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<\/a>For starters, Wiler worked for many years as a pest exterminator, and his experience in the field often inspires or informs these poems. He reveals an unexpected sympathy, or at least pity, for the creatures he\u2019s paid to eradicate. They seem to be, in his view, unfairly demonized for trying to eke out a life, which, in their view, has nothing to do with us. In this, they become foils for the humans they plague, people trying to survive while the whole world seems bent on their destruction, people often on the margins, who could easily \u201cfall through the cracks\u201d as we say (a phrase all the more pungent when thinking about roaches, mites, and bedbugs).\u201dCherish your mice, your rats, your roaches, your bedbugs!\u201d he writes in \u201cPraises for the Insect and Mammalian Dead,\u201d a poem with overtones of the Sermon on the Mount, \u201cThey are your poorest children \/ They have no other home but yours.\u201d In his affinity for the uncouth, and in his sparse deadpan lines, Wiler seems very much like the Bukowski of Jersey City\u2014except that Wiler lacks Bukowski\u2019s overriding misanthropy and fundamental meanness. (I also doubt he ever achieved the celebrity that Bukowski enjoyed before his death).<\/p>\n\n\n\nAnother defining trait\u2014which presumably led to Wiler\u2019s relatively early death\u2014was his battle with HIV. His declining health influences many (maybe all?) of the poems in this collection, imbuing them with a mixture of fatalism, sadness, and awe. Many poems chronicle the vicissitudes of the disease, from bleeding gums to low platelet counts to neuropathic pain. Others come face to face with the inevitable: \u201cI\u2019m in a house with five other people, all infected with HIV. \/ One or the other of us could die, either sooner or later,\u201d he writes in \u201cOn Death and Dying.\u201d On the one hand, he expresses an acceptance of death, maybe even a readiness. But this is undercut by poems that convey a desire to keep going, even under miserable conditions. \u201cWhy I go to Work\u201d recounts the dreary duties of his job, concluding with his desire<\/p>\n\n\n\n
and do it all again.
And again.
And again.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
And while many poems do convey a sense of anger and regret, perhaps a hint of self-pity, most seem to arise from a sense of love, the kind that comes from knowing that all desire ends in loss. Even the vermin are beautiful, and largely emblematic of the world itself, in which the collective goes on despite countless individual deaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Wiler\u2019s \u201clove\u201d is not merely an abstract love of the world, but of a particular individual–Johanna, whom he describes as \u201ca gorgeous transsexual from El Salvador.\u201d Johanna appears throughout the book, often providing the prompts that inspire the poems–most notably, \u201cThe Love Poem Johanna Asks For,\u201d which again praises the ordinariness of their life together, the appreciation of the simplest moments. It is Johanna who allows him to make peace with the world, and stirs his desire not to leave it. Johanna is not alone\u2014she brings a friend and fellow trans into their lives\u2014Divina, who, in the title poem, dies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She died in a hospital in the city of New York
and no one knew her name.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
In fact, the preceding poem, \u201cFutbol and Gowns,\u201d is ultimately a eulogy for Divina, portrayed as an exasperating, melancholic, and unforgettable person. It ends with a sentiment that might well describes Wiler\u2019s basic worldview:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Para siempre.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jack Wiler: Divina is Divina Like many, I look back on the Covid era and think (with a nod to James Wright), \u201cI have wasted my life.\u201d Or more specifically, I have squandered my time. My self-reproach is all the … Continue reading