Shaped in darkness
By the slow grind
And tumble of a glacier
Smoothed by water flow
Into this perfect shape
That fits a finger’s curve.
After all the cold and silence,
Suddenly flung into sunlight
By the warm curl of flesh.
It trills across the first
Thin skin of ice
As if with voice.
Born in the industrial town of Lima, Ohio, Gene Kimmet’s early employment included being a lens grinder, foundry worker, service station worker and salesman. While he labored to pay the bills he worked his way to degrees in economics from Ohio Northern, Case Western Reserve and Northern Illinois universities. This led to a career as an economics professor at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, Illinois.
Throughout his time as an economist, Kimmet was passionate about another pursuit—poetry. Over the years he expertly crafted poems that, as Michael F. Latza observes in Willow Review, “deftly place us all into the impetus of the moment.”
Kimmet’s Collected Poems brings together the four volumes published during his lifetime: In Fee Simple (Stormline Press, 1986), Skipping Stone (Dream Stone Press, 2000), Recollections of My Father (Canopic, 2015) and Shadows (Canopic, 2019).
