Bio

tom fallon

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thomas christopher fallon, jr


 born mass. 1936 - artistic talent recognized 1st grade
intense independent questioning - oldest - anxiety
death experience at age 5 significant
1 brother bob & love girls - father thomas asst woolworth mgr
mother edna elizabeth ward travelers accounting
family american dream work ethic

emigrate maine 1942 - learn baseball-football sandlot
cowboy films disney comics - father woolworth mgr quit stress

move to paper mill town rumford 1948 - father buys restaurant

artistic talent school/family support
cartoons for local newsweekly hs sports - mediocre student
discover renaissance-modern & art lifestyle
  david turner encourages independent reading - men of art thomas craven
view religious murals pointing 2 christ
christs defiance of society - question life parents prejudices
track theater other hs extracurricular

what is the soul

scholarship risd 1954
notebook writing drop out risd 
collective thinking problem - enlist af 
  long island base nyc off off broadway galleries
discover abc of reading ezra pound - create abstract play
john coltrane thelonious monk modern classical ravi shankar
foreign films - drink & marry - scholarship st johns md
1st poem drop out 57 - reenlist af 58
1st nervous breakdown
af discharge

pound eliot wcw cummings stevens crane other americans &c
happenings dick higgins richard kostelanetz &c
rumford oneill strindberg ibsen &c tape play scenes 1 room wall
bumming & drinking & whoring - divorce 1959

paper mill work - write on job three shifts

death exists

marry jacqueline thibodeau catholic 1960 - suicide try state asylum
begin life w family - work in clothing store
2 newspaper column local weekly - writing seriously
a dying animal trilogy w atma theater boston
work paper mill & write on job
nyc boston trips - no theater collective work -
america spiritual wasteland
first anti-poem - attend church regularly
death exists

mwpa hippies-war-social-protestors w readings mimeo publish
publish through a strangers eyes poetry off form
abstract pregnant man 1 w red dust 3 nyc - experiment lit form

temperament troubles family & jacqueline praying
labor union official newsletter editor paper mill

1st performance poem 1st group improvisation me
me times poetry editor
  seven children - fired fr local news w liberal views

read marianne moore's interview
what i write
as i have said before
could only be called
poetry
because there is no other category
 in which to put it
 
new literary category charteng

leave
mwpa moves conservative academia

publish books chapbooks
through a strangers eyes
tragic variations 1987
uncensored paper mill
paper mill fiction
 man on the moon
the me poems
black poems
 now

religion spirituality art important with christ poor follower

retire paper mill 1998

jacquelines poor medical care
1997 caring for jacqueline poor health day night
no more reading & publishing

moving words lines phrases in page space - move to lg size paper
wall works 24 x 36
visual art influence - visual maintain language as communication
talk with jacqueline

jacquelines poor medical care continues
still caring for jacqueline day & night

jacqueline dies 2012

no writing - memorial wall display 2013 - something
death exists - no writing
sleepless nights - dreams - writing 1 word - write slowly
writing 1 word - god - death
words, phrases, space - life is meaningless - no writing
visit jacquelines grave
2015 depression - suicide a positive - create w 1 word
visit jacquelines grave

  word




Art influences

Visual art most significant: Paul Cezanne, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gaugin,
Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, &c. 

Music w John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Circle; Beethoven,
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinksy, Charles Ives,
Edgar Varese, Steve Reich, etc.

Literature - Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams,
Marianne Moore, e. e. cummings, Dick Higgins, Bern Porter &c;
NYC Off-Off Broadway Seventies theater Caffe Cino, La Mama ETC, Judson Poets Theater, happenings.

& seminal books

 Men of Art, Thomas Craven, read at age 15 -
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman, read at age 17 -
ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound, read at age 20 -