Jim Dunn’s Poetic Trifecta
October 29, 2025
By Bing McGilvray
1. Jim Dunn, Angry Bull’s Cadence. The Bodily Press, 2025.
2. I Have a Poem for You. Poems by Charles Shively, edited by James Dunn and Erik Lomen. Bootstrap Press, 2025.
3. John Wieners, Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike, edited by Raymond Foye. Afterwords to the 50th Anniversary Edition by James Dunn and Robert Dewhurst. The Song Cave, 2025.
Jim Dunn, poet laureate of the COSMOS, is amidst a poetic trifecta with two books just published and a third on the way. Exemplified in these three volumes is Jim’s passion for poetry and his loyal devotion to lasting friendships. Three Cheers for Jim Dunn. If ever there was one, he’s a true poet and a great friend.
A-Z
Angry Bull’s Cadence is a tight volume of original poems crafted alphabetically, with surgical precision:
A Billion Cops
A
Billion
Cops
Deployed
Engaged
For
General
Harassment
Inciting
Jackhammer
Kisses
Laced
Moon
Nightly
Oozing
Prayers
Quickly
Returned
Sun
Tinged
Ultra-
Violet
Waves
X-rayed
Yellowjacket
Zinger
You get the idea. A clever conceit that might initially seem simplistic, but Dunn goes the extra mile, weighing every word equally, and pulls it off with aplomb. Each poem consists of 26-word bursts arranged in a list. Rat-a-tat-tat. A thinker’s delight. These poems may prompt you to try a few of your own.
A lively, colorful painting by Alex Stroup, in pitch perfect sync with the poems, completes the package by providing the wraparound book cover. Serious fun inside and out.
Left: Erik Lomen and Jim Dunn in Maine, July 4, 2025. Angela Dunn photo. Right: John Wieners in Rockport, 1999. Jim Dunn photo.
ACTING UP
I Have a Poem for You … is a collection of poems written by Charles Shively (1937–2017). Shively was a force to be reckoned with back in Boston’s heady revolutionary days of the 60s and 70s. In the era of Vietnam, LBJ, MLK, peace marches, bra burning, hippies, yippies, Nixon, Black Panthers, WBCN, gurus, LSD, Pop Art and the Silent Majority, Charles was a fierce, fearless, in-your-face voice for Gay Liberation. Shively was best known as the radical co-founder of Fag Rag, an anarchistic gay newspaper that was among the first of its kind—literate, hilarious, rowdy and outrageous—which was exactly the point. He was also a serious scholar and teacher of literature and history with a PhD from Harvard who wrote two books redefining the legacy of Walt Whitman.
A complicated and contradictory man, Shively fell out of favor with the mainstream gay ‘community’ by refusing to soften his stance during the ravages of the AIDS epidemic and suffered the price. But it is safe to say that there would be no same-gender marriage or corporately homogenized Pride parades without outspoken firebrands like him breaking down barricades of repression. Lately, repression has returned with a vengeance. There is no Shively now. Fag Rag died in 1987, and a bit of Charles went with it. No longer in line with the newly bourgeois gay esthetic, Shively returned to academia to teach, but he never stopped acting up or writing poems. Dunn and Lomen’s collection of Shively’s poems presents a more somber side of the recusant queer editor. One would not even say these poems are overtly gay. They are nonetheless beautifully effective.
WORLD OF BEATS
Erik Lomen is a renaissance rogue, an artist, poet, publisher, and owner/operator of a profitable organic mushroom farm in the woods of Maine. In 2016, Henry Ferrini introduced Erik to Jim at The Book Store in Gloucester before a reading by occult poet Gerrit Lansing.
Thanks to Dunn, Lomen entered the circle of Gerrit Lansing, whose influence seems to expand with the passage of time. A Monserrat art student, Erik had just completed a mural of Charles Olson and Vincent Ferrini (still on display in a Beverly back alley). Gerrit was good friends with his Gloucester neighbors, fellow poets Olson, Ferrini and Dunn. That mural was Erik’s ticket into the World of the Beats, Black Mountain College, Naropa University, City Lights, Woodstock, the NYC Punk scene, and the 'Boston Poets' including Charles Shively, Steve Jonas and John Wieners. Once inside this world, a remarkable avant-garde feast was underway, and Erik dug right in.
After Gerrit's reading, Jim Dunn, who lives in Beverly with his wife and two sons, offered Erik and his wife a lift back to Monserrat. “That ride! All we talked about was Wieners and Ween,” recalled Erik. Which brings us to our next book.
UP IN FLAMES
Fanny Howe, Gerrit Lansing, Ammiel Alcalay, Raymond Foye and Jim Dunn discuss the life and work of John Wieners. Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard University. Oct. 21, 2015.
Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike by John Wieners (1934–2002), 50th Anniversary Edition, is the miraculous resurrection of a landmark that has long been out of print. This collection of poems first appeared in Fag Rag. Charles Shively soon published it as a book under the mantle of the Good Gay Poets collective, of which he was also a co-founder. Most of the poetry establishment, many of whom thought Wieners had gone mad, dismissed the book. Others, who knew Wieners better, instantly recognized it as a work of genius, years ahead of its time. They were right. When the office of the Good Gay Poets was firebombed, many copies of Beyond the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike went up with the flames. A lost legend was launched and the word spread. It was Wieners' final book of poems in his lifetime, but his difficult life went on. Wieners could not and would not hide his homosexuality. He was quiet and frail, plagued by mental illness, substance abuse, nervous breakdowns, institutionalizations and even shock treatments. But he was brilliant.
John was born during the Great Depression in Milton MA into a hard-working, Irish Catholic middle-class family who never did know what to make of him. His keen intelligence got him into Boston College, but he felt ostracized for being different. John got a job at Harvard but was fired for tardiness and Benzedrine addiction. It became clear he would never fit in, so he embraced the persona of a perennial outsider, escaping often into the closeted and dangerous gay underground of night clubs and shadowy encounters on the backstreets of Boston. One evening in 1954 he wandered into a poetry reading by Charles Olson at the Charles Street Meeting House during a hurricane. That night Wieners’ adult life as a poet began. John was fascinated and followed Olson to Black Mountain College and later to Buffalo, NY. Doors opened, much as they did for Erik Lomen and for countless others when they meet their first mentor.
A POET IN FULL
Peter Anastas, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Sanders, Ed Dorn, Charles Boer, John Wieners and Harvey Brown carry Charles Olson to his final rest, January 1970. Charles Lowe photo, courtesy Cape Ann Museum Archives.
By the 1960s, John Wieners was a well-known poet. He traveled extensively to New York, San Francisco and even to the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami where activists tried to inject the first ever Gay Rights proposal into the platform. They were not successful, but their voices carried and they persisted. Afterward, John Wieners, Allen Ginsberg and Charles Shively went to Disney World but could only afford to ride on the Monorail. Quite a snapshot. And snapshots can say a lot. The photo of Charles Olson’s burial at Beachwood Cemetery in 1971 depicts but a few of John’s many esteemed contemporaries and good friends. But even friends remained apart from, as much a part of, his life. John was a sweet and sad loner. Life worsened.
Mental illness and poverty gradually took its toll. The more desperate his condition grew, the more inward he journeyed, drifting deeper into his dream. In his final years, John would communicate with very few people. Jim Dunn and Raymond Foye were the exceptions. By then he spoke in pure poetry, mythical metaphors, magical snippets of mnemonics cryptically encoded in quick melodic breathes. John Wieners and his poems at last had fused and became one in the same. ‘He had the manners of a saint,’ said Jim. He was a wonder to behold.
John Wieners believed he was already forgotten by the time he died at 68 in 2002 but interest in his singular irradiance has steadily increased. As happens with a lot of poets and artists, John's fame came posthumously. Many books by or about him have been published in his afterlife. Behind the State Capitol or Cincinnati Pike is a big one though, eagerly anticipated.
Made it this far? You are intrigued? Want to know more but don’t where to begin? A good place would be the ABCs. Angry Bull’s Cadence is only $12. Why not buy a few and pass them around. Start a conversation. Be a good friend! (Shameless plug for my buddy Jim)
Angry Bull’s Cadence and I Have a Poem for You are available now at Dogtown Books, various outlets online and scattered throughout the COSMOS. A release date of November 25 is set for Behind the State Capitol.
Coda. It’s raining Wieners! As COSMOS goes to press, Jim Dunn informs us that there is another new John Wieners book on sale now. Utter Vulnerability, Essays on the Poetry of John Wieners adds to the mounting stack in the Wieners library. Jim Dunn has an essay on Behind the State Capitol included.
To read a poem by Charles Shively: Poetry at The Arts Fuse
To read a poem by John Wieners: Poetry Foundation
To view work by Alex Stroup: alexstroup.com
Jim Dunn is the author of This Silence is a Junkyard (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Soft Launch (Bootstrap Press/Pressed Wafer, 2008), Convenient Hole (Pressed Wafer, 2004), and Insects in Sex (Fallen Angel Press, 1995). His work has appeared in Castle Grayskull, Blazing Stadium, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Bright Pink Mosquito, The Process, eoagh, Gerry Mulligan, Café Review, Meanie, and the anthology tribute to John Wieners, The Blind See Only This World. He lives in Beverly MA.
Bing McGilvray is a feature writer and illustrator for Cape Ann COSMOS. As the creator of Cosmic Bear Comix and BingOgrams he has wandered far and wide, to UMass (BA ‘76), UCLA (MFA ‘86), here, there and beyond. Used to be he was everywhere (like Cosmic Bear) but Bing now happily resides in Gloucester MA and has little desire to ‘go over the bridge’.
Bing McGilvray
Jim Dunn, poet laureate of the COSMOS, is amidst a poetic trifecta with two books just published and a third on the way. Exemplified in these three volumes …