Uncertainty, by James K. Zimmerman

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

In Uncertainty, James K. Zimmerman weaves a narrative thread that begins with the Big Bang – and what may have come before that – and then takes the reader on a journey into the depth and breadth of the Anthropocene Era. How we regard oil – the liquidified remains of flora and dinosaurs – as a gift; how we pollute our water supply with the detritus of our consumerist way of life. From there, in personifications of robots, AI, and interstellar satellites, Zimmerman interrogates how these creations – born of the genius of our species – might reflect back on us, and how they might represent us to the cosmos.

Although there is a dark, apocalyptic tone to many of the poems in Uncertainty, there is ultimately a glimmer of redemption, a course correction on a path that risks the extinction of life on earth and the destruction of the planet itself. In the end, there is hope that in reconnection to each other and to earth as a living creature, we can transcend the uncertain, dark future that may await us. Zimmerman’s vision is immensely broad, cosmic in scope, but also sensitive to the need to be attuned to the life we have, that we have created, in all its potential and even luminous beauty.

James K. Zimmerman’s writing appears in American Life in Poetry, Chicago Quarterly Review, Folio, Lumina, Nimrod, Pleiades, Rattle, Salamander, and Salt, among many other journals and anthologies. Author of four volumes of poetry – most recently The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dōgen and Unbroken Circle, Unending Thread – he values his neurodivergence as an essential wellspring of his creative inspiration. He can be contacted through his website, http://jameskzimmerman.net.