Divina Is Divina

Jack Wiler knows what it's like to lose things. Like the sun. Like the moon. Now we know what it's like to lose Jack Wiler. But we don't. Because his poems are here. Like the sun and the moon. And some of them are perfect. "We are Monsters." "How to Succeed in Pest Control." "Talking With Nat."The title poem, "Divina is Divina." And "My Beloved City," may be the best 9/11 poem ever written. Reading the poems is like having Jack back. With this book, his best, maybe more people will read his perfect poems and get it, that Jack Wiler's voice is essential to US poetics. Like sex, and love, and food, and cockroaches. Like the sun and the moon. Keep talking, Jack. We're listening.---Bob Holman

Oh Jack. What can I say? What can anybody say about Divina is Divina? It's like you have all the words---for life and death, and every grungy and gorgeous, sweet and stupid reality in between. Plus love, and plenty of it. Who wrote the book of love? You did, and the clang of your voice is food for all of us dogs, bacteria, and "lunatics coming in from the cold."---Alicia Oslriker

In his third and final collection, hack Wiler, who died in 2009, explores one of the fundamental dilemmas of human experience: How to enjoy life when you are acutely aware the Angel of Death could come to visit at any moment. While never losing sight of his mortality, he turns his attention to the present moment and examines, with humor, compassion and fearlessness, the pleasures in life---especially the varieties of love---from friendship to sex---and how we are capable of ruining those pleasures for ourselves and others. The resultant poems are deeply and insistently spiritual though not in the conventional sense of the word. Through them, Jack helps us to understand that, since life and death are, each in its own way, gifts, we must live with "commitment, relish and abandon" and then, when we die, "greet our angel with a smile."

Jack Wiler was raised in New Jersey and lived in Jersey City until his death in 2009. Diagnosed with AIDS in 2001, Jack spent the last years of his life writing and educating students about poetry. For much of his life, he worked in pest control, most notably for Acme Exterminating in New York. He worked for Long Shot Magazine for many years and in association with the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation worked as a visiting poet in the schools. Jack was a frequent participant at The Frost Place in New Hampshire and performed his poetry across the United States. His poetry has been anthologized in Aloud: Voices From the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Bum Rush the Page, and The Breath of Parted Lips: Voices from the Robert Frost Place, Volume II. His collection, Fun Being Me, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2006. Jack's words can be found online at http://jackwiler.blogspot.com.