Haselwood, David.

Foye, Raymond. "John Wieners," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 16. The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America. edited by Ann Charters, 572-583. (Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1983.) "Wieners, John."Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. (reproduced in Biography Resource Center). http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC (accessed March 4, 2007). White, Connie Kachel. "… and then you go deeper." The Shocker: WSU Alumni Magazine, Online Edition. Wichita State University Alumni Association. http://webs.wichita.edu/dt/ shockermag. (accessed 0October 20, 2010). Johnston, Alastair.A Bibliography of the Auerhahn Press and Its Successor Dave Haselwood Books, Compiled by a Printer. Berkley: Poltroon Press, 1976.

American poet John Wieners (1934-2002) is identified with both the Black Mountain School as well as the Beats. His poetry contains themes of drug abuse and mental illness, as well as a concern for women's rights, gay rights, and other social issues.

Wieners was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1934. He received his A.B. from Boston College in 1954. With encouragement from poet Charles Olson (1910-1970), Wieners attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1955-1956, where he studied writing with poets Robert Creeley (1926-2005) and Robert Duncan (1919-1988). Wieners is also identified with the American Beat poets, having spent time in San Francisco at the height of the movement in the late 1950s. Wieners's first collection of poetry, The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958), was written in San Francisco and became an instant sensation with the Beats.

In 1961, Wieners moved to New York City with aid from Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Foundation and returned to Boston in 1964. His interaction with Robert Wilson of New York's Phoenix Book Shop brought about the publication by Wilson and James Carr of Wieners's second collection, Ace of Pentacles (1964), a volume that received much positive critical attention. Wieners studied with his mentor Charles Olson at S.U.N.Y Buffalo from 1965 until 1967, during which time he wrote and published Pressed Wafer (1967).

Struggles with substance abuse and mental illness over the course of Wieners's life led to periods of institutionalization in 1959, 1969, and at various times in the early 1970s. Yet Wieners continued to write and publish, gaining insight and inspiration from those difficult times, and the early 1970s proved to be a particularly prolific period for Wieners. While institutionalized in 1969, Wieners composed Asylum Poems (1969). 1970 saw the publication of Nerves, Wieners’s first international volume. Wieners was also very active in promoting political causes, taking part in the antiwar movement, speaking out against racism, and campaigning for the rights of women and homosexuals. Cincinnati Pike, Or Behind the Sate Capitol (1975) was another landmark piece for Wieners, a volume that combines a variety of media and poetic forms.

Wieners published little new work after 1975 and remained largely out of the public eye. In 1986, he produced a retrospective collection Selected Poems, 1958-1984, edited by Raymond Foye and with a forward by Allen Ginsberg. In 1996, Wieners’s previously unpublished journal was produced in an edited form by The Sun and Moon Press; the volume documents his life in San Francisco around the time he composed The Hotel Wentley Poems . The volume titled The Journal of John Wieners is to be called 707 Scott Street for Billy Holiday, 1959 contains Wieners’s prose, poetry, and various impressions of the creative atmosphere in San Francisco at the onset of the 1960s.

Wieners died on March 1, 2002, in Boston, Massachusetts.

Friend of the Beat poets and artists in San Francisco, American publisher David Haselwood opened the Auerhahn Press in 1958 with the goal of publishing the books of young Beat poets that many larger, commercial publishers would not.

John Wieners's The Hotel Wentley Poems (1958) was the first book published by the Auerhahn Press, with Haselwood handling the design and layout and the printing delegated to the commercial firm East Wind Printers. Ultimately, the final product did not meet Haselwood's expectations and some of Wieners’s language had been censored. This convinced Haselwood to purchase a Hartford letterpress and handset future publications. The Auerhahn Press went on to publish poetry by Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, and Diane DiPrima, along with other notable Beat poets from the San Francisco Renaissance. Haselwood took on a partner, Andrew Hoyem, in 1961. Constantly struggling to remain financially solvent, the press survived thanks to fundraisers and commissioned publications. However, financial problems eventually overwhelmed the business and the Auerhahn Press closed in January 1965. The press had published a total of 40 books. Haselwood continued to publish 18 more books, working with many of the same writers he had before, under the imprint Dave Haselwood Books. This included the 1965 edition of The Hotel Wentley Poems . Haselwood closed this second publishing venture in 1968, moving on to other interests.

From the guide to the John Wieners publisher's files for, The Hotel Wentley Poems, 1963-1971, 1965, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)