THE ECOLOGY OF RELUCTANCE, poetry by Thomas Zemsky
Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-74-5
“I do not have the last line / of this poem yet, / But a few things can be told:” So opens the concluding volume of Thomas Zemsky’s long career in poetry, a unique body of work rich in metaphor and detail through which he has told his readers more than a few things. Here are collected both some of his earliest and some of his final poems, and the fact that it is not so simple to discern which is which is a testament to the consistency of his vision and the precision of his writing over the decades. The title of one poem, “Outside the Window, the Picture of a Moment” is a nice summation of his poetic program, rendering moments of life as he has observed them, refracted through a sprawling imagination. Otherwise, this collection is not so much a summary as a sampling of the range of his poetry, variously wry and quirky (one where god “has given up on improving the cockroach”, another imaging life as a series of infinitely nested warehouses where “men go skulking by at night/ to bring home something to be kissed”) but also bitingly poignant, as in his closing image of himself as “Misery / amid a myriad of stars.” In what might be his signature poem “The Story” he makes several dreamlike starts that are “not that story” before arriving at a bit of deep wisdom: “The world is very old, but I tell you, the dark is older / remembering when / a place was kept for it by the fire.” In a poem dating to his undergraduate days there is the line “you flamed well, / You were the stuff of poetry”, which serves now as an apt tribute to the poet himself. Let these serve as last lines out of a life rich in poetry: “But there is peace / as far as the eye can see / there is contentment.”
Praise for Thomas Zemsky
The Ecology of Reluctance has an incantatory, recursive quality and features Thomas Zemsky's trademark long, free verse lines. At once whimsical and profound, his poems invest the mundane with mystery—startling us with their metaphysical inquiries. From personified abstractions to secularly sacred totems, these poems manifest kaleidoscopic inner visions rooted in the sensory world, each line offering glimpses into Zemsky’s sprawling symbolic dreamscapes. For those who revel in poetry’s power to illuminate the unseen, this writer’s distinctive voice summons the cosmological imagination. While challenging at times, Zemsky’s poems ultimately reveal an embrace of life’s ambiguities and beauty found in nature’s seemingly random patterns and cycles.
—Sara Cahill Marron, author of Call Me Spes & Reasons for the Long Tu’m
Zemsky’s poems are for the ear as well as the mind and heart.
—Libby Falk Jones, author of For Your Good Health, Drink Flowers: New and Collected Poems
The voice of most poets is derivative. Tom Zemsky speaks with a voice, a way of looking at the world, that is uniquely his own. His worlds have visiting hours down whose halls we are invited to visit and marvel.
—Richard Taylor, Kentucky State Poet Laureate 1999-2001, author of Snow Falling on Water: Selected and New Poems
About the Author
Thomas Zemsky was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1947. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Since 1976 he made his home in Lexington, Kentucky where he worked for many years for the International Book Project. Following retirement his favorite pastimes included listening to jazz on LP records, Latin American and modern literature, and movies according to the auteur theory. He believed that poetry, first and foremost, is metaphor. He was the author of eight full-length poetry collections, and his poetry also appeared in the Cincinnati Review and Sewanee Review among others. He died in 2024, leaving behind a legacy of unique poetry.
Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-74-5
“I do not have the last line / of this poem yet, / But a few things can be told:” So opens the concluding volume of Thomas Zemsky’s long career in poetry, a unique body of work rich in metaphor and detail through which he has told his readers more than a few things. Here are collected both some of his earliest and some of his final poems, and the fact that it is not so simple to discern which is which is a testament to the consistency of his vision and the precision of his writing over the decades. The title of one poem, “Outside the Window, the Picture of a Moment” is a nice summation of his poetic program, rendering moments of life as he has observed them, refracted through a sprawling imagination. Otherwise, this collection is not so much a summary as a sampling of the range of his poetry, variously wry and quirky (one where god “has given up on improving the cockroach”, another imaging life as a series of infinitely nested warehouses where “men go skulking by at night/ to bring home something to be kissed”) but also bitingly poignant, as in his closing image of himself as “Misery / amid a myriad of stars.” In what might be his signature poem “The Story” he makes several dreamlike starts that are “not that story” before arriving at a bit of deep wisdom: “The world is very old, but I tell you, the dark is older / remembering when / a place was kept for it by the fire.” In a poem dating to his undergraduate days there is the line “you flamed well, / You were the stuff of poetry”, which serves now as an apt tribute to the poet himself. Let these serve as last lines out of a life rich in poetry: “But there is peace / as far as the eye can see / there is contentment.”
Praise for Thomas Zemsky
The Ecology of Reluctance has an incantatory, recursive quality and features Thomas Zemsky's trademark long, free verse lines. At once whimsical and profound, his poems invest the mundane with mystery—startling us with their metaphysical inquiries. From personified abstractions to secularly sacred totems, these poems manifest kaleidoscopic inner visions rooted in the sensory world, each line offering glimpses into Zemsky’s sprawling symbolic dreamscapes. For those who revel in poetry’s power to illuminate the unseen, this writer’s distinctive voice summons the cosmological imagination. While challenging at times, Zemsky’s poems ultimately reveal an embrace of life’s ambiguities and beauty found in nature’s seemingly random patterns and cycles.
—Sara Cahill Marron, author of Call Me Spes & Reasons for the Long Tu’m
Zemsky’s poems are for the ear as well as the mind and heart.
—Libby Falk Jones, author of For Your Good Health, Drink Flowers: New and Collected Poems
The voice of most poets is derivative. Tom Zemsky speaks with a voice, a way of looking at the world, that is uniquely his own. His worlds have visiting hours down whose halls we are invited to visit and marvel.
—Richard Taylor, Kentucky State Poet Laureate 1999-2001, author of Snow Falling on Water: Selected and New Poems
About the Author
Thomas Zemsky was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1947. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Since 1976 he made his home in Lexington, Kentucky where he worked for many years for the International Book Project. Following retirement his favorite pastimes included listening to jazz on LP records, Latin American and modern literature, and movies according to the auteur theory. He believed that poetry, first and foremost, is metaphor. He was the author of eight full-length poetry collections, and his poetry also appeared in the Cincinnati Review and Sewanee Review among others. He died in 2024, leaving behind a legacy of unique poetry.
Publication Date: June 1, 2024
Paperback, 70 pages
ISBN: 978-1-956782-74-5
“I do not have the last line / of this poem yet, / But a few things can be told:” So opens the concluding volume of Thomas Zemsky’s long career in poetry, a unique body of work rich in metaphor and detail through which he has told his readers more than a few things. Here are collected both some of his earliest and some of his final poems, and the fact that it is not so simple to discern which is which is a testament to the consistency of his vision and the precision of his writing over the decades. The title of one poem, “Outside the Window, the Picture of a Moment” is a nice summation of his poetic program, rendering moments of life as he has observed them, refracted through a sprawling imagination. Otherwise, this collection is not so much a summary as a sampling of the range of his poetry, variously wry and quirky (one where god “has given up on improving the cockroach”, another imaging life as a series of infinitely nested warehouses where “men go skulking by at night/ to bring home something to be kissed”) but also bitingly poignant, as in his closing image of himself as “Misery / amid a myriad of stars.” In what might be his signature poem “The Story” he makes several dreamlike starts that are “not that story” before arriving at a bit of deep wisdom: “The world is very old, but I tell you, the dark is older / remembering when / a place was kept for it by the fire.” In a poem dating to his undergraduate days there is the line “you flamed well, / You were the stuff of poetry”, which serves now as an apt tribute to the poet himself. Let these serve as last lines out of a life rich in poetry: “But there is peace / as far as the eye can see / there is contentment.”
Praise for Thomas Zemsky
The Ecology of Reluctance has an incantatory, recursive quality and features Thomas Zemsky's trademark long, free verse lines. At once whimsical and profound, his poems invest the mundane with mystery—startling us with their metaphysical inquiries. From personified abstractions to secularly sacred totems, these poems manifest kaleidoscopic inner visions rooted in the sensory world, each line offering glimpses into Zemsky’s sprawling symbolic dreamscapes. For those who revel in poetry’s power to illuminate the unseen, this writer’s distinctive voice summons the cosmological imagination. While challenging at times, Zemsky’s poems ultimately reveal an embrace of life’s ambiguities and beauty found in nature’s seemingly random patterns and cycles.
—Sara Cahill Marron, author of Call Me Spes & Reasons for the Long Tu’m
Zemsky’s poems are for the ear as well as the mind and heart.
—Libby Falk Jones, author of For Your Good Health, Drink Flowers: New and Collected Poems
The voice of most poets is derivative. Tom Zemsky speaks with a voice, a way of looking at the world, that is uniquely his own. His worlds have visiting hours down whose halls we are invited to visit and marvel.
—Richard Taylor, Kentucky State Poet Laureate 1999-2001, author of Snow Falling on Water: Selected and New Poems
About the Author
Thomas Zemsky was born in Hamilton, Ohio in 1947. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Since 1976 he made his home in Lexington, Kentucky where he worked for many years for the International Book Project. Following retirement his favorite pastimes included listening to jazz on LP records, Latin American and modern literature, and movies according to the auteur theory. He believed that poetry, first and foremost, is metaphor. He was the author of eight full-length poetry collections, and his poetry also appeared in the Cincinnati Review and Sewanee Review among others. He died in 2024, leaving behind a legacy of unique poetry.