Solitary Pleasure. Selected Poems, Journals and Ephemera. - John Wieners
$16.00
Solitary Pleasure is a new collection of poetry, journal entries, letters and ephemera by the American poet John Wieners, edited by Richard Porter with an introduction by Nat Raha.
John Wieners (1934-2002) was a poet, a Black Mountain College alumnus and an antiwar, gay rights & mental health activist.
‘John Wieners has been described as both ‘the greatest poet of emotion’ (by Robert Creeley) and ‘the poet laureate of gay liberation’ (within the Gay Liberation press). Solitary Pleasure delivers us this poet raw with mid-century queer feelings. Here, we encounter a writer preoccupied with the power and magic of poetics to profoundly render love, loss and survival in the face of destruction.’
— Nat Raha, from the introduction
'Any "selected poems" is going to reveal the tastes of its editor, especially when those poems are selected from among an extensive body of work like the one John Wieners left us. Richard Porter's taste is exquisite, and his selection covers great ground, from the torch song poems of Wieners' early career to the rich, tessellated works of his beautiful and anguished late-sixties period. If I wanted a friend to fall in love with John Wieners, I'd give them this book.'
— Michael Seth Stewart, editor of Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners (City Lights)
'This book is a great love held on paper, groaning out of Black Mountain and Boston. You are hit accurately by the poet flying around you as a reincarnated bow and arrow cherub. John Wieners is a fever dream where the poems forever maintain their mystery, releasing a flood of spontaneity in the reader's imagination. Let's get in the magic with both feet; let's do it now!'
— CAConrad, author of Amanda Paradise and While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books)
Pilot Press, 2023
Softcover, 137 pp
210 × 150 mm
John Wieners (1934-2002) was a poet, a Black Mountain College alumnus and an antiwar, gay rights & mental health activist.
‘John Wieners has been described as both ‘the greatest poet of emotion’ (by Robert Creeley) and ‘the poet laureate of gay liberation’ (within the Gay Liberation press). Solitary Pleasure delivers us this poet raw with mid-century queer feelings. Here, we encounter a writer preoccupied with the power and magic of poetics to profoundly render love, loss and survival in the face of destruction.’
— Nat Raha, from the introduction
'Any "selected poems" is going to reveal the tastes of its editor, especially when those poems are selected from among an extensive body of work like the one John Wieners left us. Richard Porter's taste is exquisite, and his selection covers great ground, from the torch song poems of Wieners' early career to the rich, tessellated works of his beautiful and anguished late-sixties period. If I wanted a friend to fall in love with John Wieners, I'd give them this book.'
— Michael Seth Stewart, editor of Stars Seen in Person: Selected Journals of John Wieners (City Lights)
'This book is a great love held on paper, groaning out of Black Mountain and Boston. You are hit accurately by the poet flying around you as a reincarnated bow and arrow cherub. John Wieners is a fever dream where the poems forever maintain their mystery, releasing a flood of spontaneity in the reader's imagination. Let's get in the magic with both feet; let's do it now!'
— CAConrad, author of Amanda Paradise and While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books)
Pilot Press, 2023
Softcover, 137 pp
210 × 150 mm
