Then and Now: Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Ahead

Gerry Miller was born Gerry Battles ages ago in Des Moines, Iowa, began life on the family farm near Ames, spent his younger years in eastern Iowa in Muscatine along the muddy Mississippi river, and has grown into an old man in Iowa City. He retired in 2010 from forty years spent as a non-academic at the University of Iowa.

He has written and published poetry, mostly formal poems at the time, in a variety of poetry journals.

No man should grow old without ever looking back. His past grows larger every time the sun sets: more to see, more to remember, and more to look back upon. So, this book is partially a memoir, but one that has chosen rather randomly what to include. All memoirs probably do this. Many of the pages are from a distant past, others more recent. And some pages may not be memoir-like at all. Some will say it looks like an attempt at poetry, but many will say it’s not really poetry either.

For this specific old man, these pages are just some of his journey’s footprints, moments that still seem to echo in his life’s hallway: people - past and present; places - here and gone. You may find silent sailboats on a glassy bay or cattle on an Iowa pasture. No number of words of one old man can possibly provide a pin long enough to transfix his entire life. But they can begin.