Background
Weiner was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Classical High School, until 1946, and then Radcliffe College.
(Poetry. In WE SPEAK SILENT, an opus of the quirky relatio...)
Poetry. In WE SPEAK SILENT, an opus of the quirky relationships between people and their words, Hannah Weiner becomes the vessel for the emotional spectrum of the human comedy. It is a continuing adventure in language. Hannah Weiner is also the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including THE CODE POEMS, CLAIRVOYANT JOURNAL, and LITTLE BOOKS/ INDIANS.
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Weiner was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Classical High School, until 1946, and then Radcliffe College.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1950, with a dissertation on Henry James.
Weiner started writing poetry in 1963 though her first chapbook, The Magritte Poems after René Magritte, was published in 1970. lieutenant is not indicative of her latter work, being "basically a New York School attempt to write verse in response to the paintings of René Magritte". These included "Hannah Weiner at Her Job", "a sort of open house hosted by her employer, Ampere-hour Schreiber Company, Incorporated." and "Fashion Show Poetry Event" with Eduardo Costa, John Perreault, Andy Warhol and others in a "collaborative and innovative enterprise that incorporated conceptual art, design, poetry and performance."
In the early 1970s, Weiner began writing a series of journals that were partly the result of her experiments with automatic writing and partly a result of her schizophrenia.
Judith Goldman claims that politics and ethics were central to a mode of writing she developed and called "clair-style," which used "words and phrases clairvoyantly seen" and that Weiner arrived at a method of composing that employed "these seen elements exclusively." Goldman also provides the insight that "Weiner let no representation of herself circulate that did not take her status as a clairvoyant into accountant" She influenced a number of the language poets and was included in the In the American Tree anthology of Language poetry (edited by Ron Silliman).
(Poetry. In WE SPEAK SILENT, an opus of the quirky relatio...)
Beginning with Little Books/Indians (1980) and Spoke (1984) Weiner"s work engaged with Native American politics, particularly the American Indian Movement and the case of imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier. Interest in Weiner continues into the 21st century with the recent publication of Hannah Weiner’s Open House (2007), "a representative selection spanning her decades of poetic output" This volume was edited by Patrick F. Durgin, who provides an overview of Weiner"s art:.
During the 1960s she also organized and participated in a number of happenings with other members of the New York art scene, where she had been living for some time.