Passings :: Thomas Elias Weatherly
Thomas Elias Weatherly, born in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1942, passed away July 15, 2014. Poet Burt Kimmelman tells of Weatherly as “a brilliant, eclectic poet, the craft and reach of his poetry astonishing. He was a member of the inaugural poetry workshop at St. Mark’s, under the tutelage of Joel Oppenheimer, and the second cook at the Lions Head when all manner of writer and poet could be found sucking up the nectar there. No degrees post the U.S. Marine Corps Tom was, among other things, the resident bibliophile at the Strand Bookstore in later years, before leaving NYC to return ‘home’ to the South. He taught variously at a number of colleges and universities, from time to time, and with Ted Wilentz edited what at the time was a game-changing anthology of contemporary African American poetry, titled Natural Process (Hill & Wang, 1971) His own poetry was also not only eclectic but game-changing as well.”
