A. D. Winans: the way out of the four walls
Each note attacking
The heart strings
Of the soul
—A. D. Winans
Back to 1988. One day I got an envelope from San Francisco. A. D. Winans’ first letter enclosed his seven poems. I had read his poem, for Jack Micheline, in Dave Christy’s Alpha Beat Soup #1 (Montreal, Canada. 1987). Dave Christy introduced him to Blue Jacket magazine, which I had published since 1971. Just then I was editing the number 24 as an international post Beat issue, so A. D. Winans was a welcome poet.
Blue Jacket #24, 1989, published two of Winans’ seven poems. America for Lawrence Ferlinghetti and The old Revolution in Japanese. Blue Jacket #25 published, four poems in 1990.
In 1993 the double number 26/27 published For Kenneth Patchen in Japanese and Hugh Fox’s Meeting A. D. Winans At The Trieste.
I changed Blue Jacket to Blue Beat Jacket, a small handmade international Beat and post Beat literary zine, usually under 100 copies. Blue Beat Jacket #11 (1996) and #13 (1998) published Winans’ six poems with his review of Jack Micheline’s 67 Poems For Downtrodden Saints.
The number 14 (1998) issue was dedicated to Jack Micheline’s death in February, 1998, but was really an A. D. Winans Special. His three poems for the poet, an intimate essay; Jack Micheline: Poet Of The People and A Jack Micheline Chronology. It also included his review of Ellis Amburn’s Subterranean Kerouac: The Hidden Life of Jack Kerouac.
The number 15 (1999) issue published two poems. The number 16 (2000) issue featured Winans. Only one poem, but a long 25 pages essay, Tracing The West Coast Beat Movement, and Hugh Foxs essay; The Bukowski / Winans Link, analyzing Winans’ poetry, concisely. A good read.
Each of #17 (2000), #18 [Gregory Corso Special](2001), #19( 2001) and #20 (2002)[Lawrence Ferlinghetti Special] published one Winans poem.
Looking back at the fourteen years of A. D. Winans with Blue Jacket and Blue Beat Jacket, I am convinced that he has been a powerful and advisory supporter since his 1989 ‘demise of Second Coming Press’. Winans was really ‘a small press junkie’ and is even now.
Reading his seven poems, I wrote to him my impressions of them. His quick reply (Oct 5 88) was “Yes, a good deal of my poems are about people, and I would like to think they are strong because I feel deeply about those people or their condition or plight. It is hard to separate my poems and my life as they are really closely tied together. I have others, of course, but the people ones are my favorites.”
Winans talked to Brad Evans (Beat Scene #38), “I have known and associated with people from all walks of life. When someone says that I’m a poet, I smile. I'm not a prophet or a shaman, but more a caretaker who writes down what he has observed and lived” and also “if Weiners is, in fact, a poet’s poet, I’d like to be remembered as the people’s poet”. n his autobiography (Contemporary American Authors Autobiography Series Vol . 28, 1 997) .
His literary mentors were Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman and Charles Bukowski. He says in The Holy Grail: Charles Bukowski and The Second Coming Revolution (Dustbooks 2002), “If it had not been for Hank and Bob Kaufman, I might never have become a poet. It was Hank’s ability to expose his own life that made me willing to expose mine, and it was Bob Kaufman who made me realize what it means to be a poet.”
Winans, who thinks of himself as a cross over poet from the Beat era to post Beat era, a Meat poet and a street poet, identified with Micheline, saying that he (Micheline) refused to bow down to anyone, writing poetry about and for the people: hookers, drug addicts, blue collar workers, the dispossessed, and he did it with heartfelt feeling.
I have sat one too many evenings
watching old men eat their last meal
one eye on the dessert the other
on the obituary column
—City Blues/Tenderloin Cafeteria Poem
His identification with Micheline means that his warm eyes must be a gift out of his own deep loneliness. Listen to Hugh Fox; “There’s no cure for Winans. He doesn’t want a cure, wants to be the poet laureate of loneliness and despair, wants to be the quintessential Outsider” (The Bukowski /Winans Link).
The deeper poetic love for people, the deeper creative isolation. But Winans dares to break through this fact.
Page(s) 15-16
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
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- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
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- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
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- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The