Cultural Affairs in Boston Poetry and Prose 1956-1985

Black Mountain don Robert Creeley wrote of his contemporary John Wieners, "there is no one for whom that city [Boston], or any other, has proved so determining and generative an experience." In Cultural Affairs in Boston, Wieners writes as a man imbued with the spirit of the City upon a Hill, but also with all that is antithetical to Winthrop's town: Wieners recounts dalliances with men behind night-ensconced park statues; jaunts to New York City and elsewhere with fellow libertines; and, of course, drugs: "Our faces show the strain / at 30. Hah, 30! we'll never see again / why heroin redeems us."Still, this collection is notable for the way in which poet and place are both intertwined and brought into stunning focus for the reader, no matter how unfamiliar with Boston or temperate the reader be. As Creeley continues, "nor do these poems, any of them, seem ever some place else . . . they're here, as we are."Gifted and neglected, John Wieners bedazzled all who encountered his work, and this particular work, putting Wieners into his beloved context, is bound to win over the unacquainted.By banks of the Neponset Riverlies our house.At night I hear voices of Indian spirits call out to me:"Each year these waters claim a pale face."("Hypnagogic")Wieners, John is the author of 'Cultural Affairs in Boston Poetry and Prose 1956-1985' with ISBN 9780876857380 and ISBN 0876857381.