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Interview with A.D.Winans
AMERICAN POET
An Interview With A.D. Winans
KA: In your work, the imagery is thematically consistent from poem to poem, and your voice always comes across as honest and raw. Your poems lack the polished gleam of intense revision, which may be part of their appeal. Is that something conscious, on your part – an effort to make the pieces as open and accessible as possible?
AD: I don't write poems with any "conscious" effort on my part. I do write poems that are accessible. William Carlos Williams said a poet should write in the people's language and I adhere to this. Most of my poems are spontaneous, but in the last few years I have gone back and revised many of them. A good example is my America Poem or my Call to Poets poem, but even there the revision was mostly dropping lines and/or adding new lines to bring the poem up to date.
KA: Do you remember what the first poem you ever published was, or where it was published?
AD: No. I don't recall the first poem I had published or where it was published; the first poem I was paid for appeared in Poetry Australia. It was a short untitled poem. I received $10, which in those days would get you a decent dinner.
KA: One of your poems was set to music in Tully Hall, NYC. How did that come about, and what was your reaction to it?
AD: A poem of mine, Lady Death, was published in The Anderson Valley Advertiser in Mendocino, California. William Bolcom (a well-known award-winning composer) read the poem in the newspaper. He sent me a letter and asked me if he could set the poem to music. He was preparing a program for a tenor who had been awarded a concert through the famous Julian School of Music. I think six poets were chosen overall. You can well imagine my reaction. How many poets have a poem of theirs set to music and performed at Tully Hall, which is considered the equal of Carnegie Hall? An interesting side note is that when Bolcom approached the Julliard people for payment for the poets, he was told, "We never pay poets." Bolcom paid me $300 out of his own pocket, out of the commission he was paid. This is a sad statement about the value of poetry in America. The Julliard School is not strapped for money. They paid the composer and the tenor, but nothing for the poets. As poets, we have allowed ourselves to be devalued in our society. We read for free and give our books away for free, so why should we be taken seriously? I remember Bukowski telling me that he hated giving readings and only gave them for the money. He said, "A carpenter or plumber gets paid for their work and so should a poet." I couldn't agree more.
KA: You're heavily involved with photography. How does that relate to your poetry, if at all? What can you do with the camera that you can't do with the pen, and vice versa?
AD: I'm not as heavily into it as I once was, mostly because I work in black and white, and processing for B&W film is high cost since digital has come into existence. There are few labs around who develop B&W, so you pretty much have to have your own dark room, which is impossible in a one-bedroom apartment. I take mostly portrait photographs. Not the posed kind, but people not aware they are being photographed - like the homeless and other street scenes. I have poems that compliment them and visa versa. I'd like to some day publish a book of my poems with accompanying photographs on the opposite page. Photographs have one advantage over a written poem. You look at a photo of say a factory worker getting off work and the look on his face as he leaves the factory or perhaps toiling inside the factory and you can see the lines on the worker's face, what the years have done to him, etc. You can't do that with a poem. The poem says it, but the photo shows it. So this is why I would like to do a book of poems with complimenting photos on the opposite page. Catch both the written and the visual as one. I still work with my Nikon SLR. I just don't feel comfortable with a digital camera. It doesn't feel the same way in my hands. Some professional photographers have turned to digital cameras, but they are using high-end ones that cost five grand or more. They look and feel like the SLR, but they are digital. The great advantage is not having to use film. But at this stage of the game, I still think the SLR is superior to even the high end digital Nikon.
KA: You've published dozens of chaps and books in your time. Which one is the most important to you, and why?
AD: That's hard to say. 13 Jazz Poems was my most lyrical poetry to date. This Land Is Not My Land, a book about my military experiences in Panama, was written in a style different from my normal style of writing, and won a PEN National Josephine Miles literary excellence award. My latest book, The Other Side Of Broadway: Selected Poems: 1965-2005, ranks right there at the top of the list. I edited the original book down from 288 pages to 132, no easy job. I think it gives the reader a good representative sample of what I have been writing for over four decades. I would say these three books are the most important to me, for the reasons stated.
KA: Speaking of your style, how would you describe it? To whose would you compare it to?
AD: I don't think much about style. I just write down whenever the demons tell me too. Maybe I write somewhat in the style of Jack Micheline or even William Wantling, but I have never given it any thought. I don't compare it to anyone. People have tried to compare me to Bukowski, but that's nonsense. The only comparison is the subject matter, but I paint a broader canvass than Bukowski did. He didn't write political poems and I do. He didn't write jazz poems and I have. He didn't serve in the military and had no military background in which to write from. I did. So I shared his arena of the down and out, but traveled many other forks of life's road. Detours he never took or experienced.
KA: On the topic of Bukowski, I've heard critics bash you and your work for drawing too heavily from your relationships with other famous poets of your generation such as Buk, calling it "name-dropping" and such. What would you say to those critics?
AD: I really don't care what these people think. Those that write, write. Those that have little talent to write, criticize. Bukowski told me (there goes that name-dropping again), "I knew I was getting there when the attacks started to come." Now they have sharpened their knives to toss my way, and it's always in the back, you know. If these people spent half as much time writing as they do attacking others, they might actually pen a decent poem or two. I suppose the critics you refer to are talking about my book The Holy Grail: The Charles Bukowski Second Coming Revolution. I have seen those kinds of critical comments you mention. I just shake my head at people who call themselves critics, yet don't know the difference between a biography (which they see it as) and a memoir (which the book is). How do you not relate experiences with people you knew when writing a memoir? For the most part I never see the criticism. It comes to me third hand. My work stands on its own. It doesn't need Bukowski or any other poet to prop it up. Jack Micheline wrote a lot about people he knew and loved, was he a name-dropper? The biggest self-promoting marketing poet today is Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I don't see these critics doing anything but fawning over him. I have done more than any living poet to keep the name of Kaufman and Micheline alive, if that is something to be ashamed of, then please nominate me for a place in the Hall of Shame. What I have to say to those critics is to play the role of the critic and to concentrate on the work and not the person.
KA: You have done quite a bit of work promoting the legacy of Kaufman and Micheline. Recently, on the 21st anniversary of Kaufman's death, you published an essay on his impact on your life, as well as his influence on the entire sphere of poetry. You've repeatedly called him the greatest of the beat poets. What about his work speaks so strongly to you?
AD: I published articles on both of them. I actually wrote two articles on Kaufman. The first is a critical analysis of his work without my experiences with him, which was published by APR. Gale Research bought the rights from me to publish it in a large critical analysis book that will go into 1,200 libraries and University workshops. The second article is a longer one, which also contains my personal experiences with him. The article I wrote on Jack Micheline has appeared in several small press magazines and on several web sites. Bob and Jack were the last of the "real" street poets. Not a thread of dishonesty in either of them. The difference in their writing is that Jack's poetry was lyrical, while Bob for the most part wrote in the surreal vein. I don't think I used those exact words you quote me as saying, "Greatest of the Beat Poets." I have said that Kaufman is "arguably" the best Beat Poet of his era, and Micheline falls into the class of genius. Rather than for me to go over what I have said many times elsewhere, I'd rather refer your readers to the empty mirror books web site emptymirrorbooks.com. Both my articles are posted there along with some great photos of these two outstanding poets.
KA: You maintain a Myspace and interact with young poets on it every day, you still actively publish, and it's hard to find any major zine without some of your work in it. Why is it so important to you to stay connected to the independent press community, when so many of your contemporaries have put away the pen and unplugged their phones, so to speak?
AD: S.A. Griffin talked me into joining Myspace. I have mixed feeling about it. There are a lot of people writing crappy poems and having comments sent to them about how great the poem is. Seems like a lot of mutual masturbation going on. The flip side is that I have met a dozen or more poets who I did not know before and some who knew very little about me. I don't know how much longer I will remain on the site. I do keep active publishing wise although I sent out less work last year than in the past. I think it's important to stay in touch with poets you know and those you don't know. In the last few years I have gotten a lot of requests for poems and for poetry books, and I'd say about 50% of the time the work I have had published was requested of me. I can't ever recall not fulfilling a request be it from a well-known magazine or a new one just starting up. I was the first chapbook author BOS [Bottle of Smoke Press] asked to submit a book too and I did. Now he [Bill Roberts] has developed one of the better small presses out there today. I've always said my poetry is for the people and my poems can be published anywhere by anyone as long as proper credit is cited. I don't keep track of what my contemporaries are doing. I choose to keep my work out there. It sure isn't making me rich. I do it to share with others, and hopefully some of today's younger poets will find something in it to encourage them to go on with their own writing.
KA: Seems like many people have a similar attitude toward 'academic poets' as you have toward the new breed of Myspace poets - a giant circle of praise, grant money, and workshops. What are your thoughts on the small press vs. academic debate?
AD: Let me clarify something - I don't mean to imply that ALL Myspace poets are something to avoid like the plague. There are some damn good poets on there too and I have become friends with many of them. It's just that too many people on the site desperately crave to be called a poet, and think everything they post is a poem, from the mundane to the confessional. But at least they are not doing any harm to anyone. You don't have to read them, and you don't have to have them on your friends list. Academic poetry is an entirely different matter. It's largely an inbred thing where academic poets write for other academic poets and then get grants to publish their work. The NEA Literature Program goes hand in hand with the Academic crowd. They and the Guggenheim boys line their pockets with gold so they can turn around in the classroom and produce more pabulum-producing student poets. The workshops produce even worse poets. It's the bad teaching the bad to be worse. But again I have to qualify this by saying there are some Academic poets out there who write decent poetry. Philip Levine and the late Josephine Miles immediately come to mind. So there are good and bad in every school. The secret is to stay away from schools of poetry and workshops. You need to get out there and experience life before you can write about it. The ancient Chinese poets said all you can say about flowers, the river, and dew on leafs.
KA: Can you talk a little bit about Second Coming - its genesis, whatever impact you feel it had on the small press world or on yourself?
AD: That's a hard question to answer. Second Coming had a 17 year run from l972 through 1989. It began as a chapbook-like small magazine and grew into a slick magazine and press that published over 22 books and anthologies. I featured well-known poets like Charles Bukowski and Jack Micheline alongside lesser-known poets. I guess it had an impact on some poets and writers judging from the letters I received during and since I quit publishing. Brown University bought the archives in the late 80's. Neeli Cherkovski said S.C. was multi-cultural long before that word became fashionable, and it was. I published every conceivable school of poetry and poets from all walks of life. The only criteria was the quality of the work. I don't know what impact it had on me. It was more like an extension of myself. Sort of like a twin brother. We fed off each other. It brought me into contact with a lot of poets and writers I would not have otherwise met and many of them became close friends, even to this day. It was while publishing Second Coming that I met Charles Bukowski and Jack Micheline, became part of the Folsom Prison Writer's Workshop, and organized the seven day, three county, S.C. Poets and Music Festival, honoring Josephine Miles and John Lee Hooker. So in this sense it had a big impact on my life.
KA: You recently had a fire in your apartment and lost a good deal of your work - a horrifying thought for any poet. Can you talk about what happened and what you lost? How did it affect you?
AD: I don't know exactly what happened. The fire started in the kitchen and rapidly spread into the living room. They haven't yet determined the cause of the fire. Not that it matters at this point in time. I lost a lot personal belongings. I'm not talking about things like everything in the kitchen or the sofa and chair or bedroom dresser or nightstands - things like that can be replaced. But I lost a lot of my books, magazines my work has appeared in, and several years of correspondence that I was going to send to my archives at Brown University this summer. Those things can't be replaced. I also lost my valuable framed photographs of Woody Guthrie, Billie Holiday, the Kennedy Brothers, and much, much more. I was naturally devastated by the loss of these things and was depressed for over a month. I am only now slowly getting back to anything that resembles my old self. My computer HD was destroyed by smoke and water from the fire hoses and I lost all the writing I had done in January and early February. Everything else was backed-up, but that is still a considerable loss to me. They have not even begun work on my apartment and it looks like I will not be able to move back until July, if then. I am living with my sister in Corte Madera, which is a major life style change for me. I have little or no creative urges at all, so I spend my time doing a lot of reading. I have gone back to reading poets like Sandburg, Ann Sexton, Langston Hughes, and other masters of their craft. I just take it a day at a time.
KA: You're seventy-one years old now, and have been writing poetry longer than most small-pressers have been alive. What's left for you to do?
AD: I have been writing for over forty years, so there can be but a few if any small presses still around from the day I began writing. I still have things to accomplish. I want to put a second book of Selected Poems together. I have a small collection of erotic short stories I'm revising, and I need to find a publisher for my four articles on Bukowski, Kaufman, Micheline and Alvah Bessie, one of the Hollywood Ten back in the fifties who was put in prison for refusing to cooperate with a Committee conducting a Communist witch-hunt. I'd also like to put together a poetry/photo book, combining poems and photos that I have taken over the many years. And if I never wrote another word, then there's the autobiography. That alone could keep me busy until the grim reaper shows up demanding her pound of flesh. In addition, if I beat Lady Death and get it done before she shows up on my doorsteps, my trusty Nikon will be shooting poetry snapshots of the streets of San Francisco.
KA: How do you feel about 'Lady Death'? What are your thoughts on who she is, where she leads you, if you feel ready to face her, etc?
AD: She is always in the back of your mind, especially when you reach the age of seventy. But I don't obsess about it. It's part of the life cycle. The minute you take your first breath, you begin the death process. I don't fear death. I mean, I'd like to live another ten years and get some projects completed and out of the way, like my autobiography. That may or may not be in the cards. Didn't Dylan say in one of his songs, "Those who aren't busy being born, are busy dying." I believe it was something like that.
KA: Looking back, do you have any regrets, anything you wish you would have written or said to someone?"
AD: As Edith Piaff, the great French Singer, said in her song: "No, No regrets." I had a great time publishing, met some great people, and landed a job as an Editor with the old Federally funded CETA Program, working out of the San Francisco Art Commission's Neighborhood Arts Program. For five years I was being paid for doing things I loved, and it allowed me time to put full time into my editing and publishing. In the end, however, it was my being allowed to take an early retirement from work in 1995 that allowed me the full freedom to write. The years 1995 to 2005 were my most prolific years. Is there something I wish I had said to someone that I didn't? I don't know. All the poets who were close to me knew or know how I feel or felt about them. On the flip side, I never held back in telling the enemy (the NEA and other self-serving agencies) what I thought of them. Honesty and integrity are the two things that matter the most to me. I have never sold out (and I had chances) and I don't see how I could live with myself if I did.
KA: You fought the NEA pretty diligently - a potentially risky move for your career. Why was that so important to you?
AD: The first thing you need to understand is that I never saw poetry as a "career." This is the problem I see with so many poets today. You are deluding yourself or smoking something much too strong if you believe you have a career in poetry. Poetry is a calling and not a vocation. At least this is the way I see it. So in effect there was no risk for me. In the beginning the grants were there for Second Coming, based on the quality of what S.C. was producing and not due to anything I did to ensure they came my way. I would have fought the NEA and its corrupt granting body had I been a common person outside the poetry community, just as I have fought other abuses of power at the local and state levels. At a COSMEP conference in New York, the head of the NEA Literature Program invited me to his hotel room at midnight supposedly to discuss a grant proposal. The implication was obvious. Again in NY, an influential and rich female writer came up to me and said, "There is nothing wrong with you that an NEA Grant won't cure." She invited me to spend the weekend with her in upstate NY. Again the implications were quite clear. I didn't go to the hotel room in NY or to her upstate home. In North Dakota, the same NEA Literature Director got into an argument with me over my criticism of the NEA. I told him to go to hell. He said you'll never get another grant as long as I have anything to do with the NEA. And I didn't. I think the greatest compliment I received was while I was working at the CETA Job. A friend of mine was the Acting Director when Nancy Hanks, who was then the head of the NEA, paid a visit. During the visit she mentioned that I was causing the NEA problems. He played into her hands and said, "Give him a grant." She is said to have replied, "No. That wouldn't work." What higher compliment than this? She knew I couldn't be bought. I would have taken the money because it was taxpayer's money, but I would have continued to expose the corruption that Charlie Plymell, myself and others dug up on them. Unimaginable corruption ran deep into the entire program. Ultimately we were successful in getting the Director replaced. The end-result was that they replaced him with someone even worse. It's the sum total of the system, rotten to the core. I think it's pretty obvious why it was important to me. I detest fraud and corruption at all levels, be it private industry or in the highest office of our land. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some looney crusader, but I do believe that when a person sees something wrong that person has a duty to do something more than just bitch about it. Plymell and I and an increasing number of others feel the NEA fellowship programs should be abolished. They could put the money into hiring poets and artists in useful art and writing positions such as the one I had with the CETA Program from 1975 through 1980.
KA : Who is your favorite poet of all time?"
AD: I don't know if I have a single all time favorite poet. T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams and Blake were early influences. Early Bukowski and William Wantling were later influences on my work. And it would be unfair to leave out Robinson Jeffers, Baudelaire, E.E. Cummings, Sylvia Palth, Anne Sexton, and others. The list is endless.
KA: What advice would you give to the new generation poets who are just now starting to submit their stuff?
AD: I'd advise them to sit back and ask themselves why they are writing. If the answer is to be published, I'd tell them they have chosen the wrong profession. It's true that I have been widely published, but it's also true that early on I had work published that I wish I had not submitted. Put the poem aside for a while, go back to it later, and see if it's the same poem your ego told you it was when you first finished it. I'd tell them to read a wide variety of poets, not just Bukowski and the Beats. Read Pound, Eliot, Blake, Cummings and William Carlos Williams, among other masters of their craft. I'd tell them to study the magazines they are submitting their work too, and to support those magazines they can afford to support, either by subscribing to them or buying additional copies of the issue their work appears in. I'd advise them to spend more time learning their craft and less time in coffee houses and bars. I'd tell them to look in the mirror at least once a day and make sure that a capital "P" is not on their forehead. I'd advise them what a great poet advised me, "Poetry is not a holy thing. Poetry is only holy when it forgets its holiness."
KA: What great poet was that?
AD: My alter ego.