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Review by g emil reutter
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I plucked this volume published by Bottle Of Smoke Press back in 2010 from my library to have another visit with the poet A.D. Winans. I have several of his chapbooks but I am always drawn to these selected poems for a good read. Winans is at times plainspoken and as he says you won’t need a dictionary to figure out what he is saying. He brings the heart and soul of America into his poems that reflect the hard times people have and some of the good times. As plainspoken as he is in his realism, he is at his best with images such as this from the 3rd stanza For William Wantling:
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The night rolls back its wings
Teeth as cold a naked bone
But neither the night nor
The poet dies quietly
Only the flesh expires
The word linger on welcoming
The taste of ash
And morning comes as no loss
For wherever you are
You survived the pain
Refused to surrender
Earth’s flesh removed from reality
Here in the wakening of dawn
Where the mist smells sweetly
And one can hear the throats
Of birds singing like cannons
In the hour when the spirit
Collects its visions
Replaying them on old walls
Gatsby shots from another era
Stills to fill the void
In a world of runaway tongues
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Winans is a poet of the working class, the disadvantaged. He lives among them and understands them when they pass into the forgotten world of the jobless such as the first 6 stanzas of The System:
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There are old men and women
Who have worked all their lives
Who have put in thirty-five
And forty years for the right
To a pension
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There are old people who have
Worked twenty years
Only to be laid off
Without so much as two weeks
Written notice
Abandoned to seek a living
At half the pay
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There are old people
Who have worked
Most of their lives
Only to witness
The company go belly-up
And find there is no pension
Fund left
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You can find them
On park benches
Or wandering lonely supermarkets
Or sitting daily
At neighborhood bars
Nursing their drinks
Like a blood transfusion
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They come in different flavors
Like lifesavers
Some thin and balding
Some fat and sweating
Some complaining bitterly
Some too proud to let the
Pain show
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So proud that they eat dog food
And find desert in back alley
Garbage cans
Trapped by false promises
Trapped by a belief in a system
That has abandoned them.
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Winans is the direct link to the Beat/Meat poetry movement and thus its child the Outlaw poetry movement. He writes of Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, Kaufman, Micheline and Burroughs, of politics, his time in Panama and visits to Mexico, of his mother and father, of lost loves, of hard times, of haunting memories such as in the poem. I Kiss The Feet Of Angels:
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dark starry night
fog creeping in
over the hills
raindrops falling
on the window
I see the faces of old friends
staring at me
ghosts from the past
freight trains steam ships
subway trains carrying their
cargo of death
Rimbaud the mad hatter
Baudelaire
Lorca fed a dinner of bullets
Kaufman a black messiah
walking Bourbon Street
eating a golden sardine
Micheline drinking with Kerouac
at Cedar Tavern
Jesus wiping the perspiration
from his forehead
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the foghorn plays a symphony
inside my head
I hear the drums
I feel the beat
I kiss the feet
of angels
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Winans is the last one left in the rodeo when it is all said and done. He has lived the life of a poet. A poet, publisher, performer, promoter of other poets, Winans is dedicated to the craft. At the age of 80 Winans is still creating his art. A new book is forthcoming this year, keep an eye out for it. Until then give yourself a gift and pick up a copy of Drowning Like Li Po in a River of Red Wine.
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North of Oxford 