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Fun Being Me: Poems
Four years ago, Jack Wiler was hospitalized with AIDS. This book is his attempt to talk about what it is to die and live again. The collection is far more than his struggle with the AIDS virus. Wiler aims for the hard truth as he writes about the world, money, jobs, love, sex, and death. As Wiler says, “It can be loud and it can be soft but it is never quiet.”
- GenresPoetry
140 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 15, 2020
Ever listen to Wesley Willis? The chronic schizophrenic rapper? Willis made an absurd amount of music, mostly utilizing the same Casio beat, riffing out praise for McDonald's, Alanis Morisette, and the occasional instruction to put one's mouth over certain parts of animals. But then you come across a song of his like "Chronic Schizophrenia," a simple song about how cruelly he's treated while riding the bus, and your heart just breaks.
Such is reading Wiler. There's a manic nature, rivers of profanity, but also a deep, thorough sadness. Donald Barthelme told his students, when their stories started becoming absurd, that it was time to break people's hearts. Wiler writes about sickness, about loneliness, about being broke, while he entertains you with toilet humor, profanity, and sheer honesty about what makes us suck (and wonderful) as a country.
Thanks, Jack. God's speed.
Such is reading Wiler. There's a manic nature, rivers of profanity, but also a deep, thorough sadness. Donald Barthelme told his students, when their stories started becoming absurd, that it was time to break people's hearts. Wiler writes about sickness, about loneliness, about being broke, while he entertains you with toilet humor, profanity, and sheer honesty about what makes us suck (and wonderful) as a country.
Thanks, Jack. God's speed.
October 31, 2020
I have no idea why this book was on my "want to read" list. I read Jack Wiler when Jack Wiler walked the earth. Why he isn't better known is a reflection of nothing good. One of my proudest moments was when he wrote a blurb for my first poetry collection, The Future Is Happy (BlazeVOX[books]. Anyway, yesterday I dusted off his collection "I Have No Clue" and today I deep dive, again, into "Fun..." Those two books are his best, "Fun Being Me" & "I Have No Clue" but I am not sure I can defend my use of "best" in writing about poetry.
November 26, 2011
The late Jack Wiler read as part of my Visiting Author's Series on 11/2/2007. This is a version of my spoken introduction for him:
Jack Wiler’s poems put us where things are coming apart--lives, logic, the ability to know where one stands not only with the world, but in one’s own skin. Using everyday language, Jack’s poems convey righteous anger and indignation, sharp-edged humor and an almost unbearable longing. In much of his work there’s the exasperation with those who waste the beauty and possibilities presented them, whether in small ways, like not simply acknowledging another’s existence, not noticing beauty in one’s midst, or in a larger sense, as a country, a world, seems to descend into madness around him.
He expresses all this not just with barely-controlled rage, but also with a withering wit that would make a Mencken proud.
There is real intimacy in Jack’s writing, his daring to engage the world, to delve deep into all he encounters, sometimes not happily, not even completely willingly, but in the spirit of “if there’s no good reason to say no…say yes.” Jack’s poems are plain-spoken and direct, but like the lives embodied inside them, never, ever simple. And then the longing: In a poem like “Running the River,” he vividly brings each moment to our senses, better then to feel for ourselves the great reaching out that occurs there, and in the best of his work. Jack Wiler’s poems are efforts to appreciate what we have; in “Spring at Little One’s,” he evokes this finally accepting what is, and the ever-ongoing effort to let go of the unattainable with the beautiful lines:
“...in New Jersey.
Stars.
Not millions but enough”
Jack Wiler’s poems put us where things are coming apart--lives, logic, the ability to know where one stands not only with the world, but in one’s own skin. Using everyday language, Jack’s poems convey righteous anger and indignation, sharp-edged humor and an almost unbearable longing. In much of his work there’s the exasperation with those who waste the beauty and possibilities presented them, whether in small ways, like not simply acknowledging another’s existence, not noticing beauty in one’s midst, or in a larger sense, as a country, a world, seems to descend into madness around him.
He expresses all this not just with barely-controlled rage, but also with a withering wit that would make a Mencken proud.
There is real intimacy in Jack’s writing, his daring to engage the world, to delve deep into all he encounters, sometimes not happily, not even completely willingly, but in the spirit of “if there’s no good reason to say no…say yes.” Jack’s poems are plain-spoken and direct, but like the lives embodied inside them, never, ever simple. And then the longing: In a poem like “Running the River,” he vividly brings each moment to our senses, better then to feel for ourselves the great reaching out that occurs there, and in the best of his work. Jack Wiler’s poems are efforts to appreciate what we have; in “Spring at Little One’s,” he evokes this finally accepting what is, and the ever-ongoing effort to let go of the unattainable with the beautiful lines:
“...in New Jersey.
Stars.
Not millions but enough”
June 9, 2008
Arrived in my hands at just the right time. I think I'd been starving for poetry this raucous and real.
June 7, 2008
Here is a voice that’s urgent and focused, compelling attention without coercing, helping to put the best possible face on some of the worst possible situations we can encounter.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews