Tim Dlugos

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts on August 5, 1950, Francis Timothy Dlugos later grew up in Arlington, Virginia. He joined the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order, in 1968 and entered their college, La Salle, in Philadelphia. He left the Brothers a few years later in 1971 to openly embrace a politically active, gay lifestyle. He eventually left La Salle before graduating. In Washington, D.C. Dlugos worked on Ralph Nader's Public Citizen and become heavily involved with the Mass Transit poetry scene. 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." Dlugos moved to New York in the late seventies 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 the downtown scene. Whether writing about pop culture, New York, being gay, alcoholism, or AIDS, content always came secondary to style in Dlugos' poetry. 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.

[edit] Books

  • Coming Attractions. Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1980.
  • A Fast Life. Chatsworth, CA: Sherwood Press, 1982.
  • For Years. Washington D.C.: Jawbone, 1977.
  • Entre Nous. Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1982.
  • High There. Washington D.C.: Some of Us Press, 1973.
  • Incredible Risks. New York: Hard Press, 1981.
  • Je Suis Ein Americano. Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1979.
  • Powerless: Selected Poems. Ed. David Trinidad. New York: High Risk, 1996.
  • Strong Place: Poems. New York: Amethyst Press, 1992.
 This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.