John Wieners outside the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This segment of Jim Dunn and Kevin Gallagher’s feature “Mass: Raw Poetry from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts” focuses on poet John Wieners, and includes contributions from Dunn, Seth Stewart, Ruth Lepson, John Landry, Steve Prygoda, Lewis Hammond Stone, and Wieners himself.
Tenzone was a highly optimistic attempt to bring free poetry, writing, and art to the masses and publish unknown writers not for money or fame but, well, the hell of it. Tenzone existed in the ’90s around New England and its high water mark was the issue with John Wieners. Wiener’s work was introduced to Tenzone founder Steve Prygoda as an undergrad at UMass by Bill Wellington, with whom Steve became friends with at the campus library.
