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Powerless: Selected Poems, 1973-1990
includes Dlugos' final poems, intro Dennis Cooper
150 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
99 people want to read
About the author
Tim Dlugos
21 books16 followersPoet Tim Dlugos was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. From 1968 to 1970, he was a Christian Brother at LaSalle College in Philadelphia. He left LaSalle and moved to Washington, DC, where he participated in the Mass Transit poetry readings. In the late 1970s, he moved to New York City and was active in the Lower East Side literary scene, where he was a contributing editor to Christopher Street magazine and on the Poetry Project staff.
Dlugos’s books of poetry include High There (1973), Je Suis Ein Americano (1979), Incredible Risks (1980), Entre Nous (1981), A Fast Life (1982), Strong Place (1992), Powerless: Selected Poems 1973–1990 (1995), and the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. Marked by witty observation, narratives that recount life’s daily minutia, and heavily enjambed lines, Dlugos’s poetry shares its immediate, offhand style with the work of Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler. Dlugos’s work is also noteworthy for its firsthand depiction of the AIDS pandemic.
Dlugos’s poetry inspired the 2011 collaboration with painter Philip Monaghan titled At Moments Like These He Feels Farthest Away, which paired Monaghan’s work with the Dlugos poem “Gilligan’s Island” and was shown at New York University’s Fales Library.
After learning that he was HIV positive, Dlugos studied at Yale University Divinity School to become an Episcopalian priest. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.
Dlugos’s books of poetry include High There (1973), Je Suis Ein Americano (1979), Incredible Risks (1980), Entre Nous (1981), A Fast Life (1982), Strong Place (1992), Powerless: Selected Poems 1973–1990 (1995), and the posthumous A Fast Life: Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), edited by David Trinidad. Marked by witty observation, narratives that recount life’s daily minutia, and heavily enjambed lines, Dlugos’s poetry shares its immediate, offhand style with the work of Frank O’Hara and James Schuyler. Dlugos’s work is also noteworthy for its firsthand depiction of the AIDS pandemic.
Dlugos’s poetry inspired the 2011 collaboration with painter Philip Monaghan titled At Moments Like These He Feels Farthest Away, which paired Monaghan’s work with the Dlugos poem “Gilligan’s Island” and was shown at New York University’s Fales Library.
After learning that he was HIV positive, Dlugos studied at Yale University Divinity School to become an Episcopalian priest. He died of AIDS-related complications in 1990.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 9, 2025
I want Tim Dlugos to be rediscovered very badly.
May 8, 2008
Dlugos needs a COLLECTED POEMS, seriously! Something which includes his long and marvelous poem FAST LIFE.
But this is what we have to work with, and IT'S GOOD! Some of his poems he wrote while dying of AIDS, like "G-9," will never leave you once you've read them. And it's not just your mind that holds them, it's your arms you use to hold others with that hold them. Is that corny? I'm not caring if it is. Here's "G-9" published online for EOAGH: http://chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethr...
After reading "G-9" I'm CERTAIN you will order a copy of this selected poems to read EVERYTHING YOU CAN BY DLUGOS!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
But this is what we have to work with, and IT'S GOOD! Some of his poems he wrote while dying of AIDS, like "G-9," will never leave you once you've read them. And it's not just your mind that holds them, it's your arms you use to hold others with that hold them. Is that corny? I'm not caring if it is. Here's "G-9" published online for EOAGH: http://chax.org/eoagh/issue3/issuethr...
After reading "G-9" I'm CERTAIN you will order a copy of this selected poems to read EVERYTHING YOU CAN BY DLUGOS!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
June 16, 2021
especially:
Retrovir
Ordinary Time
G-9
Retrovir
Ordinary Time
G-9
February 8, 2009
This book of selected poems covers the life work of Tim Dlugos, unfortunately his life was cut short due to AIDS. His later work, including his long poem G-9, addresses the early years of AIDS in NYC and how it affected him and his circle of friends. Much of his writing is direct speak, explanitory, as if in a letter, naming friends and giving details of his life.
In the preface by Dennis Cooper lays out his summary of the four phases of Tim's poetry:
1) "His early work is clever, gentle, infused with a melancholic longing for ideal romancy, and full of carefully attenuated horniness, often structured around and set in contrast to the fake perfect emotional lives of the TV sitcom characters with whom he grew up.
2) "The second phase sees his work becoming more physically enigmatic and complicattedly lyrical. His characteristic wit is more subtle and continuous and the punch lines he favored earlier on are diffused into recurring fragments or interludes of an ongoing, pervasive joke far more scary and comic."
3) "In the third and perhaps weakest phase of his work, which paralleled a period of heavy drinking and on and off depression in his personal life, the poems become overly dense with word games and references to pop cultureal icons." He refers to him as overacheiving in this phase.
4) The last phase of his writing, which paralleled his testing positive for HIV virus and finding the first stable love relationship of his life, is maybe the strongest. These late poems are the simplest, most graceful, and most emotionally direct of his works."
From this last section in his poem Retrovir (the generic name for AZT) he writes: "...the afternoon you're part of./Here the sky is always blue/and white, the colors of the pills/that poison you while they extend your life,/inoculating you with time/that draws you back with fingers/curved around the bowering." He never lived to know how wrong that was, the realization of the cocktail, how one needs three drugs to block the virus, which was discovered after his death.
This book is a picture into the past, of his life as a poet, and how he and his community were affected by HIV. I am glad for the people who took the time to ensure this book was published. His book is an important piece of literature from a gay man, which AIDS unfortately has been intimately tied to. It gives us history. It is a view into a gay man's life in the 1970's. I love his poem "If I Were Bertolt Brecht" and "The Young Poet," which is dedicated to Dennis Cooper. The group of poets he was part of are present throughout his giving the reader a rich experience of history, time and place.
In the preface by Dennis Cooper lays out his summary of the four phases of Tim's poetry:
1) "His early work is clever, gentle, infused with a melancholic longing for ideal romancy, and full of carefully attenuated horniness, often structured around and set in contrast to the fake perfect emotional lives of the TV sitcom characters with whom he grew up.
2) "The second phase sees his work becoming more physically enigmatic and complicattedly lyrical. His characteristic wit is more subtle and continuous and the punch lines he favored earlier on are diffused into recurring fragments or interludes of an ongoing, pervasive joke far more scary and comic."
3) "In the third and perhaps weakest phase of his work, which paralleled a period of heavy drinking and on and off depression in his personal life, the poems become overly dense with word games and references to pop cultureal icons." He refers to him as overacheiving in this phase.
4) The last phase of his writing, which paralleled his testing positive for HIV virus and finding the first stable love relationship of his life, is maybe the strongest. These late poems are the simplest, most graceful, and most emotionally direct of his works."
From this last section in his poem Retrovir (the generic name for AZT) he writes: "...the afternoon you're part of./Here the sky is always blue/and white, the colors of the pills/that poison you while they extend your life,/inoculating you with time/that draws you back with fingers/curved around the bowering." He never lived to know how wrong that was, the realization of the cocktail, how one needs three drugs to block the virus, which was discovered after his death.
This book is a picture into the past, of his life as a poet, and how he and his community were affected by HIV. I am glad for the people who took the time to ensure this book was published. His book is an important piece of literature from a gay man, which AIDS unfortately has been intimately tied to. It gives us history. It is a view into a gay man's life in the 1970's. I love his poem "If I Were Bertolt Brecht" and "The Young Poet," which is dedicated to Dennis Cooper. The group of poets he was part of are present throughout his giving the reader a rich experience of history, time and place.
Want to read
May 8, 2008I'm a big fan of his work but had no idea this book included some of his last poems, so thanks to Juliet Cook for putting it on her list where I saw it. 'Can't wait to read this. In my opinion his "Healing the World from Battery Park" is one of the best poems ever written. It's hard to fathom what he may have written had he not died so tragically young. 'So grateful he left us so many, including these.
Go here
to read his poem "G-9" in the journal EOAGH.
Go here
to read his poem "G-9" in the journal EOAGH.
June 15, 2016
I don't read poetry much- because I'm a barbarian, because my logical mind rejects it as difficult to order, who knows why but it rarely works for me. So when I say I loved this it's tempting to say, So you know it must be good if EVEN I thought so but probably it makes more sense to say, I'm completely unqualified to comment on poetry and it's worth or lack thereof. That said, I really liked this. Recommend.
September 17, 2012
Incredibly wise and beautiful, these reflections on love, sex, art, addiction, religion, friendship, politics, illness and death are both introspective and editorial. Some read like parables, though together they narrate a unique and extraordinary human life.
May 31, 2007
A revelation.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews