Our next reading will be Wednesday night, the Modern
Language auditorium, visiting poet Linda Pastan.
I can't believe I came over here and forgot
to bring a stack of brochures.
But I'm sure that you all have them anyway.
It's a pleasure to welcome Paul Zimmer back to our campus.
He was here in February of 1971, certainly time
to have him back.
His books of poetry are the Ribs of Death,
the Republic of Many Voices, the Zimmer Poems, With Wanda:
Town and Country Poems, A Seed on the Wind,
and most recently, The Ancient Wars.
His selected and new poems called
Family Poems will be released from the University
of Pittsburgh this year.
He's currently the director of the University of Georgia Press
in Athens, Georgia.
It's a great pleasure to welcome Paul Zimmer.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much.
I figure that it was 12 years ago.
And the place still looks very much the same,
and 12 years from now when I come again,
they can give me tenure.
I thank you very much for coming on in a late afternoon.
It's very, very nice of you to do that.
I want to begin with a poem about when I was a young man.
Can you all hear me?
When I was a young man, it was a curious time in America,
maybe in some ways similar to the time
we're going through now.
Many people call them the Eisenhower years.
And it was a kind of era of not much
was happening in the world.
It was a difficult time, I think, to be a young man.
I had a difficult time being a young person as it was.
And then to exist in that vacuum,
some days I didn't even know my own name, I don't think.
I had a difficult time in school and this poem reflects that.
And it's also about some years that I worked for my father.
A year that I spent working for my father, which
was one of the worst years of my life also.
So the poem was called the "Eisenhower years."
Flunked out and laid off, Zimmer works for his father
at Zimmer Shoes for Women.
The feet of old women awaken from dreams.
They groan and rub their hacked up corns together.
At last they stand and walk in agony downtown to Zimmer's
fitting stool, where he talks to the feet,
reassures them with blissful ties in medium heels.
Home from work, he checks the mail for greetings
from his draft board.
After supper, he listens to Brubeck,
lays out with a tumbler of Thunderbird, cigarettes,
and From Here to Eternity.
That evening, he goes out to the bars,
drinks three pitchers of straws, ends
up in the wee hours leaning on a lamppost.
His tie loosened, fedora pushed back
on his head, a Chesterfield stuck to his lips.
All of complacent America spreads around him
in the night.
Nothing is moving in this void.
Only the feet of old women twitching and shuffling
in pain.
Zimmer sighs and takes a drag, exhales through his nostrils.
He knows nothing and feels little.
He has never been anywhere and fears where he is growing.
This is a kind of another poem about that time.
Also, it's a crazy poem.
It's called "The Curse of the Frogs."
"The Curse of the Frogs."
Once in Louisville, on pass from basic training,
Zimmer drank so much beer he got hiccups.
He spilled on until he could not speak, could not
remember name, rank, or serial number,
and staggered from his stool out to the night to somewhere,
find a room, and fall to bed.
All night his bladder stretched and ached.
He dreamed of those frogs they used to catch beside the creek.
How Barney would turn them over to spread their legs apart,
and slip a reed up through the anus,
and then slowly blow the creatures up like green
balloons to bob and turn upon the foam.
All night, Zimmer watched them float in agony.
Their small eyes bulging with shock and revenge.
Only their mouths moved slightly.
If he could now, Zimmer would swagger into the palms
again to drink straw, draft with his buddies,
sharing all the flat footed artless talk,
the smoky drift of their potentiality,
round after round when anything seemed possible.
But then he remembers the night Barney and Gus lurched out
to the pickup and roared off for Wanda's, in smoke and cinders,
forgetting the curve just past the Ohio station.
Gus went through the windshield and broke against an Elm stump.
Barney was crushed between the steering post and truck bed.
The very next month, Zimmer was drafted.
Well, that introduces a character named Wanda,
that I made up.
And I made a book about her.
She represents every woman for me,
I guess she is based on all the women that I've known,
and some of the women that I'd wish that I'd known.
In this book, is called With Wanda: Town and Country Poems.
And it's divided into two parts.
In the first part, they're rural poems.
And they're usually spoken by men about Wanda.
And the second part is urban poems.
And the poems have city imagery in them.
I thought I would read a few of the Wanda poems to you.
This one is called "Wanda Being Beautiful."
I've never been physically beautiful.
And I've often wondered what it would be like.
It must be a real problem, certainly a problem
I've never had.
Well, the poem is called "Wanda Being Beautiful."
To be beautiful is to somehow keep
a dozen fires burning at night, to know
that all eyes shining out of the trees are afraid of you.
It is to know that every crackle of a twig, every footfall
is a threat.
The desire is greatest from a distance.
To be beautiful is to stay on the move through every season,
to watch sharply as you take what you want.
But mostly it is knowing how to choose dry wood, how to bank
your fires against cold.
This is a poem about a guy named Rollo that I made up.
And it's a Wanda poem also.
Rollo's poems always take place around water.
And he has water imagery, frequently,
almost always in his poems.
It's called "Rollo's Miracle."
I'm going to affect my country accent which
is Western Pennsylvania, cum Ohio, cum California, cum
Georgia.
But it's my country accent, folks.
This is called "Rollo's Miracle."
Rollo says, I can bring down rain.
And we say bull crap and slug him on his bicep.
But he says, underwear ain't fit to wear.
And lightning cracks its knuckles.
Thunder pulls the plug out.
Fish could swim in what comes down.
When it lets up we say to Rollo, aw bullcrap, buddy.
You got lucky.
But Wanda is giving Rollo the eye.
Underwear ain't fit to wear, he chants again.
And the clouds uncork.
The river starts to rise.
Wanda takes Rollo by the arm.
And they go off to meet the rainbow.
And we stand there with the cold rain, sighing in our socks.
Cecil says, underwear ain't fit to wear.
Underwear ain't fit to wear, shouts Zimmer.
Lester whispers, underwear ain't fit to wear.
But that sun shines on and on, bright as a fresh dropped egg.
I love jazz.
And I resisted making jazz poems,
because I don't really like poems about other art forms.
I don't like poems about paintings.
I don't like poems about music, really.
But I've always felt very poetic when I've listened to jazz.
So I waited many years to make a jazz poem.
And I made it right.
And this one is called the-- it's a Wanda poem also.
It's called "Zimmer's Last Gig."
Listening to hard bop, I stayed up all night
just like good times.
I broke the old waxes after I'd played them.
Out of nowhere Mohawk, Star Eyes, Salt Peanuts,
Confirmation, one by one, Bird being Bud, Brut, Prez.
All dead, all dead anyway, as clay around my feet
Years ago, I wanted to take Wanda to Birdland, certain
that the music would make her desire me.
Then after a few sets she would give
in to rhythm and sophistication.
And then we could slip off into the wee hours with gin,
chase, and maryjane, check into a downtown pad
and do some fancy jitterbugging between the lilywhites.
But Wanda was no quail.
Bud could have passed out over the keys.
Bird could have shot up right on stage.
Wanda would have missed the legends.
The band could have riffed all night right by her ear.
She never would have bounced.
I'll read a couple more Wanda poems.
This one is by a guy named Gus that I made up.
And he's an urban man.
And I used to live in Pittsburgh.
I lived there for many years.
And so you recognize some Pittsburgh imagery in the poem
too.
"Gus in the Streets."
On hot nights, the whole city shares industry.
The air tastes of tarnished coins,
cinders sparkle through the lamplight
and settle in the cups of my molars.
Even the television grits behind my eyes.
So I walk out into the smutty streets,
past alleys of old bones, and glass,
past the marquees of skin shows, into the neighborhood of rooms.
Here where air bites hardest into my flesh,
I imagine that Wanda calls me from a doorway, her eyes
smoldering with consent.
And later, upstairs with an old whore,
and tasting ashes again, I wonder
why Wanda never kept promises.
Why her face, so full of cozy signals,
had never really intended all the things I thought it meant.
I'll read one more.
I should explain this one.
And I usually read this one--
Arizona is a community of scholars.
And so I always like to read this, this one
especially because it's not my poem.
A number of years ago, well, not so long,
about four or five years ago.
I was in London.
And I was shopping at some of the old bookstores on Charing
Cross Road.
And I was in the basement of this one dusty old
venerable place and poking around.
And suddenly, it was very dim there, a man came up beside me.
Gray haired man with a beard.
And he's-- put something in my hand.
And he said, I should buy this.
And so I looked at it, and it was an ornately carved
wooden box.
I looked around for him again.
I couldn't find him.
So I went upstairs, saw the guy who was handling the till.
And I said, I found this in the basement, is it for sale?
And he said, yes.
And we talked about a price.
And we arrived at one that I thought was fair.
And I paid him.
And took it off to my hotel room and borrowed
one of my wife's Bobby pins, and picked the lock, opened it up.
And inside were all of these pieces of very old paper,
quite old crumbling brown paper.
And in various hands, were written poems.
And of course, I was absolutely fascinated by this.
So I began to read.
And to my great amazement I discovered
that they were Wanda poems.
So I thought I would read one of them to you.
This is one of the poems that is not my work.
One of the poems that I found in the box this
is called "Robyn Hode and Maid Wanda."
In somer when the shawes be sheyne,
and wodes do sprytly ryng, hit is so mery in the leves
to here the briddis syng.
A yeman lyved amydst these trees by name of Robyn Hode, a prode,
and mery outlaw he, yet ful of certaine gude.
One day he boed an arow depe into a grene wode tree.
But Robyn nere fell don when the swete barke cryde, ah me!
Fore in the holowe of the tree, a wench hae hidde herself.
The yeman to ploke his arow back wode hae gie al his pelf.
Robyn toke herr up from thair and bonde her wunde sae sorre.
He loked upon her wyth gladde eye for she was fare and morre.
Now in the grene wode do they lyve with lytle Johnn,
Scarloke, and Monke.
Mony a wondrous tyme hae they hadde, ful
mony more shaftes hae been sonke.
OK, that's enough Wanda poems.
This is a poem called "The History of Bears."
The bear came out of night, shambling and humming
to itself.
Until it smelled man in the cave.
The hair on its back stood up.
It groaned and tossed its head.
Bear looked into the cave and saw its images
on walls and ceiling.
Saw Zimmer cowering in the corner.
Bear sniffed again and went away.
Zimmer feared the bear like God.
He watched until it gave in to its years, then cut it open,
ate the sacred marrow from its bones, the brain
from its ponderous skull, trying to learn the love of bear.
The bear lopes in the morning, its fur
pungent and steaming, its drool spattering the frost.
Last night, the noise of Zimmer's dogs
ripped through its uneasy sleep.
Today it will retreat once more over
the crumbled primal asphalt past the gray broken shanties
and the tangles of old copper wire.
The bear smells ancient stories under the turf, scattered bones
and teeth of terrible encounters.
He rips his claws down the maple bark
and laps at the redolent syrup.
He hears how the wind desires the trees, how
storms make them bow and dip their canopies
in strange light.
He drinks cold sludge from the creek and moves on.
Zimmer loves what the bear has lost.
Sun through new leaves, and dazzle of fish,
and thrashing currents, berries on the logging roads,
business in broken elms.
And long dreams under the snow.
Well, I mentioned my dogs.
So I'll read a poem about them.
I have crazy dogs.
Like most people that have dogs, I'm a slave to them.
I really questioned whether I'm the master at all.
I debated whether to call this the hounds of the Zimmerville,
but instead I call it "The Dogs of Zimmer."
The tether of the eons holds them.
There is order and habit in their love.
But sometimes, they turn on each other in frustration
snarling and flashing teeth.
On moonlit nights, they grow restless hearing things that
they cannot see.
They chew on pillows, wet the rugs.
A busy man should have perfect dogs.
But Zimmer's dogs go flick, flick, flick,
moaning and thumping the floorboards.
They tongue his hand in the night
and make him get up to pee.
Sometimes when he unchains them, they whisk away
before he can call them back.
He does not know where they go or what they do.
He spends hours wistfully calling them.
He imagines how they snuffle postholes, raise
their dingy hinders to great stones or tunnel
into ancient graves.
But always, when it seems worst that they have gone into woods,
joining packs to overrun the suburbs,
it's flick, flick, flick outside his windows.
And Zimmer opens to see them smiling.
The wild lights in their eyes grown dim.
They bang the doorway with their tails.
Cute little devils.
The guy has been in my poems.
He's been my adversary, almost from the very first time
I started writing poems.
His name is Imbellis.
And I'm always running into him and having
a lot of trouble with him.
And so this is a poem called "The Ancient Wars."
And it's in the form of an exchange
that I have with Imbellis, of letters.
The first part of the poem is, I'm
writing a letter to Imbellis.
And in the second part of the poem,
he is responding to me in a letter.
And the poem is called "The Ancient Wars."
Dear Imbellis, when I think of the old days,
I start to bleed again recalling my terrified exits, the alleys
and swamps I hid in, your fist exploding in my face
and the light fog of concussions.
I wonder, old bull, old turk, old hammer,
if we passed each other on the street,
would your anger spill out again over your eye rooms,
would your ears redden like a rooster's wattle?
Would you knock my bridge back down my throat
and beat my glasses back into my dim eyes?
I like to think that by now you have relented,
that some woman or work has doused your fires.
That if we met again, we would slap each other on the back
and laugh about the ancient wars.
Imbellis, old bravo, super pug, could we be friends now?
Would you let me forgive you?
Peace, Zimmer.
And this is Imbellis's response.
Dear Zimmer, remember how you loved the Friday night fights?
That was always you and me in the ring circling,
jabbing, throwing classic combinations
until the abrupt explosion.
My fist crashing down like boulders and your body
suddenly limp.
You collapsing as a hammered cow into your own spit and blood,
as the crowd came to its feet growling and hooting.
You on the canvas flapping and quaking.
You crawling up the ropes to your feet.
And me sledging you down again.
And you screaming at the television.
Stop it.
Stop it, remember?
Zimmer, start sweating again.
I am waiting for you still, maybe around the next corner.
One day you'll come blundering into my sights again.
And when you do, I'll clean your clock but good,
shred your cheeks, and roll your bloody teeth, crunch your jaws,
and punch your dim lights out forever.
Yours, Imbellis.
Son of a bitch.
I've only written one other jazz poem.
And I will never write another one, my solemn vow.
But this is another one where I did it right.
One of the great heroes of my youth, or of my life
is Duke Ellington.
I think he was an American natural resource, and probably
one of our two, three great geniuses.
And so this is a poem that I made.
It's called "The Duke Ellington Dream."
"The Duke Ellington Dream."
Of course, Zimmer was late for the gig.
Duke was pissed and growling at the piano.
But Jeep, Brute, Rex, Cat, and Cootie
all moved down on the chairs as Zimmer walked in
with his tenor.
Everyone knew that the boss had arrived.
And Duke slammed out the downbeat for Caravan.
And Zimmer stood up to take his solo.
The whole joint suddenly started jiving.
Chicks came up by the bandstand to hang their lovelies
over the rail.
And Duke was sweating, but wouldn't smile through chorus,
after chorus, after chorus.
It was the same with Satin Doll, Do Nothing Till You
Hear From Me, Warm Valley, In A Sentimental Mood.
Zimmer blew them so they would stay played.
And after the final set, he packed his horn
and was heading out when Duke came up and collared him.
Zimmer, he said, you most astonishing ofay.
You have shat upon my charts, but I love you madly.
This is a poem about a reoccurring dream
that I had for many years.
I hate it when a poet says, hey, I'm dreaming.
This is a dream.
A poet should always be dreaming,
you shouldn't have to say that.
But anyway, I'm saying it to you.
I had this dream for many years.
And then I finally decided to make this poem.
And after I made it, I never had the dream again.
And I'm not sure the poem was worth it.
But here it is.
It's called "The Great House."
Over and over it happens.
My wife and I are out walking.
We come to a great stone house built into a hillside.
We are young again.
All things seem possible on this perfect day.
Suddenly, we know that the house is ours.
We enter, enjoy, exulting in what we own.
Circular staircases, niches, ballrooms, a dozen rooms
full of leather bound books, lace curtains, puppet theaters,
daguerreotypes, chests full of doilies and ancient manuscript,
hand printing presses, bowls of potpourri.
There are antique cribs, rocking chairs, a canopy bed.
We could start our lives again.
All windows swing open to singing
birds and trees through which we see a whitewashed sunlit city.
At night, after a lingering dinner
and wine, lieder and string quartets by candle glow,
we ascend the tower, open the skylight,
and turn the huge reflector into position.
The shimmer that we see has traveled for eons.
Under the circling stars, the birds
against the moon with the vast rooms breathing beneath us,
we know that the only sadness in the world
will be to leave this house.
I love trees.
And I want to make a poem about them.
This is a much better poem than Joyce Kilmer's poem.
At least I can tell you that.
It's called "A Final Affection."
I love the accomplishments of trees.
How they try to restrain great storms
and pacify the very worms that eat them.
Even their deaths seem to be considered.
I fear for trees, loving them so much.
I am nervous about each scar on bark, each leaf that browns.
I want to lie in their crotches and sigh
the whisper of sun and rains to come.
And sometimes on summer evenings,
I step out of my house to look at trees,
propping darkness up to the silence.
When I die, I want to plant up through those trunks,
so slowly, I will see each rib of bark,
each whorl up through the canopy, the subtle veins
and lobes touching me with final affection.
Then to hover above and look down
one last time on the rich upliftings,
the circle that loves the sun and moon, to see at last
what held the darkness up.
I've been in love for 25 years.
And I've always, because I resist romantic imagery,
I've held off making love poems.
But then I wanted to make a love poem.
And I decided, well, if I'm going to make one,
it's going to be an unusual one.
Because I just don't care to spout romanticism.
So I made this poem.
It's for my wife, Suzanne.
And it's called "An Enzyme Poem for Suzanne."
Most of you know what enzymes are.
They are the catalysts that make fruit juices ferment.
So this is called "An Enzyme Poem for Suzanne."
What a hulking bore it must be for you.
I slog along, ignoring you like my heartbeat.
I gurgle and mold like an old fruit seller.
And then suddenly, you'll walk through a door
and foam me up like ancient cider in heat.
And then I'll fall all about you, blathering with lost time,
making you numb with words, wanting to mix our molecules,
trying to tell you of weeks in 15 minutes.
And sometimes you must wonder, what the hell
it is with Zimmer.
And this is to tell you that you are my enzymes, my yeast,
all the things that make my cork go pop.
One of my favorite--
I return a lot to different poets
to gain strength when I'm not writing well or doing well,
when I'm too busy to do much else.
So one of the poets that I always go back to is Rilke.
And I have gained strength from reading him, and energy.
And I was thinking about how--
do we know Elegies?
He said that he was--
I think he was in a room in a castle.
But anyway the angels would come in-- angels
would come into his room and be there
when he worked on the poems.
And I was thinking to myself, hells,
thinking the conditions that I make my poems under,
I think hells--
angels are never going to come to you.
They couldn't get past my secretary.
So I made this poem in which I brought the angels down
for myself.
It's called "When Angels Came to Zimmer."
One morning a great gaggle slid down through holes in clouds,
twirling like maple seeds, through the trees
to the windows screen.
Fervent as new tussock moths, they flapped and dashed
themselves, smearing their heavenly dust,
until Zimmer, in pity and alarm, opened
to let them into his study.
They flew in with smiles and sighs,
making him bashful as if a dozen gorgeous chorus girls had
suddenly pranced into the room.
They perched on bookshelves, cigar stubs, and beer cans.
One even tried to sit on Zimmer's lap.
All day, they danced the Lindy.
And some, not knowing better, dabbled their darling toes
in the toilet bowl.
They sang chorus after chorus of Stardust and Moonlight
in Vermont, constantly touching and stroking Zimmer.
And then at day's end, as if someone had rung a bell,
they stood to sing a final chorus of Deep Purple.
With a whoosh of air and expensive perfume,
they fluttered from the room and ascended.
Zimmer stepped out to watch them rise
and flapped his dirty hanky at the stars.
This is a poem that I didn't write also.
Someone, an old man came up.
I was reading in New England at Middlebury,
about several years ago.
And this old white-haired man came up
and handed me this poem.
It's called "The Death of the Hired Zimmer."
She sat watching the moth at the candle, waiting for Eli.
When he came home, she ran to tell him, Zimmer is back.
I saw him step out of the woods at noon, and look both ways,
and head for our place.
What can we do?
Be calm, Eli said.
Was he alone?
Only his shadow, a bulge in his pocket.
Eli, be kind, she said, and took the market things
from his arms.
Don't laugh at him.
He has a plan.
I'll go and see him now, he said.
You sit and watch the moon slide through that patch of clouds.
He went, came back too soon, it seemed to her.
Dead?
she questioned as he sat down, drunk was all he answered.
Bless you.
I'll read just a few more, a couple more.
It's warm and hard work listening to poems too.
So this is a poem--
I do a lot of this.
In fact, it's a poem about work.
And I work a lot.
I spend my life working.
Well, most of us do of course.
And I have a desk in an office and a 15 people working for me.
Sometimes I think my life is as much a referee, being
a referee as anything else.
And I write poems on my lunch hours.
And very early before I catch the bus to work,
I get up and work with my poems.
And so it's my life.
I think about work all the time and do it.
And so I decided I'd make a poem about it.
It's called "Work."
To have done it 30 years without question.
Yet I tell myself, I am grateful for all work.
At noon, in my air conditioned office
with a sandwich and a poem, I try to recollect nature.
But a clerk comes in with papers to be signed.
I tell myself the disruption does not matter.
It is all work, computer runs, contracts, invoices, poems,
the same as breaking shells, hunting woods, making pots,
or gathering grain.
Jazzmen even refer to sex as work.
Some primitive people believe that death is work.
When my wife asks what I am doing,
I always answer, I am working, working, working.
Now I will spend the rest of my life trying for perfect work.
A work as rare as Aurora borealis,
so fine it will make all other work
seem true, that will last as long as words will last.
At home in my room, I mumble to myself over my poems.
Over supper, I talk to myself.
As I carpenter, or paint, or carry the groceries
up the steps, I am speaking words to myself.
What are you doing?
my children ask.
I am working, working, working.
This should be the last poem.
This is a nice way to say goodbye to you.
It's called "Zimmer Imagines Heaven."
I sit with Joseph Conrad in Monet's garden.
We are listening to Yeats chant his poems.
A breeze stirs through Thomas Hardy's mustache.
John Skelton has gone to the house for beer.
Wanda Landowska lightly fingers a clavichord.
Along the spruce tree walk, Roberto Clemente and Thurman
Munson whistle the baseball back and forth.
Mozart chats with Ellington in the roses.
Monet smokes and dabs his canvas in the sun.
Brueghel and Turner set easels behind the wisteria.
The band is warming up in the big studio, Bean, Brute, Bird,
and Serge on saxes, Kai, Bill Harris, Lawrence Brown,
trombones, Little Jazz, Clifford, Fats on trumpet,
Klook plays drums, Mingus bass, Bud the piano.
Later, Madam Schumann Heink will sing Schubert.
The monks of Benedictine Abby will chant.
There will be more poems from Emily Dickinson, James Wright,
John Clare, Walt Whitman, Richard Hugo.
Shakespeare rehearses players for King Lear.
At dusk, Alice Toklas brings out platters
of sweet breads, salad livoniere, and a tureen
of gaspacho of Malaga.
After the meal, Brahms passes fine cigars.
God comes then, radiant with the bottle of cognac,
she pours generously into the snifters.
I tell her, I have begun to learn what heaven is about.
And she wants to hear.
It is, I say, being thankful for eternity.
Her smile is the best part of the day.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]