Cycling at Sunrise

by Fred Zirm

Join Fred Zirm on his “daily meditation” of cycling at sunrise. Whether he traverses real or virtual roads, he draws parallels between cycling and his own life—and all our lives—on this rapidly spinning planet. You shouldn’t text and drive, but Fred shows us all how to compose poems, full of grace and humor, while biking down the road of experience.

Enjoy a video of Fred reading from his new book:

Early Praise

Fred Zirm’s Cycling at Sunrise is a poetry collection that gives us an insider’s view on bicycling as a sport for the person who is an adventurer at heart, but it is more than that. Zirm gives us a kind of bike rider’s philosophy. We learn how to see the world whether on a bicycle in the streets or atop a life cycle. We learn how to deal with aging and injury. We learn to stop and really look because it is necessary to see when one is riding in Mayville,  New York or on a virtual recreation of the Tour de France. What matters on a bicycle is what matters in life.  We must stay focused  and present in the moment. Zirm’s poetry reminds us of this truth.

—JOHN BRANTINGHAM, author of Life: Orange to Pear

 

Fred Zirm’s Cycling at Sunrise captures the spiritual essence at the heart of the poetic practice of cycling. Through exploring all that the word “cycle” embodies, these fine poems also offer good advice for living our best lives. Zirm is obviously an avid cyclist who speaks with earned authority, offering up sharp, vivid descriptions of his rides, but you don’t need to be a cyclist to appreciate these poems. Regardless of your own rituals and routines, your own triumphs and failures, you will find a human life at the center of this book—a life moving through its own cycle with grace, wit, humility, and good will. This unified, in-depth plunge into a cyclist’s world, life, is everything a good chapbook should be.

—JIM DANIELS, author of An Ignorance of Trees

 

At one point in Cycling at Sunrise, Fred Zirm counsels, “Never apply either brake/in mid-air.” Like a poem, a bike “offers no pretense/of protection.” It’s “nothing but two/slender wheels plus two winking/lights, signaling anyone who can see Here I am. Here I am. Please remember me.” A “sermon in sweat,” this wonderful book discovers that “what helped cause the crash/helps the healing.”

—RALPH JAMES SAVARESE, author of Never Make Them Cry: Classrooms & Coffins

 

About the Author

Outside of directing plays and teaching drama and English, riding and writing have been Fred Zirm’s two main occupations – not at the same time, although he does often think of ideas for poems while on his bicycle. On the cycling side, he has completed several century rides, competed in time trials and road races, solo toured through Greece for a month, and climbed some of most famous ascents from the Tour de France. On the writing side, his work has been published in about a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), NEAT, Chautauqua, Voices de la Luna, Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons, was published in January 2021 by Main Street Rag and his second, Rescue Dogs, in July 2023 by The Poetry Box. Fred has retired from teaching but not directing (or riding and writing) and lives in Maryland with his wife, Robin, and younger daughter, Sara, who put up with his rather time-consuming hobbies.

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Rescue Dogs

by Fred Zirm

Finalist in The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2023

Fred Zirm has known and adopted many Rescue Dogs throughout his life. These canine companions taught him both serious and humorous lessons about life, love, friendship, aging, death, and resilience. Between the laughter and the tears, these delightful and heartwarming poems featuring Carabelle, Dory, Larry, Woofer, Trey, and Snuffles, will have you ponder: Who rescued whom?

Enjoy a Video of Fred reading from the book:

Early Praise for Rescue Dogs:

I scratch her head and then
offer her the tethered freedom of the leash.
She is once again delighted
the world is just beyond our door—
and she can lead me through it.

And the world we enter with Fred Zirm’s dog is a lovely place indeed, full of beauty, wry humor, and unexpected discoveries, a place where dogs rescue humans, humans rescue dogs, and the reader goes away with a deeper appreciation of the ancient and mysterious bond between animal and man. This lovely book made me realize that I absolutely have to get a dog, because you can’t really take a walk without having a dog there to show you what you’re missing. As Zirm points out:

all dogs are guide dogs,
alerting us to what we
might miss, all the unseen
mysteries of place and time
in a twig or leaf or clump
of grass that tell us where
we are and who’s been here before.

Take a walk with Fred Zirm and his dogs. You’ll be reminded of why you came to poetry in the first place.

—George Bilgere, author of Cheap Motel Rooms of My Youth (Rattle Chapbook Prizewinner)

Hark (and bark) to the heroes that pounce and doze throughout Fred Zirm’s moving new collection, Rescue Dogs: here’s Dory the Deaf, Trey the Tri-pawed, Carabelle, Larry, Snuff, Woof, and the younger one. All dogs are guide dogs, Zirm writes, and these fetching meditations show the deep affection and abiding insights that come from living tenderly with animals as an animal. Wry and warm, Zirm’s poems remain eager to see what comes next while illuminating the hard lessons and gentle paradoxes of life among loss and time.

—Zach Savich, author of Daybed

In Rescue Dogs, Fred Zirm takes us on our mortal journey with dogs as both our guides and our companions. Observing the human world through their eyes—and their world through our own—his poems become the leash we follow to a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive. With its wit, intelligence, and profound emotion, Rescue Dogs deserves a place on every dog owner’s—and poetry lover’s—bedside table.

—Sue Ellen Thompson, author of Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems
and Winner of the Maryland Author Award

About the Author

After earning a B.A. and M.A. in English from Michigan State and an M.F.A. from the Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa, Fred Zirm spent nearly 40 years teaching English and drama at an independent boys’ school in Maryland. Since his retirement, he has continued to direct plays at community theaters but has also focused on writing poetry and has become deeply involved with the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institution. His work has been published in over a dozen small literary magazines and anthologies, including The Café Review, Still Crazy, cahoodadoodaling (Pushcart Prize nominee), Greek Fire, Poeming Pigeons, and Objects in the Rearview Mirror. His first poetry chapbook, Object Lessons (Main Street Rag), was published in January 2021.

The post Rescue Dogs appeared first on The Poetry Box.