Photo credit: Jerome Mallmann
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Intro
‘John Wieners was a key figure in the American poetic renaissance of the late 1950s and 1960s. In his work a new candour regarding sexual and drug-induced experience co-existed with both a jazz-related aesthetic of improvisation and a more traditional concern with lyric form. In 1958 his first book, The Hotel Wentley Poems, appeared. Taking its title from a bare-bulb flophouse in San Francisco’s Polk Gulch, this rhapsodically Bohemian début begins by quoting the title of an album by Bud Powell – “the scene changes”. In pieces such as “A Poem for Tea Heads” and “A Poem for Cocksuckers”, the poet presents a mental world at once kaleidoscopic and imprisoning.
‘An unexpurgated edition was not available until 1965, by which time Wieners had embarked on the most publicly successful phase of his career, becoming a teaching fellow at the State University of New York, Buffalo, an actor and stage manager at the Poet’s Theater in Cambridge, and the author of three plays performed in New York. However, he struggled with mental illness for much of his life, and was institutionalised several times. Although Asylum Poems (1969) makes reference to this burden, Wieners never exploited his condition, as had Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath in their more smoothly turned declarations of suffering.
‘Returning to Boston in 1970, Wieners became involved with publishing and education co-operatives, political action committees and the burgeoning movement for gay liberation. A fifth-floor, walk-up apartment in Joy Street, in the winding Beacon Hill area, would be home for the rest of his life. But settled quiet and conventional success were not on the agenda. Behind the State Capitol; or, Cincinnati Pike (1975) is one of the great books of the 20th century, a 200-page whirlwind of paranoid fury, hilarity, outrageous theatricality and ventriloquism.
‘His poetic career effectively finished at this point. It was not a case of unfulfilled promise but of a life’s work that developed rapidly and led with its own determined, internal logic to a natural conclusion. In the 1980s Wieners’s editor Raymond Foye embarked on a quest to gather unpublished poems. With the help of Allen Ginsberg and Robert Creeley, who remained unswerving in their support, the results were published as Selected Poems 1958-1984 (1985) and its successor Cultural Affairs in Boston (1988). In an interview with Foye, the poet had answered a query as to his theory of poetics in eminently practical terms: “I try to write the most embarrassing thing I can think of.”‘ — Geoff Ward, The Independent
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Resources
The John Wieners Page @ EPC
Archive of John Wieners mp3s @ Penn Sound
In Memorium John Wieners
Pamela Petro’s ‘The Hipster of Joy Street
CAConrad on John Wieners
Douglas Messerli remembers John Wieners
The John Wieners Facebook Page
‘The Blind See Only This World: Poems for John Wieners’
Watch four videos of John Wieners reading his poems
‘Kidnap Notes Next’
John Wieners’ books @ Black Sparrow Press
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News
‘After John’s passing, Jim Dunn and I went through the notebook (red leather with gold trim) which Bill Berkson had given John who was locked up in a Long Island asylum in 1969. (Wieners wrote his Asylum Poems from that unhappy place.) With the notebook in hand, Jim and I (with great help and encouragement from John Mitzel) sought to identify unpublished complete poems from that red book. We sent photocopies to Raymond Foye whose great care, love and attention produced the Black Sparrow editions of Selected Poems, 1956-1986 and Cultural Affairs in Boston: Poetry and Prose 1956-1985. Now Jim Dunn has transcribed and scanned Wieners remarkable notebook to bring us [a book of ] previously unpublished poems (A New Book from Rome), perhaps worked into something of a stained glass window version reminiscent of the chapel of St. Louis IX in Paris.’ — Charles Shively
ORAL HISTORY INITIATIVE: On John Wieners | Woodberry Poetry Room
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Media
John Wieners – April 2001 – Boston Improv
USA: Poetry Episode Robert Duncan and John Wieners
Basil King: A Story about John Wieners at Black Mountain College
John Wieners – Hyannisport, MA – 2.21.02 – Last Public Reading
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Interviewed
by Allen Ginsberg
Q: Have you ever had shock treatment?
A: The typewriter had it for me.
Q: How do you write your poems?
A: I have two teenage girls who help me, Norma and Edith. They do most of the writing. Then Martha Randolph congeals it in my head.
Q: Have you been pleased lately with the critical response to your work?
A: No, I hate being singled out.
Q: It seems like you’re blaming God in some of your poems.
A: Those are just secret roadmaps.
Q: (inaudible)
A: It comes from the fact that Swiss dressmakers are not allowed to speak English. It has something to do with the art of strapless gowns. (pause) A woman who carries the Index of Forbidden Books in her bodice must always be deferred to.
Q: A lot of your poems are in touch with the feminine instinct.
A: I’ve never been able to come to grips with male topics.
Q: What were your early influences?
A: The sidewalks of New York. East 11th Street, West 12th Street . . . so many side streets one doesn’t think of when not in town.
Q: When did you first come to New York?
A: I think on my way to Black Mountain. They had some townhouses in the Village, owned by some of the Board members of the college. Students and faculty could spend a few nights when in town.
Q: Why did you go to Black Mountain College?
A: To be avant-garde, and break the strictures of the Jesuit order.
Q: Did it have that effect?
A: No.
Q: Why?
A: I can’t paint.
Q: What do you think of the poetry of Charles Olson?
A: He kind of makes one lose one’s mind.
Q: (inaudible)
A: The works of Petrarch are patterns we can probably never translate.
Q: Do you believe in the existence of Hell?
A: I always have.
Q: And Heaven?
A: Less so.
Q: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, doing anything, what would it be?
A: I’d like to be in a railway station in Moscow as Sonja Henie.
Q: Did you ever spend much time in New York?
A: Yes, in the early sixties, I worked as a clerk in the Eighth Street Bookshop. I liked being around avant-garde material in the late afternoon. I like New York for its speed.
Q: Are you still writing?
A: Yes, but I didn’t bring along a pen.
Q: Why do you live in Boston?
A: I used to say Carol’s Cut-Rate. Now I’m looking forward to the new South Station opening.
Q: How do you spend your days?
A: I get up early to avoid custodianship.
Q: What contemporary poets do you like and why?
A: Creeley for his stewardship. Ed Dorn for his regional accents.
Q: Which women poets do you admire?
A: Barbara Guest: She’s the most important figure as a male spy that the N.Y. Public Library has ever produced. They trained her as a spy, like Mata Hari. I also admire Carol Berge. I met her first in 1944. I was ten and she was eleven. She asked me to put a dime into a pay phone for her . . .
A: Why do you put so much emphasis on style?
A: I don’t! I’m sworn off that subject! Now I use vowels. A, E, I, O, and U are the best ones. Alice, Evian, Ian, Olga, Uggams.
Q: What was your most recent poem?
A: A poem to Dolores. I’ll publish it when I’m seventy-three.
Q: Who is Dolores?
A: Dolores Moran, the step-daughter to Archibald MacLeish.
Q: Mr. Wieners, last week John Ashbery came and read his poems, and then aswered questions. He seems to be completely irrational in his poetry and completely rational in his life. You seem to be completely irrational in your life, and completely rational in your poetry.
A: It is never my intent to be irrational.
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The End
‘John attended a party with Charlie Shiveley Sunday around 7:30 PM. Charley drove from Cambridge and picked up John even though the party was just across Cambridge Street. Charley stopped at the drugstore first and bought John some medicine, a box of candy, and an inhaler. The host of the party had a cat and John was feeling slightly under weather because he was allergic to cats. Charley thinks John left the party around 9:30 or 10. He was found in a nearby parking garage by the parking attendant and was admitted to the ICU at Mass General at midnight that night. John tried feebly on Monday morning to breathe on his own, but to no avail. He was put on the respirator machine. An MRI was taken that showed little or no brain activity. Friday, the doctors took another MRI and it confirmed that he was brain dead. Also, as he was lying in the hospital, there was a social worker who doggedly pursued finding John’s identity. If it wasn’t for her and the nurses at MGH, he may have never been ID’d. John’s cousin (Walter Phinney’s mother) stopped by after she was contacted by the hospital Friday afternoon. John was pronounced dead at 5:11 on March 1st. I arrived at 5:30 and Charley arrived an hour later. John was still breathing on the machine and his heart was still beating. Charley and I spent some time with him and then summoned the on-call priest to administer last rites. The priest said an “Our Father”, and anointed John’s forehead and hands. Around 8:00, the technician arrived and removed the breathing tube and shut down the respirator. Charley and I stood by. I had my hand on John’s chest as his heart fluttered. We watched as his blood pressure dropped and his heart rate decreased from 111 down incrementally to 28 and then to X. His heart stopped beating at 8:16 PM. Immediately at that moment, the lights over the sink and the hospital supplies began flashing on and off in a strange rhythm. I pointed it out to Charley saying, “Look it’s John”. Charley responded, “He must have gotten into the electrical system” It was a strange, sad and beautiful moment. We said our final good-byes and left him looking peaceful, serene, and almost heroic – eyes closed , full beard, and worry-free.’ — Jim Dunn
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10 poems
TWO YEARS LATER
The hollow eyes of shock remain
Electric sockets burnt out in the
skull.
The beauty of men never disappears
But drives a blue car through the
stars
ACT #2
I took love home with me,
we fixed in the night and
sank into a stinging flash
1/4 grain of love
we had,
2 men on a cot, a silk
cover and a green cloth
over the lamp.
The music was just right.
I blew him like a symphony,
it floated and
he took me
down the street and
left me here.
3 AM. No sign.
only a moving van
up Van Ness Avenue.
Foster’s was never like this.
I’ll walk home, up the
same hills we
came down.
He’ll never come back,
there’ll be no horse
tomorrow nor pot
tonight to smoke till dawn.
He’s gone and taken
my morphine with him
Oh Johnny. Women in
the night moan yr. name.
DAVID ASPELIN
died at 16
put a rifle in his mouth, and laid across his bed at night.
After he held my hand on the way home and said
I will be dead tomorrow.
A POEM FOR VIPERS
I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with
Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me
Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us
shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom
chow yuke. Up the street under the wheels
of a strange car is his stash–The ritual.
We make it. And have made it.
For months now together after midnight.
Soon I know the fuzz will
interrupt, will arrest Jimmy and
I shall be placed on probation. The poem
does not lie to us. We lie under
its law, alive in the glamour of this hour
able to enter into the sacred places
of his dark people, who carry secrets
glassed in their eyes and hide words
under the coats of their tongue.
COCAINE
For I have seen love
and his face is choice Heart of Hearts,
a flesh of pure fire, fusing from the center
where all Motion are one.
And I have known
despair that the Face has ceased to stare
at me with the Rose of the world
but lies furled
in an artificial paradise it is Hell to get into.
If I knew you were there
I would fall upon my knees and plead to God
to deliver you in my arms once again.
But it is senseless to try.
One can only take means to reduce misery,
confuse the sensations so that this Face,
what aches in the heart and makes each new
start less close to the source of desire,
fade from the flesh that fires the night,
with dreams and infinite longing.
TWO YEARS LATER
The hollow eyes of shock remain
Electric sockets burnt out in the
—–skull.
The beauty of men never disappears
But drives a blue car through the
—————-stars.
TO CHARLES ON HIS HOME
Death is an unforgiven
That’s what we have in common
language an act of sharing words.
Coming tears will do it
Where there’s smoke
THERe’s a suitcase
fairies never change
into fire
It’s so hard to get to the top.
Death is a failure
there are so many of them.
Dont trust her
I don’t care how old the races are.
And I never have.
for Cher.
A POEM FOR RECORD PLAYERS
The scene changes
Five hours later and
I come into a room
where a clock ticks.
I find a pillow to
muffle the sounds I make.
I am engaged in taking away
from God his sound.
The pigeons somewhere
above me, the cough
a man makes down the hall,
the flap of wings
below me, the squeak
of sparrows in the alley.
The scratches I itch
on my scalp, the landing
of birds under the bay
window out my window.
All dull details
I can only describe to you,
but which are here and
I hear and shall never
give up again, shall carry
with me over the streets
of this seacoast city,
forever; oh clack your
metal wings, god, you are
mine now in the morning.
I have you by the ears
in the exhaust pipes of
a thousand cars gunning
their motors turning over
all over town.
A POEM FOR TRAPPED THINGS
This morning with a blue flame burning
this thing wings its way in.
Wind shakes the edges of its yellow being.
Gasping for breath.
Living for the instant.
Climbing up the black border of the window.
Why do you want out.
I sit in pain.
A red robe amid debris.
You bend and climb, extending antennae.
I know the butterfly is my soul
grown weak from battle.
A Giant fan on the back of
——a beetle.
A caterpillar chrysalis that seeks
a new home apart from this room.
And will disappear from sight
at the pulling of invisible strings.
Yet so tenuous, so fine
this thing is, I am
sitting on the hard bed, we could
—vanish from sight like the puff
—–off an invisible cigarette.
Furred chest, ragged silk under
—wings beating against the glass
—no one will open.
The blue diamonds on your back
are too beautiful to do
—–away with.
I watch you
—all morning
—–long.
With my hand over my mouth.
THE ACTS OF YOUTH
And with great fear I inhabit the middle of the night
What wrecks of the mind await me, what drugs
to dull the senses, what little I have left,
what more can be taken away?
The fear of travelling, of the future without hope
or buoy. I must get away from this place and see
that there is no fear without me: that it is within
unless it be some sudden act or calamity
to land me in the hospital, a total wreck, without
memory again; or worse still, behind bars. If
I could just get out of the country. Some place
where one can eat the lotus in peace.
For in this country it is terror, poverty awaits; or
am I a marked man, my life to be a lesson
or experience to those young who would trod
the same path, without God
unless he be one of justice, to wreack vengance
on the acts committed while young under un-
due influence or circumstance. Oh I have
always seen my life as drama, patterned
after those who met with disaster or doom.
Is my mind being taken away me.
I have been over the abyss before. What
is that ringing in my ears that tells me
all is nigh, is naught but the roaring of the winter wind.
Woe to those homeless who are out on this night.
Woe to those crimes committed from which we
can walk away unharmed.
So I turn on the light
And smoke rings rise in the air.
Do not think of the future; there is none.
But the formula all great art is made of.
Pain and suffering. Give me the strength
to bear it, to enter those places where the
great animals are caged. And we can live
at peace by their side. A bride to the burden
that no god imposes but knows we have the means
to sustain its force unto the end of our days.
For that is what we are made for; for that
we are created. Until the dark hours are done.
And we rise again in the dawn.
Infinite particles of the divine sun, now
worshipped in the pitches of the night.
—-
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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. Desolation is such a charismatic quality. I read about 10 pages of ‘A Little Life’ and thought it was manipulative garbage and shit-canned it. My dad lived on a beach in Hawaii (Oahu), and same deal — for most of the year it was like he lived on a movie studio backlot. Quadruple! Wow, the lack of loneliness must be nice. Congrats on the good weekend, and it does sound good even from afar (here). Being able to cathart to the point of peace is as good as life gets maybe. I could use one of those. ‘Starve Acre’ I’ve heard of. Hard not to be drawn by that title. It’s also on my list now. Thanks. May your week not put a damper on that weekend. ** Arno, Good morning, Arno! Wait, you were or are in Paris! Nice weather we’re having, no? After8 is one of Paris’s godsends. Um, usually Paris is noticeably lively after the annual big lull that falls over these environs in August when everyone’s away at their summer homes or whoever, so, no, not normal. It’s kind of lively over where I am. Not that I’m recommending that you come over to rather boring here (the 8th). The movie itself is reaching its finishing point after immense struggle, or I think so, hope so. Everything around the movie (funding, producers) is hellish. But yeah. Really nice to see you. Have local fun if you’re still here. May I recommend Musee de chasse et la nature if you haven’t been? ** _Black_Acrylic, Yay! Everyone, The new episode of _Black_Acrylic’s show Play Therapy v2.0 is online here via Tak Tent Radio! ‘Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson presents one of the few times you actually have a kind of a love for humanity. You hear the best part of the soul of the common people, you know, it’s their way of expressing their connection to eternity or whatever you want to call it.’ If you haven’t yet become addicted to Ben’s wonder of a soundfest, start now. Can not wait, of course! ** Bill, Hey! Oh, you saw Gisele’s show! Nice, nice. I don’t know if you saw it, but I think there’s a little film screening in the exhibition that Zac and I wrote the script to. I do know and very much like Skylla. What a great show! Envy, obviously. James Batley: Do you know what he’s up to? He teased a new film going on years ago now, but then he exited Facebook and I haven’t heard a peep about him and his stuff since. Your Berlin stint sounds like a complete blast! ** Lucas, Hi. Impasse, gotcha, yeah, impasses are temporary by their very nature. My Dutch was pretty rudimentary, so I’ll say I tried to read Dutch literature in Dutch, but I never believed for a moment that I was fully getting it. I did translate some Dutch poems (badly, I’m sure) for some magazine while I was there. New SCAB! With you!!! Everyone, the new (15th) issue of Dominik’s amazing and crucial lit/art zine SCAB has just now entered the world! And among its contents is a superb story by our very own Lucas M! Dare I say you simply must click this link now or very soon and get to reading and looking. SCAB is the king! Big congrats to you and especially to SCAB! My weekend was spent trying to solve the usual huge problem, and maybe just maybe we made some progress. We’ll see. Love, me. ** Justin D, Howdy, Mr. D. One of the worst ever Rolling Stones songs is called ‘Dancing with Mr. D’, and I feel absolutely certain that they were not singing about you. I know, that commenter’s way with words was soulfully fragrant. I don’t think you’ll be sorry to have watched ‘Nocturama’ and especially ‘Close Up’. Boy, there kind of couldn’t be two more different-from-each-other films than those two. ‘Riddle of Fire’: I’ll check it out. Happy belated birthday to your ma. What did you eat? My weekend was mostly spent trying to get out of the film-related morass, and time will soon tell if the weekend did its duty or not. Otherwise, pretty low key. Not bad otherwise. Big week! ** HaRpEr, Cool, about the Kristof. You won’t be sorry, I swear. A week until school, wow, time really is hyper. Do you know what experimental literature you’ll be studying in that class? I hope it’s bonifiably experimental. Right? About ‘Close Up’. so amazing. ** Oscar 🌀, Unless my fingers did something amiss, I don’t think your link worked, but I feel very suitably greeting nonetheless. Wait, never mind, I scrolled down and found the entrance and now I feel infinitely more than suitably greeted! Have I already done this (sorry, if so?): This. That’s a sigil. Stare at it lengthily with great concentration without decoding it and all of your greatest wishes will come true. Or so the Chaos Magick believers say. LA summers tend to last until Halloween, so I won’t be surprised if it’s not so temperate there, and my LA apartment does not have AC, so all bets are off on the physical comfort issue. It will for sure be hugely cathartic to finally show the film to the cast crew, and, god, I hope they like it. Design stuff … speak more to that once that is clarified for you please. You sound jazzed! Very long and very pleasant are a difficult duo to reconcile, but if anyone can wed them, you can. I hope it was. And ecstatic Monday to you, differently big guy! ** Okay. Today you get a modest day about the immodestly great poet John Wieners. Give it as close to your all as you are ready and willing to do. And see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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