Tony Gloeggler: “I started writing poetry because I was always pretty quiet and no one was really talking about things I was feeling and thinking. Trying to turn my thoughts into a poem helped me understand myself and how I fit and didn’t fit in the world. That’s still what I’m doing whenever I write. This one’s about the guys in the group home I managed (the place I fit best, where things made the most sense) and how so few people outside the residence viewed them like they viewed anyone else, how they’re mostly just like everybody else. A little nicer or nuttier, funnier, weirder, less guarded. How a couple of them are two of my favorite people ever, how they could sometimes annoy the crap out of me. And how I miss them (apologies to Lee and Florencio for not letting them in the poem but luckily they don’t read poetry just like nearly everybody else) and the staff. Especially Larry.” (web)
Tony Gloeggler: “I started writing poetry because I was always pretty quiet and no one was really talking about things I was feeling and thinking. Trying to turn my thoughts into a poem helped me understand myself and how I fitted and didn’t fit in the world. That’s still what I’m doing whenever I write. I’ve written a lot of poems about people in my life and no one seems too happy about it. I’ve got a number of poems about my father and nearly all of them have focused on our differences, conflicts. But I’m thinking he might like this one. My mom too. If they ever saw it.”
Tony Gloeggler: “My closest friend died a couple of months ago. I was shocked, but not surprised when I heard the news that Friday afternoon. He had been having a terrible time since Covid, but I figured he would tough his way through just like he fought his way through everything else in his life. We met through poetry, and we exchanged poems for at least a dozen years with unwavering support and stinging criticism—‘you’re joking with this shit, right?’ But it was everything else that drew us closer. I saw a lot of myself in him, and some things I wished I had more of, and I thought he felt that way about me. He was just a unique, no-bullshit kind of guy with a scary sense of humor and a tender heart he was willing to show as he went through life or put down on a page. He was really good at being himself. That’s what I’m going to miss most.”
Tony Gloeggler: “Is a ballplayer an athlete? My identity as a kid was being the best baseball player in the neighborhood. It was the one place I connected with my dad playing catch after dinner, him in a crouch and me with a Juan Marichael wind-up or hands on my knees at third base and him trying to hit one through me. The local hoods gave me a free pass because they played in the same leagues as me, and they knew I was better than them and respected it. I still hate running and exercising and when I went for my high school try out, the blue-eyed blonde senior captain laughed at me when I couldn’t figure out a four count jumping jack and my arms started shaking at my fifth push-up, but in my first intra-squad game, I threw one behind his head, stared him down, then struck out the side on nine pitches and was the only freshman to make the team. Also real good in schoolyard basketball and football, and I played all kinds of softball until I was 50. I think my poetry is affected by it in the sense that I work at it with the same kind of focus, and that time I no hit the rich kids school in the eighth grade CYO Cham-pionship game still means more to me than the time I got a poem in the New York Times. And even though I don’t do shit now, I’ll always feel more like a ball player than a poet or artist.” (web)
Tony Gloeggler: “A life-long resident of NYC, I was born in Brooklyn but left with my family during the white flight of the ’60s. I grew up in Flushing, now live in Richmond Hill, and helped open a group home for developmentally disabled kids in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, decades before the quasi cool hordes moved in with their bars and restaurants, laptops, nannies and doggies to mess up one more fine NY neighborhood. Writing started out for me as the place where I got my thoughts and feelings down when I had no other place to bring them. It is still that place, the place I go to first when I’m trying to figure things out, way before I can say something to either myself or anyone else. I wrote this one after some bad, out of nowhere, overwhelming medical news and connected it to times when I remembered feeling very similar. Then after working it out, making it feel as right and true as I could I gave it some air and showed it around, read it out loud …”
Tony Gloeggler: “I started writing as a way to try and figure things out for myself. It was mostly about things that people I knew didn’t talk about. And I think that’s why I still write. As a narrative poet, I’m often asked about how much of my material comes from everyday life and the answer, degree, depends on each poem. While all of the poems convey a true intent, the genuine feeling, I will sometimes change the actual facts to make the poem more effective. With this one, I didn’t have to change a thing. It happened exactly like this. I just wrote it down. I don’t think a lot of white poets write about race and I sat with it for years. I got a bit of a nudge when I became aware of the Hoagland/Rankine debate and I’m really interested in how these kinds of things play out on a Brooklyn street corner.”
