Writer and Artist
Lynn Miller is the author of works on varied subjects, both fiction and non-fiction, as well as a painter whose dominant style is that of abstract expressionism.
Lynn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Temple University. He is the author of a number of books and articles on world politics. Books include Organizing Mankind and Global Order: Values and Power in International Politics. His 2010 novel is Crossing the Line. He is the co-author (with Lloyd Jensen) of Global Challenge, (with Annette H. Emgarth) of French Philadelphia, (with James McClelland) of City in a Park: A History of Philadelphia's Fairmount Park System, and (with Therese Dolan) of Salut! France Meets Philadelphia: The French Presence in Philadelphia's History, Culture, and Art, which was published by Temple University Press in November, 2020. His memoir, Postcards from Delphi, is now available from the author.
Artist: Paintings
Lynn Miller's Paintings
As a painter, Lynn seeks to explore through visual means aspects of the world he studied as a humanist and social scientist. He explores in a vivid and painterly way what he imagines may underlie our experience of complex phenomena. He makes visual our ideas and sensations. He began as a landscape painter. Landscapes remain behind much of his work, which is now largely abstract, with references both to the physical world and to states of mind. He seeks the dazzling visual moment, and to reveal aspects of our shared human experience. He views himself as principally a humanist in his approach to art, but one with an analytic bent.
This is "gestural painting, yet marked by painterly finesse and sensitive use of color . . . Lynn Miller favors an at-times-unnerving isolation of elements, then attempts to reconnect them with much vigor." Victoria Donohoe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 12, 2011, review of "Abstracted, Take Five," at Muse Gallery, Philadelphia.
Lynn's paintings are in a number of private collections, as well as those of Jefferson University Health System; Temple University's College of Liberal Arts: both the Office of the Dean and Political Science Department; Crosslands Gallery, Chester County, Pa.; and A Woman's Place, Bucks County, Pa., among others.
Today's Poem
A Song of Homo Sapiens
They shout, renew the nation!
Cleanse the land of all whose one gene in a hundred differs from our own!
Drive them out! Purify this soil for our elect!
Here is our refuge from scoundrels.
By choosing for us whom we hate,
Our patriotism saves us from the sickly need for thought!
Photographs of earth from heaven
Prove what Olmecs knew before us,
That the wondrous home we cling to
Is a sphere.
Every movement, back or forward,
On this globe's pie-crusted surface
Leads us always toward each other,
Far or near.
If I defile your ensign, then is every honor mine--
Not over there in your camp--on my side of the line.
If I burn my tribe's banner, that is treason to be cursed,
Of course, from where you're standing, a score for you's my worst.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
These truths resemble lies.
I've never sailed to Okinawa,
Never crossed the Okovanggo,
But with those who've sailed and forded,
I am one.
I've never lived in Oklahoma,
Never fished from Ocumare,
But with those who've lived and fished there,
I am one.
Our sovereign separations damn us still from out the past,
Our braying certifies that Homo sapiens will not last.
We dying now in battle are the sons of dinosaurs,
Our fatal meteor falling through the glory of our wars.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our flesh is food for flies.
Two million years from Olduvai
Are but the twinkling of an eye
Since the start of life on this ball in space,
Or compared to how much time our race
Might have to live and love and learn
Of boundless joy and peace in turn.
I've never rowed on Okanagan,
Never walked in Okayama,
But with those who've rowed and walked there,
I am one.
I've never swum the Okatibbee,
Never loved in Okahandja,
But with those with passions spent there,
I am one.
The cosmos formed this earth to test the miracle of life
Where men evolved from eons of concordance cleft by strife.
We now must forge community across our tiny world,
Or face a sure extinction, our flags forever furled.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Humanity's the prize.