Jim Cummins Lands Seventeen Punches

It's a little known fact that the poet Jim Cummins, our Midwest correspondent, is an ace at ice hockey. Born in the Wolverine State, Cummins played right wing for the Michigan State University Spartans and was drafted in the fourth round (sixty-seventh over all) by the New York Rangers in 1989. His greatest success came in a Chicago Black Hawks uniform. The 6'2 wing established a tough-guy reputation, never backing down from a fight. Though he played for seven NHL teams, he successfully kept his sestina writing a secret from his teammates. When a reserve goalie for the Colorado Avalanche discovered Jim's book The Whole Truth, it sparked an unexpected interest in verse and prose forms culminating in the selection of Robert Bly's four-part prose poem "The Hockey Poem" as the Avalanche's official poem read annually at year-end ceremonies.

Here's Jim on the ice at his feisty best:

-- DL

Comments

[Jenny Factor]

This is officially way too cool! Jim Cummins, the Enforcer On Ice? Poetry is lucky indeed to have an ice hockey veteran. I'd actually known there was a "Jim Cummins--pro hockey player" and a "Jim Cummins, Poet" but I didn't realize they were our one single terrific J.C. until you posted this! Hockey is in fact one of the most graceful sports--and the fist fights on the ice are particularly poetic.

P.S. Michigan, Minnesota, and one other state battled Harvard in the 1989 or was it 1990 NCAA finals and I was there--in Saint Paul. The headlines that day read, "What can Harvard do to win? Think their way to Victory" The article was facetious but the Crimson won in OT, and hoardes of Bostonians marched through an emptied city out around midnight in the spring break snows.

No one who was there will ever forget it.

Jim: People Magazine may have already voted on their Hot Man of the Year, but you're eligible for Hot Poets of 2008--as far as I'm concerned! You da man!