". . . a rare evocation . . . the wonder of this world in
itself.” - Robert Creeley ♦ “. . .artful, fastidious,
learned . . . I am delighted by so much feeling for style.”- Alfred Kazin
♦
"The specificity of Burt Kimmelman's poems has, for more than thirty years, been
a singularly locating force. It situates us in space, in relation to the
luminosity of objects, art, and one another. That every shadow of wonder can
stand forth in the most familiar words is the gift this poet offers his readers
time and again." - Susan Howe ♦
"The
sense of number in his writing, the
littlest
words & the small moments through which we live,
are of a piece. In this there is a strict & powerful accounting, leaving me
– for one – filled with admiration & hooked on every word.” - Jerome
Rothenberg
♦
"Kimmelman creates himself through effacement, humility, and the expression of
the joy and terror of being alive [yet his] is a testament to the idea that self
is not created by personal expression alone...." -
Hasanthika Sirisena, American Book Review
♦
“Few
contemporary poets so gracefully demonstrate classic notions of what the
practice of poetry must be: Kimmelman’s work is carefully wrought, with
concision, focus, and the rhythm of musical composition. . . . .” - Madeline
Tiger, Jacket
♦ "This is a
carefully calibrated poetic vision filled with insights and worded with
casual, unassuming grace. Kimmelman's poems attest to the simple
majesties of being, the massive implications of the everyday." - Eric Hoffman,
Rain
Taxi ♦
“His is a painterly art of tracking beauty and the movement of desire
and loss in everyday life." - Barbara Henning ♦ "In Burt Kimmelman's poems form calls deeply to form, as though the
works lifted one to the very brim of language where one could speak of
a
life caught whole.” - Michael Heller ♦ “[In Kimmelman's work] the arts
restate the questions we have been asking and the ways they clean and stretch
our questions reward us more than answers would.” - William Bronk ♦ “Kimmelman is a poet who obviously admires the clarity of
classical Chinese poetry and strives for it in his tight syllabics and in his
shifting images of light and dark. In doing so, he finds what is luminously
transcendent in the routines of everyday life.” - Harvey Shapiro ♦ “As quiet an experience as anyone could wish for.” -
Cid Corman ♦
“Kimmelman is obviously a
master of his chosen strategies.” - Hugh Seidman ♦
“[Kimmelman’s] poems
evince a quality infrequently encountered in contemporary American poetry:
modesty, an attentive and forthright modesty. . . . Modesty in an age of irony
is infrequent, rare . . . worth our own best attention. These poems are
'worth it'.” - John Taggart ♦ “Kimmelman's quiet poems contain
the luminescence of perception, its lure, its beauty, its Zen of breath,
tracing beauty in the pulse of the extant."-Star
Black ♦ “Burt Kimmelman’s
sense of the whole poem, or what Zukofsky famously calls the “rested totality,”
is as impressive as that of his precursors [Oppen, Bronk, Creeley et al.], and
in one respect, it exceeds them. He is a remarkably confident poet, though not
confident in his self, his ego, or even his craft, his way with words, though
he has every right to be. His confidence lies with the poem itself, that he
has found it (or that it has found him), and that he can proceed through the
poem, knowing that if he follows himself sincerely, the words will be there
for him.” - Norman Finkelstein, The Offending Adam ♦
". . . a verse so delicate and so far from insistence. . . .
He seems to me at the beginning of 2012 the poet who takes the
place of Rexroth, Blackburn, and Olson as a
clean, clear, accessible starting point for any serious poet.” - Karl Young, Light
& Dust ♦
"[Kimmelman] attains the simple . . . facts." - Samuel Menashe ♦ ".
. . exceptionally intelligent and necessary." - Ed Foster, The Poetry
Project Newsletter ♦
".
. . it isn’t easy simply to be a person in a world, and to write simply,
quietly, and elegantly out of that. Kimmelman manages to do it."
-
Norman Fischer,
Jacket2
♦
"Burt Kimmelman is a master of a poetry of cinematique [. . .]
he establishes a visual field of images and action which he offers to the
reader as an embodiment of important implications. [The] sense of place itself
becomes a part of the theme of the work that it exists in, [the reader] having
been witness through the author's eyes to a world the very sights of which
create a desire to understand its meaning and a need to accept what's seen as
the stuff author and audience are made of." - Sherry Kearns, Home Planet News ♦
"His use of enjambment . . . is masterful."
- David Cooper, New York Journal of Books ♦
"His poems ... capture
details in quietly lyric ways as seemingly ephemeral as the moment they
record. But they're deceptively simple." - Michael Lally, Lally's Alley
♦ "Burt Kimmelman sees with unerring
clarity the small moments that enrich our lives. He doesn't pass through life
blindly. He doesn't rage wildly. He searches for and celebrates each stark,
harsh, sad, tender, and joyful moment through words and shares them freely.
His work is exceptional and highly recommended." - Laurel
Johnson,Midwest
Book Review ♦ ". . . coheres as tenderly as softly falling rain." -
Basil King ♦ “Burt
Kimmelman’s poems flourish as they pivot from a repertoire of reiterated
subjects—works of art, natural landscapes, family, the animal world—to a
transfiguring notion of their properties and possibilities. For over
twenty-five years, this practice has produced dynamic patterns of insight,
patterns comprised of recurring figures and forms which nevertheless shift in
their relations to his poetic witness.” -Jon Curley, Talisman: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and
Poetics ♦ “. . . everything comes together so beautifully you will just
feel sad it’s ended. . . .” - Kevin Killian,
Amazon
Reviews ♦The event is the silence of the
moment....: - Corinne Robins ♦ “. . . Kimmelman focuses on daily
experiences in ways that makes us take another look at them. He steps back to
ponder, and in so doing, makes us do the same.” —William
Allegrezza, Galatea Resurrects ♦ ". . . the poems flex with
perception and feeling." - Bernie Earley, Otoliths
♦
"The poems . . . have the spiritual resonance of a talented poet
humble before nature, love, and language. In engaging a world larger than
himself, Burt Kimmelman offers us poems that feel like a gift." - Deborah
Diemont, NewPages ♦ ". . . precious is the chance to see what is unfolding before
him, all that he is at the edge of." - Kip Zegers,
Connotation Press Book Reviews ♦ "We've waited some time to read something this intelligent, this
sensuous and this crystalline. In fact, Somehow calls out with our words to
make phrases, to mythologize our existence, to speak for us." - Gerald
Schwartz, Home Planet News ♦
"[Kimmelman's poetry is]
seamless in its execution of form and so nuanced and unproclaimed in its
delivery. . . ." - James Tolan,
Galatea Resurrects
♦
