NOW ~ Poems by Thomas Simmons

NOW ~ POEMS BY THOMAS SIMMONS

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SAINT JULIAN PRESS is excited to announce the release of NOW, a new book of poems by Thomas Simmons. Thomas served as an associate professor for the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, and for over two decades in the Department of English at the University of Iowa.   

He lives close to Iowa City, among four of his six children, who range in age from two to 30. His published works of nonfiction and scholarship include The Unseen Shore: Memories of a Christian Science Childhood (1992); A Season in the Air: One Man’s Adventures in Flying (1993); Erotic Reckonings: Mastery and Apprenticeship in the Work of Poets and Lovers (1994); Ghost Man: Reflections on Evolution, Love, and Loss (2001); The Burning Child: Essays on Mental Health and Illness (2005); Imperial Affliction: Eighteenth-Century British Poets and Their Twentieth- Century Lives (2010); and Poets’ First and Last Books in Dialogue (2012). 


NOW 
Poems by 
Thomas Simmons 


THE BODY AT REST 


In the evening we are all of us our children, 
Frightened of unconsciousness, the story's end. 


This is the end of the story. Rest now.
We are inside human history, that infinitesimal 


Shaft of light not yet past the Milky Way.
Forget the all in motion, forget that what we see 


Shifts because we see it. Past Newton, who dreamed 
Einstein but, too horrified at what he saw, dreamed 


Aristotle in return, who liked things as they stayed.
The igneous rock outside his door could not be assayed


Except in its native stillness. Our stillness now.
We have fallen a long way, but see, now, how 


Our mutual light recedes as our diminished sun 
Appears to set. Some days it is enough to have done 


Simply what we have done, and in our night 
Begin to dream our journey past the speed of light. 


SADNESS


It is one thing to observe the interstellar dark.
It is another thing entirely not to be observed by it, 
To deduce its indifference to our being, to being— 
You may say: “We make our own meaning.”
I have said it. But if I answer, “Nevertheless”
“What I most want is someone here when I awake,” 
You may well laugh at the non-sequitur, 
Wondering if I am serious or, well, merely
Morose. Merely. As if sadness did not
Soar out, impervious to gravity, well
Into interstellar space, only to find
That it had outstripped itself,
That it was now merely sadness
Without a context, without a name. 


WHAT WAS THERE 


And when it was done,
He set it, just there, on the table, 
Between the two kerosene lamps. 
Invisible, indivisible, it was his heart 
Returned to its primal state. 


Only he could see it. People
Came and went. He lit the lamps
Each night for its sake. No matter 
Whether the people knew, whether 
The poem knew. Poems know nothing. 


They point toward things—most of them, 
Most times, within the realm of the visible, 
Or something just adjacent, love or the planet 
On the table. This, this was wholly other.
He had made it to defy his life’s labour. 








Thomas Simmons © 2016
Saint Julian Press, Inc.


  

NOW – Press Release