{"id":17158,"date":"2026-02-13T11:35:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=17158"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:11:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:11:28","slug":"antler-redux-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=17158","title":{"rendered":"The great Milwaukee poet Antler touches 80, and still touches “each other”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Cover of Antler’s “Touch Each Other.” Courtesy FootHills Publishing<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In honor of Antler\u2019s 80th birthday, I have added to my commentary (in boldface) on his poetry collection “Touch Each Other” from 2013.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I have also added to Antler\u2019s Wikipedia page, including multiple new citations, under the heading of \u201cAntler\u2019s style.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Touch Ea<\/i><\/strong>ch Other<\/i>\u00a0(Foothills Publishing) By Antler\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Remember Antler\u2019s celebrated and acerbic protest poem \u201cFactory\u201d? He no longer rails, but his middle age still emits an eagle\u2019s cry for vivid dreams and hope.<\/p>\n

The former Milwaukee poet laureate\u2019s often-stunning statistical research skirls into billowing \u201cwhat ifs.\u201d Then, \u201cThe Come Cries of the Unborn Come\u201d brilliantly marries birth to last days, and life\u2019s continuum \u2014 disarming tired left-right dualisms.<\/p>\n

In another: \u201cThe existence of money and having to earn it was made up. No longer where floundering when no wonder is why we\u2019re floundering!\u201d<\/p>\n

Antler also can be effortlessly pertinent to the moment as in \u201cThreat to our Community,\u201d where spy satellites orbiting the earth take covert photos of \u201can amoeba in a drop of rain,\u201d of a 13-year-old boy gaping at his sperm through a microscope and of a virtually penniless poet, \u201cwhile extraterrestrials in a spaceship\/ between Uranus and Neptune\/train their telescope\/on a bum reading the want ads\/on a park bench in Golden Gate Park\/to see if there are any jobs\/ they can apply for\/ when they come to San Francisco incognito\/ on a reconnaissance mission\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

A generous 40-page chapbook,\u00a0Touch Each Other<\/em>\u2018s title reverberates softly, sensually and spiritually. The latter quality infuses it with spirit for anyone who appreciates great art. Regardless of your opinion of this work you must concede he has spoken to countless people and been celebrated among the greatest of the Beat generation of poet, his prime influence, along with Walt Whitman.<\/p>\n

For those, The cover image. a detail of God\u2019s hand reaching to give holy life to Adam, from Michelangelo immortal Sistine Chapel, might strike some as pretentious.<\/p>\n

Be prepared for unabashed, hilarious erotica. But please don\u2019t grouse over such outrageous love of life \u2014 Whitman\u2019s sacred embrace reborn.<\/p>\n

If you think of Milwaukee as basically a blue-collar working-class town that could never abide, say, same-sex marriage, think again.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But first appreciate that as a tired, old classist stereotype, that even as it acknowledges all that Milwaukee has provided the world, working class and engineering masterpieces like the revered Harley Davidson motorcycle, American Motors cars, Allis Chalmers\u2019 pioneering heavy equipment, A.O. Smith, once was the world\u2019s leading producer of car and truck frames. And much more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Antler, though ostensibly bohemian has done working class labor and addresses that life as honestly and passionately as any poet I know. His early epic masterpiece \u201cFactory,\u201d is based his own experience\u00a0on the assembly lines at Continental Can Company in Milwaukee.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike most of us, including myself, who also have worked in factories, he happened to have the insight, wit, artistry, eloquence, empathy and passion to transmute the experience into great art.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The poet and wilderness explorer\u00a0Antler is a former Milwaukee poet laureate and winner of the Walt Whitman Award.\u00a0Courtesy www.antlerpoet.net<\/em><\/p>\n

Besides direct literary influences, much of Antler does grow like a grand rack of horns, from his vast dedicated experiences in wildernesses. Imagine him standing over you with craggy horns rising upward, nearly piercing the sky. He is a humanist who envisions humanity entwined with nature in the sort of intimate way he envisions himself, humbly but capaciously, full of wonder.<\/strong><\/p>\n

His best big works, and some smaller ones, have the kind of capaciousness that Whitman was celebrated for as an unprecedented American poet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s no surprise that Antler won the Walt Whitman Association\u2019s Walt Whitman Award in 1985, for author \u201cwhose contribution best reveals the continuing presence of Walt Whitman in American poetry.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

What do I mean by capacious? There are few living poets who write in a straight-shooting vernacular style that can gently grab hold of your mind\u2019s eye and not let go, until he exhales his last beautiful or harsh truth, or until he\u2019s hoisted you onto a high, breath-taking granite vista to see and feel pain and possibility, as if it were just within reach.\u00a0 in other words, he embodies this blog\u2019s subtitle (Vernaculars Speak) as powerfully as any Wisconsin poet,<\/strong><\/p>\n

So yes, he\u2019s the state’s \u201cgreatest gay poet,\u201d as Paul Masterson of Shepherd Express<\/em> has proclaimed. The critic aptly wrote in 2017, \u201cExploring the emotional arch of male-male love most would find too intimate to express, his gay-themed poems are among his most moving for their raw candor.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not to diminish that, but he\u2019s more, in my book, a former Milwaukee poet laureate well worth such honor whose voice reaches to this state\u2019s greatest borders, like all the lakes and riverways that feed the wonder of wilderness that Antler lives and thrives from.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

His poem \u201cFeral\u201d helps convey his imaginative vision:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boy raised by wolves, raised by panthers, boy raised by dolphins, raised by sequoias,\/<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Boy raised by spirits of plant-eating dinosaurs\/<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Boy raised by the cave behind the waterfall\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wolves, panthers, dolphins, sequoias, spirits, dinosaurs, waterfalls. This sort of beautiful thinking can astonish a reader the more one considers its sense of glorious possibility.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, you think, if only his \u201cwhat ifs\u201d in\u00a0Touch Each Other<\/em>\u00a0became \u201cwhy nots,\u201d and then\u2026<\/p>\n

By the way, If you ever have a chance, go to hear Antler read his poetry. He declaims with exuberant verve, a sly wit, and a fine feel for the nuances of irony and tenderness in his verse.<\/p>\n

Antler has been acclaimed by such major and kindred poets as Allen Ginsburg, Gary Synder and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who published\u00a0Factory<\/em>\u00a0in the renowned City Lights series.Aside from his Walt Whitman Award, he won the 1987 Witter Bynner Prize awarded annually \u201cto an outstanding younger poet\u201d by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City.<\/p>\n

Antler was been invited to read at Walt Whitman\u2019s birthplace on Long Island in 2014.<\/p>\n

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Touch Each Other<\/em> is available at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. For more information, visit www.antlerpoet.net.<\/p>\n

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\u201cProve to Me\u201d from the new chapbook\u00a0Touch Each Other<\/strong>\u00a0by Antler\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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A short version of this post was published in\u00a0The Shepherd Express<\/em>, Sept. 4, 2013 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Your blogger Kevernacular visits City Light Books in San Francisco, which published Antler’s masterpiece “Factory.” Photo by Ann K. Peterson<\/em><\/p>\n

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