Our first reader tonight is Jim Simmerman,
author of several collections of poetry, including Home,
Once Out of Nature, Moon, Go Away, I Don't Love You No More,
Kingdom Come, and the forthcoming American Children.
Recipient of fellowships from the Arizona Commission
on the Arts, Bread Loaf and Port Townsend Writers Conferences,
Fine Arts Work Center, Hawthornden Castle
International Retreat for Writers,
and the National Endowment for the Arts,
Simmerman is currently Regents Professor of English
at Northern Arizona University.
Simmerman's poems launch from every conceivable foundation
of poetic technique, fly through a variety
of atmospheric voices, poet, persona, lyric,
and hold in an orbit of tone that
is both humorous and tender.
Simmerman's poetic drive seems to come from an obsession
to get at what needs to be said through whatever mode
necessary to better understand the self.
In his forthcoming book, American Children,
the poet comes to the fore and, as in other
of Simmerman's books, renames the world
to get a better grip on its elusiveness.
As is shown from an excerpt taken from the poem "Road
Music," there could be a car and there
could be an elephant's graveyard of cars.
And you could go there any night with a hammer and a crowbar
and try to make them sing.
Or try to make a poem about a car,
and you could revise the poem.
Here the rhythms and turns of thought make our mind sing.
And what better way to re-understand
our world, our graveyard of cars,
than through the poet's song.
Please help me welcome Jim Simmerman.