Sadly, we bring this week to a close with news of another member of our poetic community lost: James L. Cory, a pioneering queer author known to many in Philadelphia and beyond, passed away after a heroic battle with cancer on Saturday, October 12th.
Cory's good friend (and longtime Electronic Poetry Center managing editor) Jack Krick broke the news, and offered this remembrance: "He was an inventive, reflective, and earnest poet and writer, one whose work was often comic, but sublimely so. He was an inveterate reader and collector of books, a studied and discriminating listener to both jazz and classical music, and a sterling friend. I will miss him very much, as, I'm certain, so will his many, many friends and admirers." Cory offered up this beguiling autobiography in the collaborative online anthology Elective Affinities that bears witness to his diverse passions and influences, as well as his character:
Born 1953 in Oklahoma, grew up in NYC suburb (of Connecticut) and a few years in the Midwest. My father sold carpet and made a science of non-communication. Seven brothers and sisters, most of them difficult. Learned about modernist poetry and how to read same when a house painter came down off his ladder one afternoon and explicated a Wallace Stevens poem in the anthology I was reading, circa age 14. Studied European history at Penn State. Wrote poetry beginning late teens. Active in radical politics. The most interesting person I’ve met was a threadbare and anonymous gentleman who one afternoon in the late 80s appeared to give me an impromptu, room-by-room tour of the Art Institute of Chicago, then the architectural treasures of the Loop, full of ingenious explanations and insights, before vanishing around a corner. I believe this was Louis Sullivan’s ghost. Recently I stopped watching television.
While we don't have a proper PennSound author page for Cory, we wanted to highlight two recordings from him that you can find in our archives. First, from 2003's landmark The Philly Sound: New Poetry Weekend you can hear Cory's contributions to the opening event, the "9x9 Panel," hosted by CA Conrad, which featured Cory along with Jim Behrle, Edmund Berrigan, hassen, Sofia Memon, Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore, Deborah Richards, Molly Russakoff, and Prageeta Sharma. Next, there's Cory's brief set from a 2007 launch event for EOAGH issue #3 ("Queering Language") at Philly's legendary Robin's Books, which includes the poems "Chat," "He," and "Memory at 53."
We send our condolences to Cory's family and friends, in Philadelphia and worldwide, and mourn his passing.
