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| ( Left to Right: A.D. Winans, Jack Micheline) |
Dead Lions by A.D. Winans (Punk Hostage Press) $16.95
Review by Doug Holder
A.D. Winans, founder of the ground-breaking San
Francisco-based Second Coming Press and doyen of the San Francisco
poetry scene for the past 40 or 50 years, has a new book of essays out titled: Dead Lions. Winans
throws his focus on four writers: screenwriter Alvah Bessie (Bessie was one of the Hollywood Ten, who
appeared in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s), Jack Micheline, the poet and Whitmanesque wanderer, Charles Bukowski, the dirty old man of poetry, and Bob Kaufman, one of the great Beat poets to come out of
the North Beach scene in San Francisco.
Since I am primarily a poet, I am most interested in Winans’
accounts of Micheline, Bukowski, and Kaufman. Winans aptly starts with
Micheline’s death on a San Francisco subway.
A Poetic death in transit, like Lowell’s in the back of the cab— unlike most
of men who die undignified deaths from straining on the toilet, or drowning in
cancer and heart disease. Winans recounts Micheline’s wanderlust, his prolific
trips across the country, and his outrageous behavior fueled by booze. .Micheline, although he published 20 books, was spurned by the City Lights Press,
Black Sparrow and other notable
publishers because of his “offensive” behavior. But Micheline never changed his
ways. Winans writes:
“He refused to bow to anyone, choosing to write for the
people, hookers, drug addicts, blue collar workers and the dispossessed, and he
did it from deep inside the heart.”
Micheline was befriended by
Bukowski, but Bukowski did not share the religious fervor he brought to his poetry.
Yet Bukowki respected the man. Winans
quotes from a letter Bukowski sent to him:
“ Micheline is all right—he’s one third bull shit, but he’s
got a special divinity and special strength. He’s got perhaps a little too much of a POET sign
pasted to his forehead, but more often than not he says good things—in speech
and poem—power-flame, laughing things. I like the way his poems flow and roll.
His poems are total feelings beating their heads on barroom floors.”
Much has been written about Charles Bukowski, and in fact
Winans has written a memoir published by Dustbooks: The Holy Grail: Charles
Bukowski and The Second Coming that I reviewed years ago for the Small
Press Review. Still--it is interesting to hear Winans’ take on things, even
though we might have heard it before. Winans met Bukowski when he was
publishing his Second Coming magazine in San Francisco. He even had an
issue dedicated to Bukowski. Winans sees many admirable qualities in the BUK—but—he
gives us the full view of this man with the pockmarked face:
“Hank was a man of
many virtues, but to see him (as many do) as a man whose motive and actions
were in the best interests of the down and out, simply ignores the fact he
betrayed and tore apart many former friends, both in short stories, and in
vindictive poems, frequently breaking off friendships whenever someone got to
close to him, and often on brutal terms.”
Winans points out that besides his poetic acumen Bukowski was
a great entertainer. Here,Winans describes Bukowski on stage, before his
reading:
“Once on stage, he wasted no time in opening the
refrigerator door and popping open a can of beer to the sound of wild cheers. I
watched him survey the crowd for several seconds before tilting his head back
and drinking half the contents from the beer can. Again this simple act was met
with rousing cheers.”
The North Beach section of San Francisco is now more of a
tourist destination, as gentrification of the city has forced out many of the
poets and writers with astronomical rents. I recently saw some footage from a
documentary with Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Founder
of City Lights Book), who talked about the high tech sector coming in and
gutting the city—to where he barely recognizes it. But in the 50s and 60s this
was a hotbed of creative energy. North Beach is a six block area from lower
Grant Ave. to upper Grant Ave. in the city. Poet Bob Kaufman, known as the “American
Rimbaud” was a prime player here. He co-edited the well-known lit mag Beatitude
with William Margolis. Kaufman was the son of an Orthodox Jew and an
African-American mother, brought up in New Orleans. His best known book was
published by the noted Avant-Garde Press, New Directions. The book titled:
Solitudes Crowded with Loneliness created quite a stir in the local
literary community. Winans hung out with Kaufman in the Co-Existence Bagel
Shop, a happening spot at the time and he recalls a very dramatic poet:
“Kaufman entered the establishment, climbing on top of the
tables, and reciting a newly written poem…The audience hung on his every word.”
Later Kaufman got into difficulty with the police and was often hauled to the city prison after he wrote on its walls of the bagel shop: “Adolf
Hitler, growing tired of Eva Braun, and burning Jews, moved to San Francisco
and became a cop.”
The book is chock full of Winans’fly on the wall accounts
of these renegade poets and writers. This is not a scholarly book, there is no
real intensive analysis of their work, but it is a lively introduction to these
men—and well-worth the read. The book should whet the readers' interest and hopefully they will want to explore these men further. I also
wonder about the women poets of this era— but perhaps that is meant for another book.
