Renowned poet Paul Zimmer will read at Writers in the Library, 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 16, in Hodges Library auditorium.
Zimmer worked for 45 years in book publishing and sales, heading university presses at Georgia, Iowa, and Pittsburgh. After working hours, he still found time to write a significant body of poetry. The author of more than a dozen poetry collections, Zimmer has also garnered many honors and grants including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, inclusion in the National Poetry Series (“The Great Bird of Love”), the Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters and four Pushcart Prizes. Hayden Carruth once called Zimmer “the most consistently entertaining poet of the past 20 years.”
Recent books by Zimmer include Crossing to Sunlight Revisited: New and Selected Poems and two memoirs, Trains in the Distance and After the Fire: A Writer Finds His Place. After the Fire chronicles, among other subjects, Zimmer’s love of jazz and baseball, observing atomic tests during his military service in Nevada, and retirement to his isolated home on 100 acres in rural Wisconsin.
The Writers in the Library series is sponsored by the UT Libraries and the Creative Writing Program of the UT English Department. For further information, please contact Jo Anne Deeken at 974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu, or Kali Meister at meisterkali@gmail.com.