July 27, 2007
A.d.winans: the holy grail: charles bukowski and the second
coming revolution
interview by doug holder
This is an interview with poet A. D. Winans concerning the new
memoir he penned dealing with his relationship with the “dirty
old man” poet himself, Charles Bukowski.
In poet A. D. Winans’ new memoir,
“The Holy Grail: Charles Bukowski and the Second Coming
Revolution,” the author tells the fascinating story of a
personal and literary friendship with none other than the ner-do-well,
Bohemian bard, Charles Bukowski. Winans takes us back to the
60’s, 70’s and 80’s and gives the “out of school” report about
this prolific, hard drinking, and womanizing writer who changed
the face of the small press. Bukowski, best known for writing
the screenplay ” Bar Fly” featuring Mickey Rourke, was also a
staple of the famed Black Sparrow Press. Winans defines his
friendship with the poet through their poetry, letters, and “bad
elbows.” The book also explores Winans’ acclaimed literary
magazine, “Second Coming,” and the fecund literary milieu it
occupied in the San Francisco and the world small press movement
during the 70’s, and 80’s. I conducted an interview with Winans
via the internet, from his home in San Francisco.
DH: What do you feel is Bukowski’s single most important
contribution to Literature and or Poetry?
ADW: I think Bukowski himself answered that in an article
he wrote for Second Coming. He said, ” My contribution was to
loosen and simplify poetry, to make it more humane. I made it
easy for them to follow. I taught them that you can write a poem
the same way you can write a letter, and that there need not be
anything necessarily holy about it.”
Hemingway did much the same thing with prose, and then along
came Bukowski to do the same thing with poetry. And I’d add that
Bukowski’s letters were often poetic gems. The art of letter
writing has all but disappeared, lost in email transmissions
that too often are cold and impersonal.
DH: Your own entry into Poetry was fueled by the
injustice witnessed while you were in the service in Panama.
Would it be fair to say that politics and social injustice was
your first muse rather than a poet or a specific body of work?
ADW: My first influence came from musicians and not
poets. When I was in high school, I would sit in my room for
hours listening to Hank Williams, Senior sing his haunting
songs. When I came home from Panama, my mother said: ” You are
not the same person. What did they do to you?” What they did was
to take away my innocence. The things I saw there burned
themself into my social conscience. It took me over thirty years
to put my experiences down on paper. It’s all there in ” This
Land Is Not My Land.” Green Bean Press published some of the
poems in a small chapbook, and Harold Norse encouraged me to
expand the book, which I have done. I just haven’t gotten around
to sending it out to a publisher yet.
DH: What similarities do you see between yourself and
Charles Bukowski, both as a man and a writer?
ADW: We both went to city college, we were both heavy
drinkers, we were both womanizers, we both ( to a large degree)
wrote for the same audience, we were both in trouble with the
law, we both came up through the small press, we both saw the
futility of writing workshops, and we both realized a writer
could either spend his time writing in relative isolation, or he
could hang around with other poets in cafes. We both chose the
former over the latter.
DH: Can you describe the milieu of North Beach in the
50’s and 60’s, that was your spawning ground as a poet. Was this
area of San Francisco as significant as Greenwich Village in
NYC?
ADW: North Beach was the West Coast equivalent of
Greenwich Village, and many of the poets ( Ginsberg, Corso,
Micheline, Kaufman) frequently spent time shuttling from one
place to the other. The ” Cedar Tavern” was a focal point for NY
poets. In San Francisco it was “The Place” (presided over by
Jack Spicer) and ” The Co-Existence Bagel Shop”, where Bob
Kaufman made his home. Gino and Carlo’s was another favorite
hangout, and you would often find Spicer and Richard Brautigan
there. I didn’t visit NY and the Village until the 60’s, and it
of course had completely changed by then.
DH:If it wasn’t for little magazines and small presses,
do you think guys like you and the BUK would have a platform or
a venue for your work?
ADW: No, I don’t think we would have. Other than Hank
having an early story of his published in STORY magazine, the
great body of his work appeared in the “Littles” He was
published in Penguin Poetry Anthology, but those were isolated
incidents. Early on, I had poems accepted by Poetry Australia
and even sold some short stories to the Berkeley Barb and
Easyrider( a biker mag.), but it wasn’t till much later that APR
( American Poetry Review), City Lights Journal, and a few
academic journals began to publish my work. Later Gale Research
paid me a thousand dollars for a 10,000 word autobiography and
Brown University bought my archives. In the last few years I
have been included in some important anthologies, like Thunder
Mouth’s Press’ THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY. I don’t
think much of this would have been posssible had I not been
first published in the small presses.
DH: You started an acclaimed literary magazine in the
early 70’s, SECOND COMING. What was the mission statement of
this magazine? You had a special Bukowski issue, how was that
received?
ADW: I don’t know if you could say that there was a
statement; it was much more of a personal mission. I felt at the
time that a lot of crap was being published and I wanted to
start a magazine that would return to the spirit of the 50’s and
60’s. The Bukowski issue was a success in that Bukowski himself
said it was the best unbiased issue ever done on him. The
special Bukowski issue, my own North Beach Poems, and the
California Bicentennial Poets Anthology were the only Second
Coming issues and books that turned a profit. It’s sad but true
that too few poets support the magazines that publish them
DH: So many artists and writers are afflicted or choose
to afflict themselves with drugs and alcohol. Writers,
especially young writers tend to romanticize this lifestyle. You
and Bukowski had serious problems with these demons. Does this
lifestyle help the writer in terms of his creativity? Why do so
many turn to it. Is there something about the sensibility of an
artist that makes it attractive or even necessary?
ADW: That’s a lot of questions rolled into one. Poets and
writers do seem to be drawn to heavy drinking, and a good number
of them are drawn to drugs. Alcohol was my drug of choice. I
started drinking in my junior year in high school and became a
heavy drinker in Panama. There was nothing romantic about it. I
was more or less a social alcoholic. Put me in a bar and I’d
drink myself into a stupor. Unlike Bukowski, I never drank and
wrote at the same time. I tried a few times, but what came from
it were poorly written poems. I can’t speak for other writers as
to whether it would help their creativity or not. It obviously
helped Buk, but I don’t think it helped me, in the least, and I
never drank the day after a night of heavy drinking. I hated
those hangovers. It was when the hangovers began to last two
days that I knew I had to stop heavy drinking. I limit myself to
two drinks these days and seldom go to bars.
DH: You write in the book that Bukowski was far from a
saint. He could be brutal with his friends, unfaithful to his
women, treacherous in his business dealings, etc… Yet you loved
him. Why?
ADW: I admired his persistence and grit. His drive to
make it to the big time. He developed a persona to achieve that
goal. I also admired his giving up the security of the post
office to write full time, and at an age it would not have been
easy for him to find another job. I admire his honesty with the
written word, although his honesty did not always show itself.
None of us are saints, there are things in my past I am far from
proud of, but I can honestly say I never set out to deliberately
hurt anyone. In my book ( The Holy Grail), I tried to treat
everyone fairly. With Buk, he had this thing about not wanting
to get too close to people and when that would happen, he cast
them aside, or ridiculed them in poems and short stories, and
even bragged about it. But in all fairness, he stopped doing
this, after he became a success. So I guess I loved the best in
him and tried to overlook his weaknesses.
I might add that the Buk said to me, ” To live with the Gods,
you first have to forgive the drunks.” Early Bukowski, when he
was drunk, was not a nice person. When he was sober, he could be
shy, and quite likeable. In the end, however, his art prevailed
over his persona.
DH: Bukowski is sometimes
mistaken for a “Beat” writer. How would you classify him?
ADW: I hate putting anyone in a category. Bukowski told
me he was never a Beat. Let me quote you from a letter he wrote
me, ” I never liked the Beats. They were too self-promotional,
and the drugs gave them all wooden dicks or turned them into
cunts. I’m from the old school. I believe in working and living
in isolation. Crowds weaken your intent and originality.”
Well Bukowski remained true to the latter part of this
statement, but one could certainly question his comment about
the Beats being too self-promotional. I mean Ginsberg certainly
was a master at self-promotion and Ferlinghetti isn’t far
behind, but Bukowski promoted himself pretty well too. If I were
pressed I would say Bukowski was a Bohemian, as was Jack
Micheline, although Jack used the Beat handle to his advantage
when it was beneficial to him.
DH: Do you see any new Bukowskis on the horizon?
ADW: No I don’t.
DH: Do you think the small presses today are as effective
as in your salad days, in terms of getting the “word”out?
ADW: The small presses have always had problems with
distribution. They simply lack the money or power to gain the
attention of the established media, and most small press
publishers lack promotion skills, as well. There are of course
exceptions, but they are few and far between. Second Coming was
never a money maker, but I got the word out well enough. I left
copies of the mag in doctor and dentist offices, where you had a
captive audience. There were also bookfairs and library
conferences where we participated, and COSMEP ( Committee of
Small Magazine editors and Publishers) helped promote and
distribute books to some extent. The most important thing to
come out of COSMEP was to provide a kinship among small press
editors and publishers. Those were fun times. We were thumbing
our noses (in the 1970’s) at the collective masses, and having
fun doing it. That doesn’t exist today.
I know there will be people out there who say the internet and
the web have provided a background where more people can see a
poet’s work, but there is no evidence whatsoever that this has
resulted in any significant sales. In fact, if you can read the
work free, why would you want to pay to read the same poem in
print format? Well some of us still feel strongly about the
print world, but I don’t know about its future-twenty-thirty
years from now.
DH: Do you think Bukowski’s corpus of work will be used
in courses at colleges around the country as part of the
literary canon?
ADW: I don’t suspect that this will be the case. The
academics have not seen fit to give him the proper recognition
that his work deserves. But who knows? Bukowski may be required
reading fifty years from now, or he could be forgotten. Either
way, Bukowski would be laughing his ass off.
( This interview originally appeared in SPARE CHANGE NEWS.)
* Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. Send
your books for review to: Doug Holder 25 School St. Somerville,
Ma. 02143 To purchase A. D. Winans memoir go to: http://www.dustbooks.com
dougholder.post.harvard.edu
this article previously published on authorsden.com
kagablog July 27, 2007