A collection of poems by Andover’s Laurie Zimmerman, since 1989 a member of the English department faculty at Proctor Academy, has been published by the Quercus Review Press, a California publishing house that is also honoring her as an Annual Book Award Winner in its poetry series.
Owl
The snow essential. Low
moan hung like a heard
moon across the flurrying
night. Light calling.
Body in its dress
of feathers and dust.
Hunched shape
shifting in the dark
fork of pine. Coo
and muffle, swivel-
fall flush. Bird
or snow or shadow.
Night’s mean, equation
of fall-rise, song-silence.
Song as betrayal. Snow
as plenitude. Or
the other way around.
From Bright Exit, reprinted with permission
Titled Bright Exit, the collection is described by fellow poet Gillian Wegener as ” a study in loss – loss of names, loss of identity, loss of relationships, loss of footing in the world…. But these losses do not drown the poet or the reader. Instead, Laurie’s poetry provides a tender and sure kind of lift out of what could be despair. Her words move the reader toward an understanding that even such a collection of losses can lead us toward a new sense of self and the world around us all.”
A second reviewer, poet Tony Hoagland, writes in an endorsement of the 83-page volume, “Honesty will never go out of fashion in poetry, especially as it is channeled through the clean lyrics of Laurie Zimmerman’s Bright Exit. These poems are so searching; they press against the veil of appearances, demanding to learn the truth of what’s really there – tender-hearted, and sensuous, sure, but equally smart and tough-minded; repeatedly, impressively refusing easy sentimentality. It’s that rigor of honesty that makes these poems the rich, reliable tutorial in soul-making that they are. I relish them.”
Bright Exit is Laurie’s first poetry collection. In its “Acknowledgments” section, she expresses gratitude for support received from Andover residents Ethney McMahon, Susan Norris, and Sarah Will, and from longtime friend and mentor Donald Hall of Wilmot. It can be purchased at the Morgan Hill Bookstore in New London or online at Amazon.com.
Laurie’s work has been featured in New Letters, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, Orion Magazine, Rattle, 5 AM, Oberon, Christian Century, Mid-American Review, Image, and elsewhere, and online at Verse Daily and the Academy of American Poets’ Web site, among others. Laurie is the recipient of the New Letters Award in Poetry and the River Styx International Poetry Contest prize.
Bright Exit, her first full-length collection, was a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and the Washington Prize, among others. Her poetry has been featured on New Hampshire Public Radio, and she was the recipient of a writing fellowship from the University of New Orleans. She is former poetry editor at Radix Magazine.