Tom Weatherly

On 'Short History of the Saxophone'

Of course the word is a brick. This notion, and also that of poet as mason, is gorgeously confirmed in Thomas Weatherly’s new book, short history of the saxophone (Groundwater Press, 2006). Though Weatherly has been publishing poetry for almost forty years, short history of the saxophone is his first published work since the early ’70s, when he put out two books — Maumau American Cantos and Thumbprint — and coedited Natural Process: An Anthology of New Black Poetry

Editorial note: This review of Tom Weatherly’s short history of the saxophone (New York: Groundwater Press, 2006) originally appeared in The Poetry Project Newsletter no. 212, October/November 2007). — Julia Bloch

From 'This Ain't No Disco'

Detail from back cover of ‘Maumau American Cantos.’

In 1971, Telegraph Books, publishers of Tom Clark, Ron Padgett, and Ted Berrigan, produced Tom Weatherly’s chapbook Thumbprint

Editorial note: What follows is excerpted from Aldon Nielsen’s essay “This Ain’t No Disco,” which originally appeared in The World in Time and Space: Towards a History of Innovative American Poetry in Our Time, edited by Edward Foster and Joseph Donahue (Jersey City, NJ: Talisman House, 2002), 536–46. — Julia Bloch

The blues, Tom Weatherly, and the American canon

Letter to the author, August 26, 1991.

If you read Weatherly’s sixties and early seventies poetry in something more than a cursory way, you’ll see Preface in them. Jones’s book seized him too — although I won’t say that it was seminal for him. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide NoteDutchman, and Blues People (appearing in 1960) were written by someone hailing from Newark, New Jersey, who had made a life in Greenwich Village. 

In 1964, as I was about to leave for college, I attended James Baldwin’s new play Blues for Mr. Charlie. By then, Everett LeRoi Jones (a.k.a. LeRoi Jones, subsequently Amiri Baraka) had moved to Greenwich Village, though I would not discover him till the following year. Jones’s equally brilliant and even more searing play, Dutchman, was also first produced that year. Baldwin had published Notes of a Native Son in 1955, which helped to create a Harlem of nearly mythic stature as he delved into its sorrows, complexities, and triumphs.

'never muted heart'

Tom Weatherly's trespass

Maumau American Cantos, Tom Weatherly’s first collection of poetry, possesses one of the best titles for a book of any decade of the twentieth century, and perhaps even for the century as a whole. Yet, three years after his death, his work remains almost completely ignored. In this essay, primarily via readings of poems from the Maumau Cantos, I will hope to show why such neglect is borderline criminal.

Maumau American Cantos, Tom Weatherly’s first collection of poetry, possesses one of the best titles for a book of any decade of the twentieth century, and perhaps even for the century as a whole. Yet, three years after his death, his work remains almost completely ignored. In this essay, primarily via readings of poems from the Maumau Cantos, I will hope to show why such neglect is borderline criminal.[1]

Poem and reminiscence

Post-it note of poem with doodle by Tom Weatherly, circa 1980s.

This time you were a man
Akua Lezli Hope
for TEW II

Essay with Tom Weatherly in it

Cover of ‘Lip’ no. 1 (1971, left) by Sam Amico.

Note: This essay appeared in the first issue of Lip magazine (1971), published by Middle Earth Books and guest edited by Victor Bockris. Other contributors included Gerard Malanga, Patti Smith, Tom Pickard, Aram Saroyan, Tom Clark, Andrew Wylie, Tom Raworth, and John Wieners.

Reminiscence

On Tom Weatherly, October 2014

Left: Tom Weatherly, ‘Thumbprint,’ 1971; right: John Ashbery, ‘Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror,’ 1977.

Tom Weatherly’s poetry seamlessly combines jazz-inflected improvisational tendencies and the cool minimalism of Pound and H.D. How can this be? Well, you had to know Tom to know the answer. He was always relaxed and funny in person, but you were somehow given to understand that this attitude was formed by darker and more serious forces. You always wanted to spend more time with him because of the ease with which it passed. I remember how disappointed I felt when I learned he had moved back to the south, and regretted not having seen him oftener than I did.

Reminiscence

On Tom Weatherly and Kenneth Bluford, 1972

Note: What follows is a reminiscence of a reading in celebration of the journal Lip, of which Tom Weatherly and Kenneth Bluford were a part, on Sunday, November 19, 1972. — David Grundy

Email to Jerome Rothenberg

NoteThis text is excerpted from an email sent to Jerome Rothenberg in January 2011. — David Grundy 

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