The Great
Bird of Love
by Paul Zimmer
This is Michael Carey
for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s
literary tradition. Today’s writer is Paul Zimmer who until his recent
retirement and move back to his farm was the Director of the University of Iowa
Press in Iowa City. Over the years Mr. Zimmer has published eleven books of
poetry, fitting his prolific scribbling in over lunch hours and between important
calls at the office. His poetry has ranged in topics to everything under the
sun but no matter how serious the poem, Mr. Zimmer rarely loses his self-deprecating
sense of humor. He is the only poet this reader can think of, able to fit the
word Zimmer into so many poems, making his very real self a fictitious character
and metaphor for many different things in his own imagination. In this poem,
"The Great Bird of Love" he does not fail us. In it he, or maybe his
poetry, becomes a bird and flies us on his wings to a land of tenderness, and
empathy and comfort. Rest assured the poem is not egotistical; it is about the
poet’s desire to lift and to be lifted and maybe poetry’s ability
to do just that.
The
Great Bird of Love
I want to become a great
night bird
Called the Zimmer, grow intricate gears
And tendons, brace my wings on updrafts,
Roll them down with a motion
That lifts me slowly into the stars
To fly above the troubles of the land.
When I soar the moon will shine past
My shoulder and slide through
Streams like a luminous fish.
I want my cry to be huge and melancholy,
The undefiled movement of my wings
To fold and unfold on rising gloom.
People will see my silhouette
from
Their windows and be comforted,
Knowing that, though oppressed,
They are cherished and watched over,
Can turn to kiss their children,
Tuck them into their beds and say:
Sleep tight.
No harm tonight
In starry skies
The Zimmer flies.
"The Great Bird
of Love" by Paul Zimmer from his book The Great Bird of Love published
by The University of Illinois Press also included in Crossing to Sunlight:
Selected Poems, 1965-1995 published by the University of Georgia Press.
For Voices from the
Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to
hear the music blooming all around you.
Biography
Paul Zimmer has published
eleven books of poetry including Family Reunion (U of Pittsburgh Press,
1985), which won an Award for Literature from the American Academy and Institute
of Arts and Letters; The Great Bird of Love (U. of Illinois Press, 1989);
which was selected by William Stafford for the National Poetry Series; Big
Blue Train (U. of Arkansas Press, 1993); and Crossing to Sunlight: Selected
Poems, 1965-1995, (U. of Georgia Press 1996).
He has read his poems at close to 300 colleges and poetry centers from coast-to-coast, has recorded his poems for the Library of Congress, and has been awarded Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1974 and 1981. He has received three Pushcart Prizes and his poems have been widely anthologized. He was the Associate Director of the University of Pittsburgh Press (1967-1978), Director of the University of Georgia Press (1978-1984), and, until his recent retirement, Director of the University of Iowa Press in Iowa City.