of the most significant and influential poets of our time." --Gwendolyn Brooks

The Collected Poems of E. Ethelbert Miller (2019)

Poetry collection by E. Ethelbert Miller, writer and literary activist. The editor of Poet Lore, Miller served as Director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University. Awarded an honorary Doctor of Literature from Emory and Henry College, Miller has taught at UNLV, American University, George Mason University, and Emory and Henry College. A two-time Fulbright Senior Specialist Program Fellow and the founder of the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C., Miller has authored several collections of poetry and two memoirs. He is the host and producer of The Scholars, which airs on UDC-TV. A 2015 Washington, D.C. Hall of Fame Inductee, Miller is also a regular on National Public Radio.

"Ethelbert's poetry enters us and sings. Like the biblical prophets, he inspires and challenges us, and gives voice to our deepest longing: to live with greater intensity and passion, and bring significance to our existence. He is one of the great voices of our day." --Susannah Heschel, Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College

Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer (2013)

Moving beyond the loss of both his father and brother, E.Ethelbert Miller tells the story of how love survived in his family. When Miller was about ten years old, his father told him how he considered leaving his mother. Years later, now a writer and a father, Miller looks back on the simple remark and how it shaped him. In Fathering Words, Miller explores his development as an African American writer, the responsibility of his chosen career, and his ambitions to raise the consciousness of Black people.

Miller's poetry often relies on the voices of women. Here in Fathering Words, he has chosen to write his memoir in two voices. He places his sister's voice on the page next to his own. The result is a wonderful duet that tells two stories woven into one. Fathering Words is Miller's moving tribute and a powerful memoir.

About the author:

E. Ethelbert Miller is an African-American poet, teacher and literary activist, based in Washington, DC.[1][2] He is the author of several collections of poetry and two memoirs, the editor of Poet Lore magazine, and the host of the weekly WPFW morning radio show On the Margin.

Watch HERE