A. D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings

A.D.Winans

A. D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings 

Reviewed by Pam Rosenblatt

A.D. Winans is a poet who tells life as he sees it, as he lives, and as he knows it. Mr. Winans has published over 50 poetry books over the past 50 plus years.  His name is well-recognized around  United States poetry circles. It’s no surprise that Wind On His Wings is another successful read by A.D. Winans.

                Published by Presa Press in 2012, Winans’s Wind On His Wings is a 41 page chapbook that contains poems that are easy to understand, to the point, and reflect what’s on the poet’s mind at the time of the write. Often times his words are humorous, often times his words are political, and sometimes his words are distasteful. But all the time, Winans has maintained his status of “poet”.

                In his opening poem, “Aladdin’s Lamp”, Winans speaks his masculine mind in a light, sexual tone that carries the reader’s interest – that is up until the final stanza that reveals his ability to show the distastefulness of the aging process in a humorous light:

I push my way through the old

Wild West barroom doors

at the Saloon

the oldest bar in San Francisco

I order a boilermaker

eye the swamper with a wheel barrel belly

who pays me no attention

I down a shot and beer

in less than five minutes

pull out the key

to the upstairs hotel room

walk up the stairway

fit the key in the lock

the young woman I picked up

the night before

still naked on the bed

I climb in beside her

a fire lit in this old man’s body

as I rub my cock

like Aladdin’s lamp

hoping there is one more wish left

Winans has the ability to write in a sensitive, more caring tone as well, as can be read in his rather political poem, “POEM FOR ROBERTO VARGAS AND THE NICARAGUAN FREEDOM FIGHTERS”:

this poem is for you Roberto

and for Ed “Foots” Lipman too

this poem is for every poet

who ever paced the cellblocks of San Quentin

Folsom, Attica, and Neil Island

or fought the people’s struggle in Chile

Cuba or Nicaragua

this poem is for those who walk

the dream of freedom

with guerilla visions

in their hearts and eyes

this poem is for those

who gave their lifeblood

to wash the streets free of oppression

for those who rest in heroic

and not so heroic graves

in the  struggle for human dignity

I sit here in my seventy-sixth year

thinking of young boys

who have fought the real war

thinking of grieving mothers and widows

of young women in black suspender belts

and knee high leather boots

with revolutionary roots

thinking of how the words come too late

and never say enough

knowing that in the Buddha Temple of life

all things must die

knowing there is no survival

no tarot cards horoscopes or incantations

to bring back the dead

I walk the midnight supermarket of death

thinking of Lorca and that long dirt  road

thinking of the execution wall

the hangman’s noose

ethnic cleansing ovens and genocide

hearing the gypsy ballad

that sings to the heavens knowing

there is a strange code

to this language we are addicted to

as Gene Fowler pointed out  to me

evil spelled backwards is live

being made into a State automated

robot is evil

but dying is not evil

for it is in its whole

the disintegration

the bacterial feeding

which in turn is a live process

and so the fight goes on

and must go on until

every street has been cleared

of assassins until

every newborn

in encircled in a poem

the spirit lives on

in those who passed the baton

the vision cannot be killed

even as we retreat into

the depths of our being

listening to the blood

beat solid against the walls

of the heart knowing

there are secrets in the bones

that cannot be denied

or sold out to the whims of others

sleep well my comrades

only the flesh is gone

your strength lives on

in those who dared

to reach out and kiss

the sun

               

A.D. Winans has written a complex chapbook that reads easily, though sometimes he makes the readers painfully aware that “the spirit lives on/in those who passed the baton/the vision cannot be killed/even as we retreat into/the depths of our being/listening to the blood/beat solid against the walls/of the heart knowing/there are secrets in the bones/that cannot be denied/or sold out to the whims of others.”

In his aging years, Winans seems to have come to the conclusion that “your strength lives on/in those who dared/to reach out and kiss/the sun”. If these words are true, then A.D. Winans has lived a full life, and his poems reflect his own inner “strength”.  

A.D. Winans’s Wind On His Wings is an excellent year 2012 read!