Poets, Poetry and Patronage: focusing on Harvard's 'Patron of Poetry'-the Brooklyn-born millionaire, John L 'Jack' Sweeney (1906-1986) who 'worked for free' in the Woodberry Poetry Room (HU). He was a pioneer in the recording of poets reading their poems. He ameliorated Harvard's fractious dealings with poets-in William James' term 'undisciplinables'-and pursued a precipitous diplomatic role on campus. Suspicious of the hermeneutics and theories within the academy, he supported American genius from modernism onwards to the 1980s including Berryman, Creeley, Cummings, Eliot, Lowell, Olson, Plath, Pound, Rich, Stevens, and 'the sturdy beggar' Dylan Thomas. Jack Sweeney reached out to a constellation of 20th century poets, not merely schools and movements but also mavericks and outsiders in conflict with professors and curricula, real poetry versus academic poetry; and he eventually quit the groves of academe for patronage outside of Harvard's walls.The non-academic Introduction and A-Z present a subversive scholarly, holographic, critical, biographical history of poetry based on unpublished letters and vast resources, unravelling the poetics, the politics, triumphs and tragedies. Poets in breakdown and breakthrough, madness and suicide, agony, ecstasy, and comedy; and producing immortal poetry and literature which is free patronage to the university system. 'Jack Sweeney, waiting, gracious, whitehaired, loveable, in the quiet sanctum of the poetry room.'-Sylvia Plath 'Jack Sweeney, he introJUICED Dylan [Thomas] to Harvard.'-Ezra Pound'You do know, don't you, Jack, that I appreciate all you have done for me and think of you always with great fondness.'-Anne Sexton'Benevolent Jack Sweeney!'-Marianne Moore 'Dear Jack, Thank you for your Phi Beta Kappa poem ("An Arch for Janus"). I liked the poem. I found it moving, especially, for some reason, the reference to John Quincy Adams.'-T. S. Eliot 'My staunch friend Jack Sweeney (himself a poet) who runs the Harvard 'record room'"-E. E. Cummings
About the Author: Kevin Kiely poet, novelist, literary critic, American Fulbright Scholar, PhD in modernist and postmodernist poetry - born County Down, Northern Ireland. Commentator on poetry, literature and the arts in Village Magazine, Irish Independent, Books Ireland, The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, The International Wallace Stevens Journal and other publications. Quintesse (St Martin's Press, New York); Breakfast with Sylvia (3rd Edition 2015) awarded the Patrick Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry, A Horse Called El Dorado Bisto Award, SOS Lusitania 'One Book One Community' title for the Lusitania Centenary. Francis Stuart: Artist and Outcast (Liffey Press, Dublin 2007; Dufour, PA 2008; Official Biography Revised Edition Areopagitica, NC 2017). His poems have appeared in many anthologies: Something Sensational To Read in the Train (anthology foreword: Brendan Kennelly) Lemon Soap Press, Dublin 2005; Catullus: One Man of Verona anthology ed. Ronan Sheehan Farmar & Farmar Ltd 2010; Ends & Beginnings anthology eds. John Gery and William Pratt AMS Press Inc, New York 2011; Windows Anthology eds. Heather Brett and Noel Monahan 2012; In Place of Love and Country eds Richard Parker & John Gery Crater Press, London 2013; Liberty, Come Galloping! Salvation, Flower: Poets Worldwide Anthology ed. Kamran Mir Hazar, Kabul Press 2013; Still Anthology Ed. Chelley McLear CAP, Belfast 2014. SALIGIA Anthology PICP, The Hague 2015; Cork Literary Review Anthology Ed. Kathy Darcy Bradshaw Books 2016; 1916-2016: An Anthology of Reactions Eds. Dominic Taylor & John Liddy Limerick Writers' Centre 2016. Author of the groundbreaking innovative Harvard's Patron: Jack of All Poets. wwwkevinkiely.net kevinkielypoet wiki