Joel Allegretti, a long time writer from Fort Lee, New Jersey, was kind enough to sit down with me and let me ask him a few questions.  Joel is incredibly involved in the NJ literary scene. He’s a who’s-who kinda man.  He is a writer who is continually engaged within our metro community.  He believes that readings are essential to a writer’s success, and I couldn’t agree more.  Poetry is an art form that began as an oral institution, and it’s clear that Joel takes that pretty seriously.

Yes, the title of this post is indeed a loaded one. However, if you have ever had the chance to hear Joe Weil read poetry, it would all make sense.  On Thursday, January 6th, I had the pleasure of listening to Joe once more in Montclair, NJ at the Montclair Library. “Whenever I come to New Jersey,” Weil said, “I get nostalgic for friends.” Weil was planted and grew tall in a working class family out of Elizabeth, NJ. He begins his reading talking about the sadism of first grade and the nuns who told him he wouldn’t come to greatness. “They used to call it word blindness,” he states, and of course now we call it dyslexia. He was also left handed which many years ago came with negative connotations, like buying those extra few pairs of left-handed scissors was just asking too much. Weil writes about this experience in his poem, “In First Grade,” where he pens:

Johnny Gazumba was forced to help me with my penmanship/ which, according to Sister George, was seven circles of hell/ lower than chicken scratch/ Everyone (the nuns and cafeteria ladies) said he’d be a presit one day./ Twenty years later, he overdosed on smack but/ for all I know, his penmanship was still intact…

40+ years later, Weil reads with such fluency and passion, you’d think he would have been a nerdy kid with a dictionary.

We’re serializing William Weekley’s book thinger, for the next couple of weeks, probably every Tuesday and Thursday. You can read the first part over here.

Be aware, he has an aversion for writing normal sentences, or making paragraphs. Make of that what you…will.

(then), I am beginning to discover that it goes on and on so much deeper than anything complacently surface-like. you could just imagine those song-sung suburban woes of boredom and apathy. out there someewhere is a whole country—HELL—a whole fucking generation full of desolate children who grew up into the void. a walking youthcult you can find at any coffee shop or clothing store super-center vapid and tilled right from good old American soil. maybe this is a curse, our curse.

Taylor Quilty and i were never really friends in high-school, but we went to the same small one & we had a whole bunch of cigarette-smoking mutual friends. we were never great friends after high-school either but he lived with Alec Gabin, Joe Plourde, Eskimeaux & myself at 1331 in North Bergen NJ for about a month & one particular weekend he half wrecked my car (and another particular weekend we embarked on a long road trip with Alec which resulted in chipped teeth, crack, a first tattoo, a hippie commune, and a lot of lot of dr…iving).  since 1331 he’s lived in Brooklyn with Ray Weiss (Le Rug), then in Philly, then he lived back home for a while… most recently he’s been in and out of some rehab in Baltimore MD and i haven’t much heard from him…  i know he’s been doing a lot of painting.  for a short while in August ’10 he was writing some beautiful words on tamur.records’ blog that i’d like to reprint in this venue. here’s what i’ve got:

We’re serializing William Weekley’s book thinger, for the next couple of weeks, probably every Tuesday and Thursday. You can read Part one here.

Be aware, he has an aversion for writing normal sentences, or making paragraphs. Make of that what you…will.

i sold my soul for, at best, a mediocre life.

for at my best, i sold life a mediocre soul.

WHEN WE FINALLY got around to taking the acid i was just a little worried that it may not work, since it had been sitting at the bottom of my sock drawer for over two months.

In December of 2006 I drove my dad’s ’96 Toyota Corolla to the American border in Buffalo, NY and said goodbye to the best maple syrup in the world. (I don’t really think any one cares much about maple syrup outside of Canada…)  As I got the okay from the Stone Cold Steve Austin-lookin’ border guard, I was talking to my country mile after mile aloud. Things like, ”I’m sorry I’m leaving…” (One of the best Saves the Day songs ever) and ”I don’t know how I will live without you…” were coming out time and time again.  I felt a bit weird at the beginning speaking out loud to a country that could not console me or answer me back, but I continued to speak and write my way out of Canada for years.

Writing has always been a big part of my life.  I spent most of my university career writing through lectures and making artistic men swoon with my powers of sexually explicit poetry.

The Will in question.

We’re going to start serializing William Weekley’s book thinger, for the next couple of weeks, probably every Tuesday and Thursday. Be aware, he has an aversion for writing normal sentences, or making paragraphs. Make of that what you…will.

Will, or “Wil” as he prefers to be called, is a writer/graphic designer/artist dude from Iselin, New Jersey, the land of 1,000 Indian food restaurants, dinky suburbs, and the Metropark, which can help take you very far away from Iselin. Will did that once, and this tale chronicles some of that, and other stuff. Get in touch with him. You can get him to make graphics and other weird-o stuff, that is if you can get him to wake up.

this was all written during a period of confusion.

disregard the past, present and now satisfy old premonitions

and future memories.

so, lets go.

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