John Wieners birthday today. We celebrate (as always) America's great poète maudit, pure poet, sacred soul, lyric singer, lover, gay hero, rare treasure, blessed icon.
For previous (extensive) John Wieners posts on the Allen Ginsberg Project - see here, here and here, here and here
Here, courtesy of Derek Fenner, is footage of John's last public reading, given a mere eight days before his death on March 1 2002.
Posthumously, John's reputation (as it should) just keeps on growing and growing.
Two important pieces of scholarship (on-going) - Robert Dewhurst is hard at work on Ungrateful City - The Collected Poems of John Wieners. For more on that particular project, seehere
and M.Seth Stewart has been doing extraordinary work at CUNY, both with the letters (For The Voices) and the journals (a volume of Selected Journals is scheduled for City Lights in the Fall - We can't wait!)
Meanwhile, here's a photo of John taken by Allen, in the now-defunct Odessa restaurant, in New York City in 1993
and a photo taken by Andy Warhol almost three decades previously
and more images of John (courtesy Raymond Foye)
[John Wieners - Photograph by Allen DeLoach]
[Allen Ginsberg and John Wieners, Miami, 1972]
