Note: The following poems were originally published in Lip no. 1 (1971): 107–19, following Ken Bluford’s “Essay with Tom Weatherly in It,” and collected under the heading “Weather.” — David Grundy
Note: The following eight early poems written in 1964–1965, all of which predate the poems in Weatherly’s first published collection, Maumau American Cantos, are taken from typescripts at the Rosey Pool Collection, now at the University of Sussex.[1] Pool, the Dutch editor of the anthology September 6, 2019
Note: The following poems were originally published in Climate/Stream, a joint publication with Ken Bluford, by Middle Earth Books in 1972. Two of these poems, “godfather” and “for Judy Alms,” also appeared in Alcheringa. — David Grundy
We’re familiar by now with the designation of neglected writers as “poets’ poets”— essentially, an excuse for their continuing neglect. And we are, or should be, even more familiar with the neglect heaped on African American innovative writers, especially those who refuse to be easily pigeonholed into secure ideological or formal categories. Thomas Elias Weatherly (1942–2014) fits both categories.
Note: What follows is the complete text of Tom Weatherly’s first book, Maumau American Cantos, originally published by Corinth Books in 1970. — David Grundy