Tim Dlugos

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Tim Dlugos (1950-1990). Courtesy Hyperallergic.

Francis Timothy Dlugos (August 5, 1950 - December 3, 1990) was an American poet.

Life

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, he grew up in Arlington, Virginia.

In 1968, Dlugos joined the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order and entered their college, La Salle College, in Philadelphia. He left the Brothers in 1971 to openly embrace a politically active, gay lifestyle. He eventually left La Salle before graduating and moved to Washington, D.C..

Dlugos worked on Ralph Nader's Public Citizen and become heavily involved with the Mass Transit poetry scene. His 1st book of poetry, High There, was published by the groundbreaking Some of Us Press.

In the late 1970s Dlugos moved to New York City, where he edited and contributed to such magazines as Christopher Street, New York Native and The Poetry Project Newsletter. He read everywhere and with almost everyone involved in the downtown scene. Whether writing about pop culture, New York, being gay, alcoholism or AIDS, content always came secondary to style in Dlugos' poetry. His poetry was published widely in various journals including BOMB magazine, the Paris Review, and the Washington Review.

Sometime after being diagnosed HIV positive, Dlugos decided to abandon his career as a fundraiser to become a priest in the Episcopalian church where he could utilize and express his experiences as a gay man.

While studying at the Yale School of Divinity, Dlugos died of AIDS-related complications on December 3, 1990.

Writing

Describing his poetry in None of the Above, an early anthology in which Dlugos appeared, he stated: "1. I try to write out of the time & space I find myself in. 2. My best work takes the 'timeless' -- spontaneous goofs, flights, body motions -- & drags it onto timeline, the 'real world' where most of us live. I am 'successful' when the language (clean combination of words) takes me or someone else back to the original combination of feelings & perceptions 'out there,' or somewhere equally nice. 3. My work is part of the nostalgia craze; all of it reminds me of where I used to be. 4. Grace, in a very orthodox sense, is my major preoccupation."

Recognition

In 1996, David Trinidad released a selected edition of Dlugos' poetry. In 2011 Nightboat Books published Dlugos' A Fast Life: The Collected Poems, edited by Trinidad.

Publications

• High There. Washington, DC: Some of Us Press, 1973.
• For Years. Washington, DC: Jawbone Press, 1977.
• Je Suis Ein Americano. Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1979.
• Coming Attractions (Little Caesar Press)
• Incredible Risks. New York: Hard Press, 1981.
• A Fast Life (Sherwood Press)
• Entre Nous. Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1982.
• Strong Place: Poems. New York: Amethyst Press, 1992.
• Powerless: Selected poems, 1973-1990 (edited by David Trinidad). New York & London: Serpent's Tail, 1996.
• A Fast Life: Collected poems. Calicoon: Nightboat Books, 2011.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Sleep Like Spoons (Tim Dlugos)

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• Tim Dlugos 1950-1990 at the Poetry Foundation.
• Tim Dlugos at PoemHunter (1 poem).

Etc.

• NYU's Fales Library and Special Collections guide to the Tim Dlugos Papers