From the colors of grass, flowers,
Autumn leaves, from the smell
Of lilacs and fresh baked bread,
From awkward conversations
In bars with lonely women, his world
Retreating to a single rented room,
A rectangle, twelve by sixteen,
Eight feet high; fifteen-hundred
And thirty-six cubic feet. His one
Remaining task to capture life
In formulas and sets of curves.
Plotting time against existence
He draws a long slope dipping
Toward a flat infinity. The heart
Beats seventy-two times
To the minute, body heat holds
Steady at ninety-eight degrees.
Still, each night the line diminishes
As time erases things, eroding
The outside world. Air turns
Stale, pictures leave the walls,
Windows disappear. The room
Goes dark, then gone.
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: Skipping Stone (Dream Stone Press, 2000), In Fee Simple (Stormline Press, 1986), Recollections of My Father (Canopic, 2015) and Shadows (Canopic, 2019).
