Poet Jim Brodey died on 16 July, 1993 in San Francisco of complications related to AIDS. For approximately the last two months of his life he resided in A Gift Of Love Hospice. For several months he had been suffering from the neurological deteriorations associated with advanced AIDS disease. Two weeks prior to his death cerebral bleeding had begun, for which he declined treatment.

Brodey was born 30 November, 1942 in Brooklyn and grew up in New York. He attended NYU and studied writing under Louise Bogan, who suggested he study at The New School, where at that time Frank O'Hara was teaching writing. Brodey in that way became personally acquainted with the poets of the "New York School" and the brilliance of his writing was recognized and encouraged. In 1966 he won the Dylan Thomas Poetry Prize at The New School. In 1968 he moved to the West Coast at a time when a number of poets from New York settled in Bolinas, California. He came back to New York, but returned to California for a longer sojourn in 1972. In 1975 he was back in New York, and but for a shorter trip West in 1977, he lived in New York, in the East Village and then in Queens, until the late 1980's. The end of that decade found him chained-up to crack, and the crack depredated him pretty tough. His life got shapeless, he lost his home and belongings, and landed up living in Tompkins Square Park. In 1991, he left for California one more time. He managed, with the help of friends in Marin and San Francisco. By summer 1992 he became consistently clean and sober, but by then the disease began dictation. Through the Human Concern Center of Marin he became a counselor to hospitalized AIDS patients. At this he excelled, and in the fall of 1992 that organization honored him as volunteer of the year.

Brodey was an avid follower of musical history, current, past, high and low. His knowledge of jazz, rock, and blues and his various, occasionally lost, record collections are memorable. He wrote about music for The East Village Other and Creem, among other publications. On several occasions he directed workshops at the Poetry Project, and hi s hours-long visits to fellow poets could, on a good day, be workshops in themselves. North America contains reams of collaborations aired-out during such visits. Brodey could be extremely sensitive to and appreciative of the poems of others, and his encouragement led many younger poets to publish and often edit their own magazines. He could be an intense and inspired friend. To friends he could be someone both inspiring and troubling. It was sometimes hard to tell where his gut throb left off and the chameleon began. Even his camouflage was significantly brighter than the background linoleum, however.

Brodey staked so much on his ability to create poems that to speak of the attributes of his writing would seem to trivialize the self-embodiment he projected into his works. All the same, jazz-like improvisation and spontaneity strike the reader, whether in honking aggressive modes or in the transparent lyrics he could also compose. He professes in his poems to give himself complete. It often appears that he exceeds his goal, whether the self of the moment be cynical or naive, sentimental or insouciant, erotic or bestial. There are times when I imagine that he modeled his art on Coltrane, Coleman, and Ayler combined, and then I recall that, in fact, he did. Problems exist where he overpowers his own modest self-disciplinary equipment. There are poems of his in which the riot spills into the avenues of perception with a fitness that could not have been contrived, only to be interrupted by a few bars from an unworthy tune. I then scratch my head, pick unfriendly weapon-like things out of my intake passageways, and read on until the guy gets his grip back on the finer fervor. There are plenty of poems that are executed in sheer poetry speculation, and they work. There are really out works and sweet lonely lullabies. There are an awful lot of poems that couldn't possibly be improved upon. Here and there in some of his works, and throughout in the sizable body of his best work, Brodey fills out that bigger-than-life American poetry skin that isn't to be defined or described. What you do is recognize it for what it is, for who it is, and not be done with it, ever.

Brodey fronted a magazine that put out two issues in 1966 and 1970, Clothesline. In the 1970's he started up Jim Brodey Books which published his own Piranha Yoga (1978) and that was that. He organized reading series a couple of times, but I can't remember details. He fast-talked his way into a number of things, and often enough other poets got some kind of opportunity out of it.

It's not at all impossible to think of Brodey not being around anymore. It got to be almost impossible for him to be around. His work wasn't appreciated widely enough, and his better qualities weren't either. I might go so far as to say he didn't treat his talents with enough respect. On the other hand, I'm not one to say a poet, of all people, should go around grateful, fercrissake, if s/he really has it. I know Brodey felt something like gratitude toward the universe for being allowed to taste of glorious inspirations, and his ambiguity of feeling toward poetry, his piety one moment and profanation the next, were totally cool by me. And maybe a lot of his hunger for glory led him to be ravaged by his desires and mistakes.

Back to Book Discription

About Us  |  Contact Us  |  Home

Copyright © 2005 by Hard Press Editions