Yours Presently: The Selected Letters of John Wieners

Description

Wieners was an oracular presence whose authenticity was unquestionable. His poems, journals, and, now, his letters are evocative dispatches from inside the traumas of addiction, mental illness, midcentury gay culture, and poverty. They’re also radiant, jazz-struck testaments to the reverence with which he upheld poetry as a vocation. . . . Stewart, the collection’s editor, and others who have tended Wieners’s legacy . . . are to be commended for preserving this work for posterity.”

Wieners’ tremulous exuberance is apparent throughout Yours Presently, a generous selection of his letters edited and helpfully glossed by Michael Seth Stewart. . . . Diane di Prima, Robert Duncan, Joanne Kyger, Charles Olson, Michael McClure, Ed Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, Joe Brainard, Donald Allen, Anne Waldman–Wieners corresponded with all of them, honoring those relationships with his affection, openness, and candor.”