Jack Wiler: one more time, maybe not the last time, here's Jack

A few of the good people of New Jersey organized a tribute to Jack Wiler here in New York City this afternoon. I just got back from it and will describe while my feet unthaw (see this morning's blog on cold weather--and walking).

I was prepared to take notes on names and memories, but the bar at Le Poisson Rogue on Bleecker was too dark to deal with a notebook, and anyway, who wants to spend three hours with great people while jotting particulars. I had a beer instead and enjoyed the background noise of a Bowie tribute band rehearsing next door.

Poet Jack Wiler, author of three books, Fun Being Me and Divina Is Divina (the latter forthcoming) from CavanKerry Press, and I Have No Clue from Longshot, was memorable in flesh and word. Most everyone at today's event knew him better than I did and it would feel presumptuous to resurrect their tales of Jack, but there was a theme or two I'll share. His poetry is precise, freighted, accessible and real deal. His work wasn't enough known and sometimes he regretted that, and sometimes didn't have enough ego to believe in himself.

Hemingway's "bullshit detector" had been installed in Jack at an early age and functioned well. As is the case with those who detect even a smudge or two here or there, let alone the ubiquitous abundant steaming piles Jack freely expressed his distaste-to-anger, something I very much appreciate, as that's my chore-to-gift (access to free expression). My turn at the mic I read his poem "The Names of God" which I mention in my other Jack Wiler posting.*

He was a salesman for an extermination business off-and-on for over twenty years. I'd be interested knowing how he came to that, but have a theory why he stuck with it. His boss, the pres. of Acme Exterminating Corp., had to be one of the good pieces of fortune of Jack's life. Robert Stien knew Jack was a poet, sometimes went with Jack to his readings or the Geraldine Dodge poetry festival in Jersey. One time an extermination biz colleague worried, "Extermination is not Jack's number one priority, poetry is." Stien laughed. We all laughed.

There was only one tribute that bothered me, from a poet who suggested Jack's accessibility was the result of a reader not having to plow through mythological or Biblical references. I don't think that comment would have made Jack happy. He wrote about what he wrote about. He read tons and was raised by a reader -- his mother. References weren't his calling in poetry, but I doubt he had an aversion.

He had a rich, full life. He had a tenderly open mind. He was loved by many. He will continue to be read by many and very likely for a long time.

My previous post on Jack:

*http://my3000lovingarms.blogspot.com/2009/10/rip-jack-wiler-fun-being-him.html

///Thanks to Danny Shot, Joan Handler and many others for today.

R.I.P. Jack Wiler: Fun being him

I'm pretty sure the first time I saw Jack Wiler read was at the Bowery Poetry Club's New Year's Day reading. I'm very sure the first time I saw Jack Wiler read I knew he was a great poet.

He read one of his extermination poems. Few poets know extermination as Wiler did, much to poetry's loss. He worked for a bug and rat business, in sales and advisement, as I understand. The poem he read was about killing roaches but either it's not in his collection or I can't find it right now. It is, however, a wonder of a poem, detailed, true, funny. It is, like all of Jack's poems, simultaneously accessible and beyond my reach. I can understand it; I can't understand how he wrote it.

In search of the extermination poem I paged through Fun Being Me. I don't own I Have No Clue. What's so remarkable, again, about Jack's work is its effortless and successful attention to the commonplace. He writes brilliantly about the hardest thing to write brilliantly, let alone well, about: life.

I'm preoccupied with God and gods, the soul and her progress, the great way, the next stop. Wiler writes about wanting to have sex again. About wasting away from the disease and coming back to life. He writes a poem to his nieces. "You're two white girls in a world that is changing." The changes are good, as if the promise of a better world to come can come in the world that's here.

Jack writes why he loves his town and hates a noisy neighbor; of pleasures of barbecue, Jersey, women; of friends and their children, their music, their cheer and love. Of disappointment. I hear many attempts by many poets trying write of the everyday and most attempts, honest and heartfelt, don't get the lead out. Don't move beyond the personal. Because although a poem may be, on one level about meeting a friend Midtown N.Y. at Jimmy's ("Pilgrimmage"), it's got to be about something more to be a worthy poem. Each of Jack's poems were about this and that.

The final poem in Fun Being Me is "The Names of God." The poet has dreamed the names and they include "a classroom and it was full of dogs" "dead blossoms from the flowers I've planted" "when a great man is struck down."

Jack's been struck down. As he wrote on Facebook, "I've been a bad, bad boy." That led to the disease. When I asked him to sign my copy of his book I suggested he write, To Sarah, the best lay I've ever had (not relevant to our acquaintanceship). He wrote: For the sweetest woman on the planet. When I asked him to write a blurb for my book he said yes.




(His family has asked his poems not be republished at least for now.)