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Jim Minick

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Power of poetry

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Whether you’re looking for a focused stirring narrative or a wide-ranging compilation of tales, Jim Minick’s two recently published books of poetry are available to fulfill your wish.
Minick, a Wythe County resident since 2002 who lives in the hamlet of Huckleberry, said he enjoys the brevity and accompanying freedom that the poetry genre provides.
“Poetry for me is a way to capture a moment, especially if you don’t have a lot of time,” Minick said.
And time wasn’t a luxury for Minick in capturing the stories that make up the first of his two recently published works.
“Her Secret Song,” which came out on Aug. 1 was the first published poetry book for the Radford University special purpose faculty member.
The work tells the story of the life of Minick’s Aunt Ruth, details of which the poet gathered from frequent visits to her residence near Boston during the last year of her life.
“I wanted to get to know her before she died,” Minick said of his aunt, who succumbed to cancer in 2001 at the age of 73. “It’s a journey of a nephew getting to know his aunt, as well as the family saying goodbye.”
Minick’s poems are accompanied by numerous old family photos, which are interspersed throughout the book with his writings.
Although Aunt Ruth’s life story is one of the daily triumphs and tragedies of an everyday person, she notably had an extraordinary facial disfigurement known as “elephant man’s disease” that affected her life.
The ailment, characterized by benign tumors covering a person’s body, was with his aunt virtually from birth, Minick said.
He said she most prominently had a growth above one of her eyes, but her condition didn’t hold her back in life.
“She taught sixth-grade for 35 years,” Minick said.
Minick said he wrote many of the poems that make up “Her Secret Song” during the year he spent regularly visiting his aunt.
In the ensuing years since her death, Minick said he refined the poems and added new ones, finally bearing down to finalize the project for publication in the last year.
Fortuitously, Minick’s compilation of other poems he’s written over the years also found a publisher around the same time.
His anthology, “Burning Heaven,” was just published on Wednesday.
Unlike “Her Secret Song,” Minick’s second poetry work has no single overarching focus.
Instead, “Burning Heaven” details Minick’s feelings on a wide variety of subjects, from life growing up on a farm in rural Pennsylvania to love.
The title of the book, Minick said, comes from an experience he had as a teenager, captured in the poem “Dehorning,” where he had to help remove horns from calves.
“We’re making them into angels,” Minick recalled one of his uncles telling him as he inhaled the acrid smell produced by the chore. “We don’t want them to be devils.”
Despite the deeply personal nature of his poetry, Minick said he still intentionally tries to connect with his readers.
“I try to make it accessible,” he said.
Both of Minick’s books are available at http://www.amazon.com and other online bookstores.
More information about “Her Secret Song” can be found at the publisher’s Web site, http://www.motesbooks.com.
Similarly, additional information about “Burning Heaven” is available at http://www.windpub.com.
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .