Remembering Kent Mueller

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Photo by Greg Klassen

Kent Mueller

It might take Milwaukee a 21st century minute to realize we lost a legend on the morning of October 28, when poet, art dealer, collector, local historian and model train afficionado Kent Mueller passed away peacefully, holding his wife Linda’s hand in hospice after battling lung cancer. 

With the scarce pairing of humility and generosity, Kent Mueller made lasting, formative marks on those around him, eternal marks in my case. I met Kent in September 1986, in the Bern Boys building above Kodric’s on National Avenue, which was haunted then, and will remain so now that Kent can stroll its smoky confines again in whatever’s left of heaven.  

That autumn I’d responded to a UWM Post classified ad by Goal Zero, a wily, scruffy poetry group seeking new blood. In Kent I found a mentor and cohort, the friendship never wavered in nearly 40 years. He was the reliable guy with the full-time job, beautiful home and level of security most creative folks either envy or despise. The Mueller home, bursting with art, was regularly my first stop upon returning to Milwaukee. He and Linda were ever the gracious hosts, always offering the bed in Linda’s sewing room. He never said no to me. 

Meeting Goal Zero 

Poets are a lonely breed, and yes men make good friends. There are times as a poet I wondered who cares? and remembered Kent cared—which was good enough to carry on. Goal Zero met weekly at the Metropolitan Gallery, which Kent co-owned with Linda. In addition to his quiet encouragement as a poet, he was simultaneously ushering in the careers of artists like Michelle Grabner and Fred Stonehouse (among countless others) and represented the advance guard in the field of outsider art, giving Milwaukee its view of unknown native sons Clare Mente and Eugene von Bruckenhein well before the world at large knew their magnificent names. I can attest. I got to sit in those exhibitions for a few, invaluable hours a week for years. Kent offered me my first gallery exhibitions; identifying me as a visual artist before I myself did. He also sold me my first art purchase. And second, third and fourth. How was this man selling a pauper works of art?  Unbridled enthusiasm and a payment plan was all, and in that respect, he helped make me an art dealer. My two years at Columbia’s MFA program taught me a mere fraction of what Kent Mueller taught me on any average drunken Saturday night.  

And his poetry! Nursing elements of Lenny Bruce with the bandages of William Burroughs, it tended Charles Bukowski’s bar, simultaneously taking handouts from Philip K. Dick, all with the timbre of Gregory Corso in the pithy cadence of Edgar Guest. You always knew a Kent Mueller poem; it was the last poem to leave the station and the first to arrive at its destination. He found inspiration in the interstitial corners of our culture that most people don’t even notice, much less scrutinize. And the funniest thing is he was probably a novelist at heart. Staunch defender of “difficult” writers (“difficulty” was an invitation for Kent, not a discouragement), he wrote like a plain spoken, old world populist who’d done his homework, reading and re-reading William Gaddis, Aleister Crowley, Lee Mortimer’s USA Confidential and the N scale model railroad catalogs that he labored over for his basement recreation of Milwaukee’s 1930’s railyards. 

Old School Punk Ethos 

Kent could’ve been Nick Cave for Halloween without changing much about his appearance. His jangly posture (as if his spine was made of chain link) with the nervous, essential tremor of a veteran croupier on the wrong side of the table; always sporting a rumpled jacket and more rumpled button-down shirt with collar (in case a tie was required, it never was), Florsheim shoes Tom Waits would’ve been proud of—shirt pocket as well-thumbed as the spiral notebook within, all to belie his inherently iconoclastic, old school, punk ethos. Like an original dadaist, his clothes didn’t match his distaste for the stupid, hidebound world.  

I was forever begging Kent to re-open a gallery and rekindle the instinctual fire he had for new voices and visions. I was lucky to come along for the ride for his final curatorial effort, a Goal Zero retrospective at Usable Space in June 2022 which consisted of long, late night conversations about curatorial strategies and researching photos, poems, zines and posters. He was known to claim the title of World’s Greatest File Clerk, and he kept great, if unwieldy records of most everything he dabbled in; much time and effort was spent rummaging through those vast holdings.  One highlight of that process was a trip to New York, where we convened in Ridgewood, Queens, he from Milwaukee, me from Nashville and hunted down the films of Jim Shannon, meeting Jim’s daughter Kate and copying the lot in order to make his show the best it could be. We were both happy to be fellow travelers, visiting New York City on equal terms, with one cherished goal and a thousand delicious distractions. We had an unforgettable few days. The resulting exhibition was as spirited a retrospective as a dozen scrappy, Wisconsin poets could ask for—I know he was proud of the show, as he should have been. 

I had the dumb luck of seeing him 11 days before he died. Bearded, abed, still stubborn as a mule, he attempted to sit up for a proper discussion. I told him he looked good with a beard, and he did, despite the fact that it meant he couldn’t shave anymore. He was the ancient, medieval bard embodied, knees and elbows as knobby as his walking stick, and impatient with the whole dying thing. He wasn’t a big hugger, but we hugged goodbye, thank god, so I could keep his chin on my shoulder. He looked forward to reading Thomas Pynchon’s new book, set in Milwaukee, but ran out of time. Now I’ll be reading it aloud, on the off chance he’s listening.