Join us for an unforgettable 50th anniversary celebration of John Wieners’ searing, inimitable, “impossibly plural” collection, BEHIND THE STATE CAPITOL, OR CINCINNATI PIKE (Good Gay Poets: Boston, 1975), soon to be reissued by Song Cave. "A complex schizo-analysis of language, Capitalism, incarceration and state power,” Wieners' work has (over the past 5 decades) not lost but rather gained momentum and its transmission now extends from coast to coast.
Two great readers of Wieners’ undefinable and uncompromising poetry—Eileen Myles and Cedar Sigo—will share excerpts from his poetry, in conversation with their own work. Myles will read new poems and share sections of a (previously unpublished) 1970s book-length poem BIRDWATCHING (forthcoming from Fonograf). Sigo will read from his stunning recent collection SIREN OF ATLANTIS (Wave, 2025).
The event will be introduced by poet and Wieners scholar Jim Dunn. Archival audio of Wieners will also be premiered. Afterwards, we invite you to join us for an after-party at Lamont Library (where Wieners once held--and lost--a job as a librarian). We will lift up a glass in his honor. Come one, come all.
IN-PERSON ATTENDANCE: Edison-Newman Room, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Free and open to the public. After-party at the Woodberry Poetry Room.
ONLINE ATTENDANCE: Livestreaming available via the WPR YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/WoodberryPoetryRoom
Please contact us with any questions about this event. We can be reached by email at
cG9ldHJ5cm0gfCBmYXMgISBoYXJ2YXJkICEgZWR1 or via phone at (617) 495-2454. We encourage persons with disabilities who would like to request accommodations or have questions about physical access to contact Houghton Library at least three days in advance of the reading:
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