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Truth Be Bold: Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS
truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, is a testament to my career in AIDS services for over 21 years; it is a “coming out,” the reveal of my HIV status and thus a story within a story. It is a book from a survivor who witnessed first hand the devastation, it offers remembrances of the many who’ve passed, and grapples with the theme of survival. We've come through a massive epidemic that many think is over but it is not. In the United States we still have up to 20% of the population who do not know they are positive. There is still stigma. The younger generation no longer know about what we went through. This book is a gift from someone who has been a first hand witness and she brings us to the front lines of this epidemic.
118 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2017
26 people want to read
About the author
Julene Tripp Weaver
14 books65 followersJulene Tripp Weaver, a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle, has four poetry collections; Slow Now With Clear Skies (MoonPath Press, 2024); truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), which won the Bisexual Book Award in 2018, four Indie Press Awards, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards; No Father Can Save Her, (Plain View Press, 2011), and a chapbook, Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues, (Finishing Line Press, 2007).
Her poems have appeared in HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Seattle Review of Books, Poetry Super Highway, As it Ought To Be, Feels Blind, and elsewhere. Anthologies include: Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes, Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice, and I Sing the Salmon Home.
Her poems have appeared in HEAL, Autumn Sky Poetry, The Seattle Review of Books, Poetry Super Highway, As it Ought To Be, Feels Blind, and elsewhere. Anthologies include: Poets Speaking to Poets: Echoes and Tributes, Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems about Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice, and I Sing the Salmon Home.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 4, 2018
In Truth Be Told: Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, Julene Weaver has assembled a heart breaking compendium of compassion, pain and miraculously survival. The book is a coming out of an entirely different kind, and we are asked to suspend our impulse to think we might already know what that means - to come out, because we do not. The revelation is one of living with HIV, of losing countless friends and loved ones. We find that it is the capacity to change little bits of the world that makes a life filled with uncertainty certain of at least one thing, we are called to do what we are able to do for one another. To go on in the face of a death sentence, to dig for life with bare, beautiful, precarious hands. Weaver's poems become a shared room where many who've suffered far too much in this lifetime enter, leave, disappear and sometimes die. As an AIDs case manager Weaver describes the hard work of advocating for her clients who face seemingly insurmountable odds, with many structurally stacked decks against them.
In Drying Out, she writes:
"I learn to settle into myself
away from my clients,
such a task, to claim my time
to unroll from their problems
to separate"
The weight of their lives enters and there is "wailing in it." There is wailing in the authors own journey as well. This is the bravery found here, to carry double weight, one's own and another's. To draw boundary lines, to know that sometimes we can only do so much, that we can't carry a person the whole way through.
"Certain moves come down to only one," she writes in How We fail. "One person. You. Your life." Dictating letters for her clients, listening to their fear and worry over the phone, with countless other papers that must be sent out on behalf of a dozen other clients waiting, it is no easy task to do this work, let alone to have written this book.
While there is so much loss in Truth Be Told it is not a book of the dead, it is a book of the living. Which is not to make light of the loss but to carry that loss, that grief, into another day. To fight, to advocate, to scream, cry, dream, march, do good, do justice, do poetry. The loss is remembered in survival, and deeply honored in action. We are asked to do what we can while we are able. This book asks of us; what are we willing to give and do for one another, in the face of death, will we live and in living will we act courageously.
In Drying Out, she writes:
"I learn to settle into myself
away from my clients,
such a task, to claim my time
to unroll from their problems
to separate"
The weight of their lives enters and there is "wailing in it." There is wailing in the authors own journey as well. This is the bravery found here, to carry double weight, one's own and another's. To draw boundary lines, to know that sometimes we can only do so much, that we can't carry a person the whole way through.
"Certain moves come down to only one," she writes in How We fail. "One person. You. Your life." Dictating letters for her clients, listening to their fear and worry over the phone, with countless other papers that must be sent out on behalf of a dozen other clients waiting, it is no easy task to do this work, let alone to have written this book.
While there is so much loss in Truth Be Told it is not a book of the dead, it is a book of the living. Which is not to make light of the loss but to carry that loss, that grief, into another day. To fight, to advocate, to scream, cry, dream, march, do good, do justice, do poetry. The loss is remembered in survival, and deeply honored in action. We are asked to do what we can while we are able. This book asks of us; what are we willing to give and do for one another, in the face of death, will we live and in living will we act courageously.
June 10, 2017
The raw honesty that Julene shares with us, the reader.
this is
a reality
blank check
fill in the amount
of currency
if you can
the
emotional cost
not
purchasable
nor measurable
this is
a reality
blank check
fill in the amount
of currency
if you can
the
emotional cost
not
purchasable
nor measurable
April 4, 2017
No bias here, I wrote this book! It is a brave historical look at the AIDS epidemic up close and personal from someone who worked it and lived it.
June 4, 2020
Hi Julene,
I started reading your book, and I am captivated by your style of candor and tenderness. I've already cried once. I've been looking for poetry like this for so long, and you have become the voice I have been searching for. We need more poets writing about living with HIV, because those voices heal.
Yet, it is that permanent state of hurt that haunts us, and keeps us vulnerable to difficulties. I hope these transitions become easier for you, and your moving testament of survival becomes heard by others.
Thank you for gifting this wonderful book to me. I had to go to Amazon and buy your other two books. I want to read more by you.
Please keep in touch, because your kindness and intelligence are so valuable and priceless to me.
Peace, Love, and Kindest Wishes, Ruben Santos Claveria
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams, from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems"
Hi Julene T. Weaver,
I just finished your book of poems called "Truth Be Bold," and I was amazed and astonished at the amount of truth, tenderness, and courage I found in you poems, many related to the HIV/AIDS era. As a person living with HIV for over 14 years, I love and admire the courage you have to tell your story. You are a voice to the voiceless, those living and dying of HIV/AIDS.
We are survivors in many ways, which makes us wounded in the most sensitive spots. It takes great courage and self-respect to share your history, using a candor that only the brave can use.
Your elegies to your HIV/AIDS clients, while being a psychotherapist and social worker, are just as important as the AIDS quilt, because you humanize the tragedies that happen everyday.
I plan to read your book again, because these poems are of vital importance and relevance. We need voices like yours so desperately because the help us survive and cope with the trauma and pain of the HIV/AIDS era. Thank you a million times over for writing these poems. Your journey living with HIV is not in vain, because you left a courageous and tender record of your survival.
May you be blessed with many more years to live, and may you fill you days and nights with poetry that speaks to the heart.
Peace, Love, Poetry, and Kindest Wishes, Ruben and Mike.
I started reading your book, and I am captivated by your style of candor and tenderness. I've already cried once. I've been looking for poetry like this for so long, and you have become the voice I have been searching for. We need more poets writing about living with HIV, because those voices heal.
Yet, it is that permanent state of hurt that haunts us, and keeps us vulnerable to difficulties. I hope these transitions become easier for you, and your moving testament of survival becomes heard by others.
Thank you for gifting this wonderful book to me. I had to go to Amazon and buy your other two books. I want to read more by you.
Please keep in touch, because your kindness and intelligence are so valuable and priceless to me.
Peace, Love, and Kindest Wishes, Ruben Santos Claveria
"It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there."
--William Carlos Williams, from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems"
Hi Julene T. Weaver,
I just finished your book of poems called "Truth Be Bold," and I was amazed and astonished at the amount of truth, tenderness, and courage I found in you poems, many related to the HIV/AIDS era. As a person living with HIV for over 14 years, I love and admire the courage you have to tell your story. You are a voice to the voiceless, those living and dying of HIV/AIDS.
We are survivors in many ways, which makes us wounded in the most sensitive spots. It takes great courage and self-respect to share your history, using a candor that only the brave can use.
Your elegies to your HIV/AIDS clients, while being a psychotherapist and social worker, are just as important as the AIDS quilt, because you humanize the tragedies that happen everyday.
I plan to read your book again, because these poems are of vital importance and relevance. We need voices like yours so desperately because the help us survive and cope with the trauma and pain of the HIV/AIDS era. Thank you a million times over for writing these poems. Your journey living with HIV is not in vain, because you left a courageous and tender record of your survival.
May you be blessed with many more years to live, and may you fill you days and nights with poetry that speaks to the heart.
Peace, Love, Poetry, and Kindest Wishes, Ruben and Mike.
Read
April 28, 2017Julene Tripp Weaver is one strong, courageous woman. Although she has always lived her truth, she now invites readers to share what was once private. Read the opening poem slowly. Close the book, let Weaver’s words sink in. Search your heart-what is the worst, the scariest, thing your best friend, your sister, your daughter could tell you about herself. Then “take time to feel the sensations/ sit silent with me.” (The Addition of Audience: A Meditation) Breathe deeply, find your center, open the book again, and enter Weaver’s sacred space.
The book is divided into four sections. These sections mirror the journey of a person receiving a life-altering medical diagnosis. Weaver utilizes a variety of long lines, poems that cover more than one page, and some poems with short, clipped lines. Weaver, a native New Yorker, worked as an HIV/AIDS case manager for two decades. The second section, titled How Have You Helped, contains poems about her years as a case manager, and the clients she turned herself inside out to help. She captures the joy and frustration of social work. She bears witness to those whom much of society seems to forget.
I work up my mojo
but your criminal history blocks the angels.
(Another Heartbreak Day at Work)
Part of Weaver’s truth is the honesty with which she talks about the work she loved. Lines in these poems resonate.
It is almost five, I instruct my hand to stop-
do not answer the ringing phone
(Prevention for the Provider)
Who Have You Lost, the third section, contains elegies for people who have died of HIV/AIDS. Some of these poems are laments, some are joyous, all are filled with love yet overlaid with the sorrow of a life ended too soon. Underlying these poems is the thought that none of us is promised tomorrow. Weaver is determined that these lives be remembered, because they matter. This is my favorite section.
Jim loved trains, on his birthday friends take
a special train with his urn, scatter his ashes
in his favorite mountains of Oregon.
(Jim)
The final section, How Do You Survive, is an introspective look at long term survivors. The opening poem in this section focuses on women, an overlooked group in the early days of HIV.
Our lives are full of ashes
some of us blend them in pavers for our patios
others have them in jars on windowsills
in urns above the fireplace
(Old timers, the women)
There are introspective, meditative poems about the virus.
And for some of us,
our hearts melded to welcome the virus
make it feel at home.
(HIV Today)
Let these masterful poems serve as a call to awareness and action. HIV remains a significant problem, and it affects everybody. Read Weaver’s book, share it, and take her message to heart. As Weaver says in Seeking, “I entered this story with/ knowledge, still it came/ a surprise, caught in/ a bear trap, speeding.” Meditation on Mortality ends with an offer of peace. “I want to/believe in comfort for you and for me.”
The book is divided into four sections. These sections mirror the journey of a person receiving a life-altering medical diagnosis. Weaver utilizes a variety of long lines, poems that cover more than one page, and some poems with short, clipped lines. Weaver, a native New Yorker, worked as an HIV/AIDS case manager for two decades. The second section, titled How Have You Helped, contains poems about her years as a case manager, and the clients she turned herself inside out to help. She captures the joy and frustration of social work. She bears witness to those whom much of society seems to forget.
I work up my mojo
but your criminal history blocks the angels.
(Another Heartbreak Day at Work)
Part of Weaver’s truth is the honesty with which she talks about the work she loved. Lines in these poems resonate.
It is almost five, I instruct my hand to stop-
do not answer the ringing phone
(Prevention for the Provider)
Who Have You Lost, the third section, contains elegies for people who have died of HIV/AIDS. Some of these poems are laments, some are joyous, all are filled with love yet overlaid with the sorrow of a life ended too soon. Underlying these poems is the thought that none of us is promised tomorrow. Weaver is determined that these lives be remembered, because they matter. This is my favorite section.
Jim loved trains, on his birthday friends take
a special train with his urn, scatter his ashes
in his favorite mountains of Oregon.
(Jim)
The final section, How Do You Survive, is an introspective look at long term survivors. The opening poem in this section focuses on women, an overlooked group in the early days of HIV.
Our lives are full of ashes
some of us blend them in pavers for our patios
others have them in jars on windowsills
in urns above the fireplace
(Old timers, the women)
There are introspective, meditative poems about the virus.
And for some of us,
our hearts melded to welcome the virus
make it feel at home.
(HIV Today)
Let these masterful poems serve as a call to awareness and action. HIV remains a significant problem, and it affects everybody. Read Weaver’s book, share it, and take her message to heart. As Weaver says in Seeking, “I entered this story with/ knowledge, still it came/ a surprise, caught in/ a bear trap, speeding.” Meditation on Mortality ends with an offer of peace. “I want to/believe in comfort for you and for me.”
July 8, 2017
These are not easy poems, they are important poems. They tell the story of the people who died of A.I.D.S., the people who cared for them, the people left behind, and the people still living with this disease. Julene has found the balance between the bold truth and the human ability to consume the words that are hard to swallow.
And consume them we must, to make them a part of us so that we can tell their stories, and not let the memories be lost forever.
And consume them we must, to make them a part of us so that we can tell their stories, and not let the memories be lost forever.
July 31, 2018
Beautiful, heartbreaking, powerful poems throughout Julene Tripp Weaver's socially conscious collection. This is a must read for anyone who has been through trauma and health crises--their own or loved ones.
December 28, 2021
Julene Weaver's truth is bold. Delivering the stories and sentiments of the "Age of Aids" in poems may have made a more lasting impression on me than David France's "How to Survive a Plague," which I read earlier in our current plague. Some poems are biographies of those felled by AIDS. Some are her own stories of survival. Some describe her work as an HIV/AIDS case manager. Viral history is human history is personal history.
January 8, 2018
"truth be bold" is a gorgeous and
moving collection of poems inspired by Julene Tripp Weaver's
experience as an HIV-positive woman and as someone who counsels and cares
for all kinds of people with HIV disease. The poems are often
realistic portraits of individuals the author has known, yet
woven in among the hard-scrabble details are feelings of empathy
and love and, too often, heart-break and frustration. At times,
they are reminiscent of poems from Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon
River Anthology." They hearken back even further to Whitman's
Civil War poetry, especially his "Wound Dresser." They offer a
refreshing glimpse into the life of someone very much living with
HIV and carrying on with life amidst ongoing personal and
political struggles.
moving collection of poems inspired by Julene Tripp Weaver's
experience as an HIV-positive woman and as someone who counsels and cares
for all kinds of people with HIV disease. The poems are often
realistic portraits of individuals the author has known, yet
woven in among the hard-scrabble details are feelings of empathy
and love and, too often, heart-break and frustration. At times,
they are reminiscent of poems from Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon
River Anthology." They hearken back even further to Whitman's
Civil War poetry, especially his "Wound Dresser." They offer a
refreshing glimpse into the life of someone very much living with
HIV and carrying on with life amidst ongoing personal and
political struggles.
November 16, 2017
I would quote from the book but having read it from cover to cover I just loaned it to someone. Granted I dipped into it and carried it with me to read for several months. I'm glad I waited. This is a very important work that should be read without distraction. Weaver's coming out as HIV-Positive poem introduces the work as a whole, but it goes on to mourn and celebrate so many others. An observer, an AIDS worker, and a gifted poet. This collection deserves to go beyond local readers lucky enough to hear her works-in-progress to national (at the least). An extraordinary work.
April 9, 2018
Julene Tripp Weaver’s Truth be Bold is a powerful, readable, nearly-impossible-to-put-down, boundary-crossing coming-out collection. Weaver writes authentically about difficult but important things. She’s a hawk for truth; her unflinching gaze guides us through a world of frustration, love, sadness, survival, death, & compassion. "Inside desire lies/the truth of blood —/longing to live a full life, a natural death." If you only read one book of poetry this year, make it count—make it this one.
And as if that weren't enough, the author is bi and owns it in this book!
And as if that weren't enough, the author is bi and owns it in this book!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews