by
Jim Simmerman
American Poets Continuum Series
In
his fifth full-length collection, Jim Simmerman creates an elegy-in-verse
with technical mastery, wit and passion. American Children's
thematic pillars are bridged by three sequences: one of free verse
poems; another in traditional and not-so-traditional forms; a
third of "miniatures" -- brief verse snapshots, arranged
in pairs and processions. By turns lyric, narrative, and
meditative, the poems in this collection range in tone from the
formal tribute of eulogy to the keening and cut-up of wake.
"Simmerman has always had a curious, charming and self-conscious
relationship with his reader. But it is Simmerman's craftiness
in form and language that most distinguishes his work. Most
winning is that Simmerman's poems resound with the true remorse
and grief of living, with the wonders to be discovered in the
mundane, and with the hard-won insight that "there's always
something/left to give so long as you give a damn at all."
-- Alison Hawthorne Deming
Wherever
She Goes
I can
still hear the lights going out
in
your voice, can still feel the clutch
of
us slipping.... I've been tripping
lately
maybe too much on the wrong
turns
we make nearly daily and mainly
how
easy to get so stuck on some one
- way
street we never arrive at where
we
meant to go. So, here's the thing:
If
I tattoo a ring of Celtic knots
to
the third finger of my left hand
(do
I linger at all in the wings
of
your thoughts?), would you care?
If
I ride a cockhorse to Banbury Cross
(it's
a long, long ride), are you there?
Available editions:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paperback
ISBN: 1-929918-64-X
Price: $14.95
Publishing Date: May 2005
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BOA Editions,
Ltd. would like to thank the following generous Publishing Partners
for their support of American Children:
Alan
& Nancy Cameros
Burch
& Louise Craig
Suzanne
& Peter Durant
Dr.
Henry & Beverly French
Dane
& Judy Gordon
Kip
& Deb Hale
Peter
& Rob in Hursh
Robert
& Willy Hursh
Earl
Kage
X.J.
Kennedy
Archie
& Pat Kutz
Rosemary
& Lew Lloyd
Rob
ert & Francie Marx
Dan
Meyers
Boo
Poulin
Deborah
Ronnen
Paul
and Andrea Rubery
David
W. Ryon
Thomas
R. Ward
Pat
& Michael Wilder
