Customer Reviews

Don't Touch the Poet: The Life and Times of Joel Oppenheimer

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I really enjoyed this book. As a 1987 graduate of New England College, I had Joel as a teacher and an advisor, and most importantly as a friend. (and a fellow Mets fan!)
Joel helped me to transform from a disjointed, disorganized and immature college freshman to a more focused and interested writer.
The book shed light on his life and reminded me of a few stories he told me in my four years of knowing him.
I can vividly remember sitting in his smoke filled office arguing over my lack of attention to my studies...:)
What a great guy, I sure wish he was still here with us.

This is by far one of the best biographies of a contemporary poet I've ever read. Gilmore gives us Oppenheimer the drinker, chain-smoker, cuckold, cocksman, lover, friend, good-guy, wise-man, and master of the directly stated, simply worded, poem. Oppenheimer comes across as a person who was--somehow--more than the sum of his parts. That "somehow" was his gift for living close to the bone, surviving break-ups and bouts with the bottle, and ultimately writing well. No hagiography (as so many paeons to the Beats turn out to be), Don't Touch the Poet allows us to hear from enemies and not-so-impressed-ex-wives as well as life-long friends. The end result is similar to Boswell's portrait of Dr. Johnson holding forth in his dressing gown: at one and the same time a bit off-putting, yet somewhat charming, wholly fascinating, and, one feels, totally true to life.

As good a biography as we are likely to get of Joel Oppenheimer and perhaps the only one. Joel's earlier years are especially well researched and told. The absence of Amiri Baraka's voice is a pity.

The book would have benefited with more input from Pete Hamill, Sam Abrams and a few others. Also, a few of Joel's more notable students are silent: Tom Weatherly; and Bob Rixon, who has been telling lovely anecdotes about Joel for years over WFMU in New York.

Which is maybe a complaint that the book is too short at 246 pages. But Gilmore writes with devotion and leaves us with the belief that "every spring he saw we see still"

Fine work.

A superb listener, Gilmore has tracked down and evoked from an ever-widening circle of Joe Oppenheimer's friends, enemies (few), and family the life of amid-century American poet. It's rare that biography begins from such carefully sorted living testimony. Gilmore's resulting insightful observations are met on the page by an inviting and enlisting set of Joel Oppenheimer's poems. To read DON'T TOUCH THE POET is to be touched by a poet.

Joel Oppenheimer was an important, influential Beat poet, and Mr. Gilmore has rescued him and his era. Readers who remember Oppenheimer will be happy to meet him again. For my part, I was glad to be introduced to a great personality in American letters and to the generous sampling of his poetry that appears herein. A model biography, in its meticulousness and its objectivity that is always tempered with affection.

I am fortunate enough to have known Joel Oppenheimer pretty well. He was my advisor and professor at New England College for a couple years before he passed away. Lymon (also a past professor of mine) has done a fantastic job describing Joel and his workings. There was so much about Joel that I didn't know and wish I had known. What I do know about Joel is that he was a positive presence. He was also very much a positive force in my life as a student.

Thanks, Lymon. Being taught by you, once again, was a pleasure...