Miller, you had a short visit with Hank Williams in the early fifties. Was it as ethereal as we might imagine?
MILLER: Just before Christmas in 1952, Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys gave a fine performance at McNeese State College [now University], where I had my first college teaching position. I was twenty-two. Lucinda would be born just over a month later. I stepped up onto the stage after the concert, when Hank and the band members were sitting on their stools, putting away their instruments. He ignored me for a few moments, then looked up and cocked his head in silence. I said, “Mr. Williams, my name is Williams, and I just wanted to tell you that you’re the best there is.” He put his guitar down and said, “Anywhere around here to get a drink?” I told him that just a few blocks away was an Esso station with a bar—gas stations often had booths back then—and I could take him there. He asked me to let his driver know where we’d be. When we got to the station, he sat facing the front door to watch for his Cadillac, and ordered a beer. I thought I ought to be drinking something a little more on a college-professor level, so I ordered a Scotch. He had a couple of beers while we had a good chat about country music, and women, and southern Louisiana. We nodded and smiled as we talked until he saw his driver pull up in the big car. I stayed in my seat as he stepped past me and paused to lean down and place a hand on my shoulder. “You ought to drink beer, Williams,” he said. “You got a beer-drinkin’ soul.” He died a few weeks later, on January 1, 1953, in the backseat of that car, on his way to a concert in Ohio. Lucinda will never forget that she was born to the name Williams, in that town, to be a writer and singer mostly of country music. And I’ll never forget my last taste of Scotch.

Lucinda, what bearing did that story have on the path you would take in life?
LUCINDA: Flannery O’Connor’s writing and Hank Williams’s music explain everything you need to know about me as an artist.

Miller, can you share an anecdote of Lucinda’s early writing, and if you talked about what made for good writing?
MILLER: From her high school days Lucinda has shown me her songs-on-the-way. I said nothing about the tunes but treated the words as if she were working on a poem. The most moving and enjoyable memory of this is of the day she showed me the last songs she’d finished for the [2007] album West. I said, “Honey, I don’t see a thing that I’d change in these lines.” She smiled, raised her hands, and said, “Does that mean I’ve graduated?”
LUCINDA: [With West] Dad said, “This is the closest thing to poetry you’ve ever written!” There were numerous advantages to growing up a poet’s daughter. I was allowed to listen in on poetry workshops, for example. I attended many, many poetry readings in Fayetteville, after which time, folks would often gather at our house for an evening of hanging out, talking, and exchanging ideas. At some point during the evening, Dad might be asked to read a poem. Another poet would follow with a poem. I would be asked to get my guitar out and play some songs. Over the years we have counted among our many friends John Clellon Holmes, Ellen Gilchrist, James Whitehead, Ernest Gaines, John Ciardi, Richard Yates, James Dickey, and others. This was my audience and these were my critics. Dad was my professor and I was his student. No formal education could have ever compared with the richness of this type of “homeschooling.”

Was it intimidating doing that at first?
LUCINDA: Never. Dad was my mentor, and I looked up to him as a creative soul mate. He was supportive and his suggestions brilliant, even if it only meant changing one word. For example, in my song “Drunken Angel,” there is the line “Blood spilled out from the hole in your heart.” Originally I had written, “Blood spilled out from a hole in your heart.” Dad suggested I use the in place of a. Beautiful!

Lucinda, what was the best piece of advice your father ever gave you?
LUCINDA: Dad stressed the importance of the economics of writing. Clean it up, edit, edit, revise! Above all, the listener should be able to understand the poem or the song, not be forced to unravel a complicated, self-indulgent puzzle. Offer your art up to the whole world, not just an elite few.

What advice did he give you on performing, if any?
LUCINDA: In my early years, there were two pieces of advice Dad gave me: Enunciate! And never apologize to the audience!

Miller, did she ever give you advice?
MILLER: Yes, but not about poetry. I think it’s a precious rarity that a man can honestly call his wife and his daughter his two best friends. That’s how I feel. Nobody in this trio leads anybody. We all know what we’re doing.