LITERARY/BIOGRAPHICAL DATA FOR JOSEPH SIMMONS: How an Accident Changed my Life and Poetry I have been asked to include here some notes about my life and things that may have affected my poetry. I face a formidable obstacle trying to write up notes about my life, because I was in an auto accident at age 18 that erased most of my memory. I can only remember bits and snatches of my life before the accident, though occasionally I see or recall something that illuminates another part of my past. I was driving home late after work on an August night. As I came almost in sight of my house, I saw auto lights on an intersecting road. The car pulled out of a side road in front of me. I applied the brakes, went into a long skid and turned to avoid the other auto just before impact. My car went into a spin, bounced through a drainage ditch and slammed sideways into a telephone pole. As the car partly wrapped around the pole the passenger's window smashed over my head, driving my head through my side window. I didn't even feel the steel rod that arced across the car, went through my right elbow, broke one of my ribs and pushed it through my lung. Fortunately I stayed conscious through this, or I would not have been able to realize I was coughing blood, and then blow the horn and turn the headlights back on. It was late at night, but someone in the closest house was watching a late movie. They saw my lights and called the police, who soon called the rescue unit to cut me out of the car. My heart stopped 12 times in the ambulance going to the hospital, for once I lost consciousness I was no longer coughing out my blood and started drowning in it. Fortunately the nearest hospital had a heart-lung machine, which kept me alive through part of my 2-week coma. I was not expected to recover, but when I did I spent a week with a total memory of less than a minute. I was determined to recover, and the next week my memory improved to the point that I retained some things for several days. As soon as I came home I began rereading my college texts, trying to prolong my retention. But how do you rearrange the way your brain works? I decided to try meditating, sending my awareness deep into myself, to see if I could restructure and rebuild my ability to retain memories. I did continue to improve at an accelerating rate, and 4 months after my accident I returned to college. I stayed in the dormitory and began studying more than 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. I Wasn't happy with my marks my first semester back, with 3 C's and an F, but my doctors reassurred me that it was a major accomplishment to get those C's. My second semester back was a bit better, but I got another F in calculus. I just couldn't remember the formulas both quickly and accurately enough to pass tests. That semester, though, I got an A in English Literature. Dr. Dunn, my English teacher, said I had excellent analytical skills and the ability to organize my thoughts into a logical progression to conclusions. These attributes, he said, made me one of the best student wrtiers he had seen. I decided to change majors from Physics to English. My grade point average went from borderline passing 1.8 to honors 3.5 the next semester. From that point through the rest of my time in college I stayed on the Dean's Honors List. During my second semester back in college I started becoming more aware of the world outside the campus, even with the long hours I spent studying. I began to reflect on what I'd always thought America was like and what I was learning about different parts of America--the America of the poor, the America of the laborers, the Americas of the migrants and the homeless. Some of this learning was from reading books by Steinbeck, Hemingway, John Dos Passos and others; some from reading newspapers and magazines, some from what I saw visiting friends in the inner city. I read and digested these for literature courses and for the purpose of writing term papers, but what I read moved me so deeply that in time I began to feel my own need to put my thoughts into writing. The result was "Dreams of Darkness," the collection of poems grouped here under the hotlink, "Early Poetry." I wrote other poetry during my college years: a series of poems about love and a few social commentaries, but "Dreams of Darkness" was my most important collegiate work. I don't think I even kept copies of the others. I didn't write much for several years after graduation, but then started again when I went to a junior college, where I got an Associate of Arts and Sciences in Chemistry. That year I had "On the Way Up to Downland" published in "Who's Who in American College Poetry." Writing that poem opened the gates, as it were, and I began writing again. Through all the time I have been writing poetry I have avoided studying contemporary poetic and writing styles, trying to refine and develop my own, admittedly different, style of writing.Hotlink_Back_to_Home_Page
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