Full Description
"There is no doubt in my mind or in anyone's mind who knows these poems well that they are major American poetry and will be in anthologies for one hundred years, I mean that good."—Allen Ginsberg
"A graceful rigor seems to be Wieners' natural mode; we feel the force of deliberation in his most free forms—he is never casual. The grace is miraculous, for he aims at intensities, by orders that shape and then restrict feeling to the ardent."—Robert Duncan
"What moves us is not the darkness of the world in which the poems were written by the pity and terror and joy that is beauty in the poems themselves. . . . In Wieners the glamor is in the word-music itself."—Denise Levertov
Supplication: Selected Poems of John Wieners gathers work by one of the most significant poets of the Black Mountain and Beat generation. Includes poems that have previously never been published, the full text of the 1958 edition of his influential The Hotel Wentley Poems, plus poems from rare sources, facsimiles, notes, and collages by Wieners. An invaluable collection for new and old fans.
John Wieners (1934–2002) was a founding member of the "New American" poetry that flourished in America after the Second World War. Upon graduating from Boston College in 1954, Wieners enrolled in the final class of Black Mountain College. Following Black Mountain's closure in 1956, he founded the small magazine Measure (1957–1962) and embarked on a peripatetic life, participating in poetry communities in Boston, San Francisco, New York, and Buffalo throughout the late 1950s and 1960s, before settling at 44 Joy Street in Boston in 1972. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, three one-act plays, and numerous broadsides, pamphlets, uncollected poems, and journals. Robert Creeley described Wieners as "the greatest poet of emotion" of their time.
Contents
With Mr. J. R. Morton
Not Complete Enough
The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958)
A poem for record players
A poem for tea heads
A poem for painters
A poem for early risers
A poem for cock suckers
A poem for the old man
A poem for museum goers
A poem for the insane
.........
A poem for the dead I know
A poem for movie goers
A poem for benzedrine
from The Journal of John Wieners is to be called 707 Scott Street (1959)
July 22
July 25
July 27
July 28
July 29
Aug 11
September 6
.........
King Solomon's Magnetic Quiz
`Peyote' poem
from Ace of Pentacles (1964)
Act #2
A Poem for Trapped Things
The Acts of Youth
An Anniversary of Death
My Mother
Cocaine
.........
6.8
Poems 1965-1967
Ancient blue star!
Sickness
Sunset
In the Darkness
Solitary Pleasure
Memories of you
Dope
For Huncke
II Alone
Stationary
Berkeley St Bridge
Parking Lot
Maine
We have a flame within us I told Charles
Pressed Wafer (1967)
Impasse
The Old Man:
The Eagle Bar
There are holy orders in life
The Garbos and Dietrichs
The blind see only this world (A Christmas Card
.......
Loss
What Happened?
from Asylum Poems (1969)
Suisse
Sustenance
Forthcoming
Private Estate
Stop Watch
from Nerves (1970)
Supplication
In Public
Billie
Acceptance
Deprivation
Indignation
The Suck
Reading in Bed
.........
The Travel of Imagination through Time
Poems 1972-1974
Viva
Here for the Night
The Pool Hall
Money is Not Monogamous
The Loneliness
Sexual facts are tiring, too
I Hope It Goes On
Music
Yonnie
from Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike (1975)
.........
What a Poet Is For . . .
By the wandering fire we sat and ate
from She'd Turn on a Dime (1984)
Lost poems are like old friends, amore.
Lordship
Biding in the Gloom
September Eleventh
au rive
Charity Balls
The Lanterns Along the Wall
Acknowledgements
Index of Titles and First Lines
