Wednesday, December 6, 8:00 PM

"To my mind, Paul Zimmer has been the most consistently entertaining poet of the past 20 years."

—Hayden Carruth

Author of over a dozen poetry collections, Paul Zimmer ranks as one of America’s best known poets. He has received two NEA fellowships, the Helen Bullis Memorial Award, two Pushcart Prizes, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. In 1998, his book The Great Bird of Love was selected for the National Poetry Series. Also an editor, Zimmer has directed the university presses at Georgia, Iowa, and Pittsburgh, and was instrumental in the foundation of the Pitt Poetry Series (which has published most of the poets appearing in the Poetry-in-the-Round series in recent memory). His latest book is Crossing to Sunlight: Selected Poems, a substantial retrospective of his most famous work.

"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,

That 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."

—from Family Reunion: Selected and New Poems