The late great poet, John Wieners would have been 79 years old today. Happy Birthday, dear John, in Eternity, in Heaven!
We’ll point you, first of all, to our 2011 birthday posting
and to these remarkable Wieners recordings
and to this, his contemporaneous (1959) observations on Allen.
Lost and Found also recently published selected letters between John Wieners and Charles Olson (and John Latta‘s intelligent thoughts coming off those volumes may be read here and here).
For more (transatlantic) (UK) observations on Wieners and his poems – see here, here, and here.
More recently, the recently-revived Jacket – Jacket 2 has just published a (long-awaited) Massachusetts/John Wieners feature (edited by Jim Dunn and Kevin Gallagher) with some essential reads – starting off with Dunn’s own “The Old Brick City By The Atlantic” (“I am often referred to as Wieners informal caregiver in the later years of his life”, Dunn writes, “The truth is I gave him no more care than any friend would have. If anything, he showed as much, or even greater care for me than I for him. Robert Creeley echoed this feeling – “We are not taking care of John any more than he is taking care of us, if you hear me. We need him very much. We need what his poems can say.””). Equally illuminating, Seth Stewart (on) “The most beautiful and truest” – Collecting the letters of John Wieners”, Ruth Lepson‘s notes and meditations, and a candid (aren’t they always!) interview with John conducted (1993, towards the end of his life) by Lewis Hammond Stone for Tenzone magazine, (alongside miscellaneous photos, document-scans, and poems).