After The Fire: A Writer Finds His Place

by Paul Zimmer

Overview

Looking back at a lifetime of rich experience from Wisconsin’s driftless hills

We all dream of finding the place we can be most ourselves, the landscape that seems to have been crafted just for us. The poet Paul Zimmer has found his: a farm in the driftless hills of southwestern Wisconsin, a region of rolling land and crooked rivers, "driftless" because here the great glaciers of the Patrician ice sheet split widely, leaving behind a heart-shaped area untouched by crushing ice. After the Fire is the story of Zimmer’s journey from his boyhood in the factory town of Canton, Ohio, and his days as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert, to his many years in the book business as a writer and publisher, and the rural tranquillity of his present life.

Zimmer juxtaposes timeless rustic subjects (tending the land, country people and their ways, the ever-changing beauty of his natural surroundings) with flashbacks to key moments: his first and only boxing match, hearing Count Basie play and discovering his lifelong love of jazz, his return to the France of his ancestors, his painful departure from the publishing world after forty years. These stories are full of humor and pathos, keen insights and poignant meditations, but the real center of the book is the abiding beauty of the driftless hills, the silence and peace that is the source of and reward for Zimmer’s hard-won wisdom. Above all, it is a meditation on the ways that nature provides deep meaning and solace, and a consideration of the importance of finding the right place.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816640195
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	04/18/2002
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Zimmer is a much honored and widely published poet and essayist, the author of eight volumes of poetry. His work has received awards from the American Institute of Arts and Letters and has been selected for the National Poetry Series. He was a finalist in the essay category for the 1998 National Magazine Award, and for the past two years his writings have been Notable Essays in the Best American Essays series. He lives on a farm near Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, and spends part of each year in the south of France.

Editorial Reviews

This thoughtful rumination on the important things in life will greatly interest Zimmer's readers. Of primary importance to Zimmer (Crossing to Sunlight), now in his retirement, is where he lives an isolated house located on 100 acres of land in Wisconsin that he shares with his wife, Suzanne. Although the couple, who have been together for 44 years, had lived in many places while they raised their children, it is in this current home that Zimmer, no longer limited to free moments after working full-time, has found peace and time to work on his poems. However, in order to fit into this rural Midwestern community, Zimmer has allowed several neighbors to hunt on his land on opening day in November, despite his abhorrence of the sport. The Zimmers also spend part of each year in southern France, an area that he enjoys both for its beauty and heretical history. In this gently written, enjoyable memoir, Zimmer reflects on the animals that share his space, including coyotes and the dogs he has owned that helped him through the very worst patches of life. In other chapters, he describes his lifelong love affairs with jazz and baseball, as well as the alienation he feels from organized religion. (May) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Poet and essayist Zimmer opens his memoir with a quote from Walt Whitman: "After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear what remains?" Like Whitman, Zimmer finds his answer in the permanence and beauty of nature. He and his wife bought a home and 100 acres of land in the "driftless hills" of southwestern Wisconsin, and this book serves as a hymn to that "last, peaceful crowning place." Certain chapters of the book push more directly into memoir, with flashbacks to Zimmer's years as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert in the 1950s, his ecstatic discovery of poetry and jazz, and his love of baseball, particularly the catcher's position. The book might best be described as nature writing dotted with personal memoir; it can be slow going at times, meditative and almost too quiet, but it provides a lovely sense of the quiet nobility of rural life. For regional collections. Amy Strong, South Portland, ME Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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