MCC Host to Seasoned Poet

"Inspiration comes from moments that don't have words clanging behind them like the shoes and tin cans people used to tie to the cars of newlyweds," said Dr. Daniel Zimmerman, chairman of the Middlesex County College English department. With MCC celebrating its annual Liberal Arts festival, poetry is on the forefront of Zimmerman's mind. He grew up in Buffalo, New York on the former Buffalo Creek Reservation. It is Tim Russert country, what the Mormons call the City of Bountiful, said Zimmerman. It remained bountiful until the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and destroyed much of Buffalo's economy. Currently he resides in Somerset (Franklin Township), which is one of the top ten places to live in America. Zimmerman attended a grammar school built on the site of a Seneca Indian meeting house and South Park high school. He then attended the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English, a master's degree in humanities and a doctor of philosophy degree in English. Zimmerman did his dissertation on the visionary poetics of William Blake and John Milton. "I started writing poetry in high school as an antidote to the mostly deadly stuff well-meaning teachers forced us to read. Eloquence of all kinds has always perked my ear," said Zimmerman, "I loved to learn new words, to compete in spelling bees, to do crosswords, memorize poems and, eventually, respond to them with poems of my own." Writing means permanence, despite present obscurity. It may prove a key for an undiscovered lock, an egg tooth for an unhatched eagle or a whisper restoring hearing to a long deaf ear, said Zimmerman. "I try to write whenever I don't know which category the poem I begin will represent. If I can't surprise myself, I don't expect to interest others in ways I would want to interest them," said Zimmerman. Zimmerman has published 12 books: "Mandala" (1964); "Déjà vu" (1967); "Royal Jelly" (1974); "Perspective" (1974); "See All The People" (1976); "At That" (1978); "Tattoos for Proteus" (1994); "Indian Rope Trick" (1994); 3 Poems (1994); "Blue Horitals" (1997); "Isotopes" (2001); and "Post-Avant" (2002), which won the Editor's Choice, 2000 Transcontinental Poetry Award. Along with these books, Zimmerman has published several poems, essays and writings on the Web. Until he entered college, Zimmerman planned to become a psychiatrist, but the rapidly intuiting madness of that quest made him determined to become a poet and a teacher more than ever. After four years as a teaching assistant in graduate school he found himself overqualified for any of the jobs that were available at a time. About 13.5 percent of Buffalo was unemployed at the time, said Zimmerman. Eventually Zimmerman managed to secure employment as a landscaper, proofreader, community college adjunct instructor and advertising salesman. "I had simultaneous occupations that kept me conspicuously fit but below the poverty level for several years," said Zimmerman, "after a year as an artist in residence with the city of Buffalo and another year as a reporter for a Vermont weekly newspaper, I emerged from the chrysalis of penury in 1979 as an instructor at MCC. I like it here in heaven." In the fall of 2008, Zimmerman was one of the MCC faculty members brought together by Emanuel DiPasquale to help compile the "Middlesex: A Literary Journal." "'Middlesex: A Literary Journal' sprang like Athena from the head of our poet in residence, professor Emanuel DiPasquale, former poetry editor of the long-famous, now defunct magazine 'Chelsea'," said Zimmerman. It took most of the year to solicit, edit, and design the first issue of the journal. Its value, especially as an ongoing venue, lies in the opportunity for members of the MCC community to display their considerable talents to a world often dismissive of those who work in and graduate from community colleges, said Zimmerman. "When our student literary magazine, Myriad, took several major prizes two years ago in competition with every other college and university in the country, it showed that elite institutions have no monopoly on talent," said Zimmerman, "I believe that MCC confirms and extends that fact." Zimmerman also teaches two classes per semester and encourages his students explore the arts and write poetry. Write poems in many different forms from around the world. Read the oral poetry of illiterate people. Rhyme, don't rhyme, study etymology, read the dictionary; when it says see also, see, said Zimmerman. Remember that your audience probably doesn't yet exist. Create it. Converse with poets, start with the dead ones. Listen to recordings of starting with Walt Whitman and moving chronologically to the present. Imitate them, then put those imitations in a box and keep it closed for ten years, said Zimmerman. "I believe people should read poetry that they don't immediately understand, as well as poetry that speaks to them immediately and transparently. I hope that some of my own poems represent both varieties," said Zimmerman.