James K. Zimmerman. Little Miracles. Baltimore: Passager
Books, 2015. 82pgs, paper. $16. ISBN: 978-0615245720.
Jim Zimmerman’s handsomely
produced Little Miracles fulfills the
promise he makes at the opening of the book. He proposes that his poems, in
addressing the familiar elements of life such as distress, anxiety, death, and confusion
will nevertheless extoll the human ability to transcend loss and reach
tranquility. I was not disappointed. My reading was engaged, and I enjoyed the
poet’s lyricism, diction, and adeptness with figurative language. These are mature
and thoughtful poems that call on our senses of sight, touch, and sound. In
many respects, the apex of peacefulness is attained through participatory reading
of the poetry itself, by attending to this poet’s voice and insight. Zimmerman
is an accomplished, award-winning poet, with work appearing in such journals as
The Atlanta Review, The Bellingham Review, The MacGuffin, and Passager. My anticipation is that more poetry books are forthcoming
from Zimmerman.
Zimmerman’s are
beautifully-crafted poems of discovery, curiosity, and vision (e.g., “The Near
Edge”). Readers are welcomed to wander and explore with the intelligent and
allusive poet, and if necessary retreat to his safer zones. The poet is a
careful observer of the textures of human life and sensitive to the activities
of the natural world (“Four Days After the Solstice”). Zimmerman’s lines are
short, with sparse punctuation – the images are simple and direct. No
elaboration. Intense but not labored. Nevertheless, there is a high degree of
lyrical measure in these poems, and I often found myself re-reading them to
work on the vocal beat, the breathy, punctuated expression.
This musicality is not
surprising, since Zimmerman (now a clinical psychologist) was a songwriter as a
younger man. In fact, I could imagine some of these poems being sung and accompanied
by music. I believe it was Charles Bernstein who, when asked what poetry is,
replied, timing. Zimmerman certainly
has the right timing in his lines. While the themes and ideas are somber and
enduring, the structures are delicate, ethereal, and almost ephemeral, as if
thoughts overheard. Zimmerman reminds us that in spite of close relationships, our
lives sometimes indirectly participate in other lives. His poetry captures that
connection. Above all, we have a personable speaker (no Prufrock) whose
succinct style and compressed syntax encourage intimacy, a pairing with someone
in spite of distance (“Synchronicity”).
Many subjects touch on aging,
life’s passages, and handling physical change, such as forgetfulness and the
inability to metaphorically sing (“Nice Weather,” “Dry Season”). Some poems
deal with loss and the absence of people or pets, separation from others (“As
If”). There are attempts to make contact with another who is gone through “the
braille of feeling” (“Possession”). Some of the poems deal with fleeting time,
the apparent thinness of life and experience, the ether of memory and the
difficulty to recall and grasp amid “quiet corners” – threads in a tapestry
(his image) (“Plato’s Nap in the Afternoon”). What does it mean to become old –
how does age (suddenly) happen? As in “Expectation,” the simple arrangements of
sensations, sounds, and rhythms combine to paint life’s picture of terrifying cruelties
and simple joys.
Here are some lines from “The
Dream About the Old Man” which, to some degree, capture Zimmerman’s elusive
style; that is, his profound ability to invite multiple readings with a
satisfactory cognitive ambiguity:
I could not say a word
would not appear in my
mind refused to reopen
As simple as this thought
appears, consider some of the possibilities. Speechless and without presence?
Speechless in his own mind? Invisible to himself? Speech would not be revealed
in his mind? Or he’s stuck in old age like an ancient larva caught in a cocoon
(my image) who will not reveal his feeling of agedness to others. Another poem
deals with our proclivity to calculate others’ ages, as if computing our own
demise (“Relativity”). We open and close our minds like journals, looking
backward and forward, often forgetting what we’ve jotted down years ago. That
is precisely why we need a poet like Jim Zimmerman who has the ability to
capture concrete experience in seeming abstraction.
One of my favorite poems
(hard to choose among so many good ones) would be “Carving Avocado Pits.” The
essential passage of time resides in what we think, feel, sense – the cutting
of metaphorical figures through time and in mutable objects. There are faces
which seem to reflect one’s own growing age with their “quiet resignation” in
the creator’s hands. In some way, we are responsible for the creation of our
agedness. How are we going to shape it all? Among other instances in this book
(including the title poem), those are the little miracles: the brutality of
being taken down, yet with the hope
of some extra time to live. Indeed, in one poem, the speaker tries to
reincarnate but realizes that “birth alone would / never be enough” and so infiltrates
dreams of the living whose eventual death is gently “the brush on my cheek / of
a butterfly wing” (“Reincarnation #193”). This collection is important since it
reminds us – without clichés – how our lives can be filled with imaginative
miracles of our own making, “...when color is not yet” (“Awakening”).
These are serious poems,
but quite readable, crossing the space between ultimate demise and new
beginning. In dealing with isolation, desperation, longing, and hope, the poet conducts
attention to detail, measured cadences, and strikingly complex but relatable
imagery (e.g., “Gratitude Journal (Early December)”). There is much lively
action in this book in spite of dark overtones. The concluding image is of hope;
not the stillness of a room but the vitality of life where we are like ocean
waters active in curling motion (“We Are the Moment”).
- Gregory F. Tague,
Professor of English, St. Francis College, general editor, Bibliotekos
Copyright 2016 by Gregory F. Tague
