Front cover image for After the fire : a writer finds his place

After the fire : a writer finds his place

"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 Canton, Ohio, and his days as a soldier during atomic tests in the Nevada desert, to his many years as a writer and publisher, and the rural tranquillity of his present life. Zimmer juxtaposes timeless rustic subjects with flashbacks to key moments: his first and only boxing match, 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 consideration of the ways that nature provides deep meaning and solace, and of the importance of finding the right place."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2002
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ©2002
Biographies
xxvii, 229 pages ; 23 cm
9780816640195, 081664019X
48399318
Acknowledgmentsxi
Prologue: Finding Homexiii
Strangers in Friendly Places
3(25)
Trees
28(7)
Sky
35(5)
Poetry
40(4)
Neighbors
44(5)
Birds
49(6)
Making Poetry
55(12)
Library
67(5)
Insects and Arachnids
72(4)
Grasses, Fruits, Plants
76(4)
Gardening
80(7)
Coyotes, Foxes, Wolves
87(3)
Taking a Punch
90(17)
Deer
107(2)
The Hunt
109(5)
The Blind World
114(20)
Trouble
134(5)
Dogs
139(5)
Old Jazz
144(2)
Young Jazz
146(21)
Winter
167(5)
The Condition of My Faith
172(17)
Spring
189(4)
Summer
193(4)
The Catcher
197(21)
Dairy Days
218(9)
Autumn
227