Gildzen

        Gildzen & the Century Dimes with Thurston Moore at Bowery Poetry Club (photo by Lisa Wascovich)

*   *   *

Like many poets before him Alex Gildzen has used the facts and foibles of his life as fodder for his work. As early as 1970 he wrote Dec. ‘70:Ohio, a forerunner to his first major publication, The Year Book (North Atlantic Books, 1974).

These first attempts at journals-as-poetry were later joined by Postcard Memoirs. This project combined Gildzen’s fascination with autobiography and love of mail art. He used the size of a postcard as parameter in beginning the story of his life. Each postcard was mailed -- either from home or from travels as far away as Morocco -- to a select group of friends and fellow writers. The first hundred were collected in a limited edition in 1990.

But all previous writing was finger exercise preparing Gildzen for his master work, Alex in Movieland. This ambitious serial work combines the poet’s love of film, appreciation of conceptual art and concerns of stretching autobiographical forms to present the movie of his life. It is a work he plans to continue through the rest of that life.

Gildzen was born on the Presidio of Monterey while his father was stationed in California during World War II. He lived the majority of his life in Ohio.  He grew up in Elyria where he was teen columnist for the Chronicle-Telegram, edited his high school newspaper and wrote his first poems. Gildzen attended university in Kent where he was drama critic for the student paper and began the little magazine Toucan with R.L. Carothers.  Although never a resident of Cleveland he is often identified as such because d.a. levy included him in the Poetry/Cleveland issue of Congress in 1967 followed in the next year by being one of “Eleven Cleveland Poets” in a special supplement in the British magazine Asylum.    Gildzen later taught English at Kent State before becoming a rare books librarian, cataloging the papers of James Broughton and Jean-Claude van Itallie and the archives of the Open Theater and co-editing the bibliographical journal The Serif with Dean Keller.  He also edited the library’s Occasional Papers which published poetry by John Ashbery and Gary Snyder, prose by Richard Grossinger and Anais Nin, and art by Alex Katz and Robert Smithson. He took an early retirement so he could move to Santa Fe to write full time.  While serving on the board of the local AIDS organization, he produced the first pop concert in the history of the Santa Fe Opera.

James Bertolino published Gildzen’s first book, Into the Sea (Abraxas Press), in 1969. It consisted of only three poems. Later titles include Funny Ducks (Ghost Dance Press, 1973), New Notes (Shelly’s Press, 1978), Postcard Poems (Viscerally Press, 1978), Skins (Catcher Press, 1981) and The Avalanche of Time (North Atlantic Books, 1986). He is co-editor with Maggie Anderson of the anthology A Gathering of Poets (Kent State University Press, 1992). A bibliography of his published work is available in Dimitris Karageorgiou’s Gildzen at 50 (Toucan Press, 1993). At the suggestion of Todd Hughes he made his internet debut in 1996 with the publication of "Caught in a Net" on Hughes’ Lizabeth Scott website.  Subsequently he has been Poet of the Week on “Poetry Super Highway” and author of Poem o’ the Week on “Deep Cleveland Junkmail Oracle.”  His online chapbooks have appeared on “Muse Apprentice Guild” and “SpaceBreather.”  HIs most recent print book was February 03 (Slow Toe, 2003), a collaboration with Todd Colby, Thurston Moore and Matthew Wascovich.

Over the years Gildzen has been drawn by David Hockney, filmed by Richard Myers and photographed by Jonathan Williams, Stathis Orphanos and Joel Singer.  On stage he has appeared in the Mabou Mines production of “Cold Harbor” and in “Fool Moon” in Hollywood.  He edited 1976’s “A Little Anthology of Lists” with contributions by Ira Joel Haber, Bernadette Mayer, Paul Metcalf and Thomas Meyer.  He collaborated with Andrew Lundwall on the poem sequence “Chocolate & Daffodils” and contributed to Ken B. Miller’s Abe Lincoln mail art project exhibited at Philadelphia’s Highwire Gallery in the summer of 2004. 

Quaker Square/Akron  2004 (photo by Steve Tills)