Monday, July 21, 2014

TOM WEATHERLY R.I.P.

People are always raving and bragging and expounding on how the Internet and World Wide Web and other names for the interconnectivity so many seem to have through their computers and smart phones and I'm always the curmudgeon who points out that most of the information I have in my head and on my bookshelves isn't anywhere on the web and if it is it is usually at least partially incorrect (including a lot of stuff about me). Tom Weatherly's passing is just one example.

Nowhere on Google or other sites I tried could I find a photograph of any of Tom's books I used to have but have disappeared over the years like too many (loaned to people who never brought them back, or in some cases stolen by people while at a party at my many apartments over the years) nor could I find any photos of Tom himself back when I knew him in the 1970s. We weren't close friends, merely acquaintances (we read our poetry together a few times, and in fact I think he was the other reader the first time I read at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in NYC) but I liked him and admired his unique contributions to "American" poetry and poetry in general and his commitment to that.

Here's a sweet remembrance and obit of Tom by his close friend (and now mine) poet Burt Kimmelman. My heart goes out to the family, friends and fans he left behind.

[PS: And here's a photo of what he looked like after he moved back down South and I lost touch with him:]

2 comments:

tpw said...

I was hoping not to have to confess this, but I was the one who stole and/or and borrowed all your Tom Weatherly books. Sorry.

But, seriously, I hate to hear of these losses.

Akua Lezli Hope said...

I met him at a poetry reading in the 70's, we were both on the bill. He was a mentor and more and I mourn his departure, sudden and surprising, in the middle of a conversation, an unanswered question arising from his new poem on the death of Walter Dean Myers, another wonderful hard working writer about how to be in touch.