In 2007 I was one of two U.S. Poets honored at the Oaxaca, Mexico International Arts Festival
Below is an interview conducted at that time.
Interviewer: Daniel Eduardo De La Fuente Altamirano, a Mexico freelance
journalist.
A.D. Winans
1-How would you describe the literary environment in the
US?
First off, I’m not a poetry scholar or an academic poet. The response you
will receive is a blue-collar, workingman’s perspective of the poetry scene and
how it relates to my life.
If by this question you are referring to the publishing environment in the
U.S., it has been on the decline since corporations first began purchasing major
publishing houses in the eighties. The major publishing houses no longer accept
unsolicited manuscripts. You need to have an agent in order to get in the front
door. This is a “Catch-22” situation. The publisher demands you have an agent,
and the agent demands publishing credits, and a track history before
representing you.
The University presses are dominated by academic writers and a few poets
and writers who have managed to obtain name recognition.
The only real alternative left is being published by a small press. There
are literally thousands of small press magazines seeking and publishing the work
of alternative poets and writers, but 99% of them lack any distribution and are
limited to small press runs. The small presses who publish books are hampered
by lack of funds for proper promotion and distribution.
This has led to “Print on Demand” (POD) services, which refers to the
digital printing and binding of a book in a relatively short time frame. It is
cost-effective to produce books one or two at a time, rather than the more
costly process of a larger print run.
In reality, however, POD publishing services aren’t publishers in the
traditional sense of the word but are really just a printing-publishing service
offered to writers. They charge a fee for publication and will publish most
anyone willing to pay the fee. They do not routinely provide editing services
or proofreading, although many will provide this service at an additional fee.
In practice, this service closely resembles vanity publishers and is equated as
such by critics and reviewers.
It has been estimated that 40% of POD sales are to the authors themselves,
who purchase them for family and friends. There are many drawbacks: Booksellers
don’t like dealing with POD services; POD services are not cheap; books are
unlikely to be reviewed; The book will not be publicized, and terms and
conditions have been known to be changed without warning. In short, to a new
poet or writer, the publishing prospects other than the small press world are
indeed bleak.
If you are referring to the poets and authors writing within this
environment, a lot has changed since my generation. There are any number of
young writers today who are not overly concerned with being published by a big
publishing house. This is true for some writers I know in San Francisco who are
content with desktop publishing and having their books published in a print run
of 100 or 200 copies. They are satisfied with a local reputation, although I’m
sure they would not turn down an offer from a large publishing house.
I don’t feel qualified to speak for the entire U.S. I was born in San
Francisco, California, and have lived here practically my entire life;
therefore, I feel qualified to speak about my own literary environment.
San Francisco has always been a Mecca for creativity, be it poetry, prose,
or the art world. Many young people continue to be enthralled with the Beat
poets and writers, but before the Beat Generation, there existed what was known
as the “ San Francisco Renaissance,” a designation for a range of poetic
activity centered throughout the city.
The poet Kenneth Rexroth is considered the founding father of the
renaissance. Rexroth was a prominent second-generation modernist poet who
corresponded with the likes of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. He held
regular readings in his apartment located in the Fillmore District. The poets
and writers attending the meetings represented a wide range of styles, from the
ballads of Helen Adams to the bawdy themes of poet and filmmaker James
Broughton.
In the fifties, the Beat Generation sprang-up with the core of the movement
centered in New York’s Greenwich Village and San Francisco’s North Beach.
Allen Ginsberg came to San Francisco around this time and soon found his
way to Rexroth’s pad, as did Philip Whalen and other Beat poets. Later Rexroth
arranged a reading at the Six Gallery where Ginsberg read his now famous HOWL
poem. Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen. Michael Mc Clure, and Philip Lamanita
(surreal poet) were also on the bill.
Literary historians cite jazz as a major influence on the work of the
Beats, and this is certainly true in the case of writers and poets like Jack
Kerouac and Bob Kaufman. The truth is reading poetry to music was nothing new.
In the early 1900s, Carl Sandburg played the guitar while reading poetry and
Rexroth read to jazz with Langston Hughes, in Chicago, Illinois, before the term
“Beat” existed. And Kenneth Patchen, whom I have only heard on tape, was
perhaps the greatest jazz poet of them all.
The Beats openly challenged and defied the established order of the day.
They were among the first to fictionalize their lives to readers worldwide, who
thrived on their real-life experiences. By the late fifties, they had cemented
their role in the new American Counterculture. The most important thing Kerouac,
Ginsberg, and Cassady did was to make rebellious youths in the U.S. and abroad
aware there were others out there who felt the same way they felt.
The single most important event that served to gain the Beats notoriety was
when the U.S. Customs seized A shipment of Ginsberg’s HOWL, declaring it
obscene. Customs later dropped the charge and allowed the book into the U.S.,
but an overzealous San Francisco Police Department arrested Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and Shig Muro (the then manager of City Lights) and charged them
with selling obscene literature. Judge Clayton Horn later ruled that if a book
has “The slightest redeeming social importance, it is protected under the First
and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. and California Constructions and therefore
can not be declared obscene.” This legal precedent allowed Henry Miller’s
Tropic of Cancer to be published by Grove Press.
The Beat movement in San Francisco continued through the early part of the
sixties. Ferlinghetti, Corso, Ginsberg, Di Prima, Joanne Kyger, Bob Kaufman,
Jack Spicer, Richard Brautigan, Philip Whalen, and others were at the forefront
of the movement.
There is some dispute over who termed the word “Beat.” Some people claim
it was Bob Kaufman. Ferlinghetti, Mc Clure, and others Beats have said they are
uncomfortable with the term but are quite content with the fame it has brought
them. The word itself is hardly new. As Robert Briggs has pointed out, “In
1860, a Beat was a loafer, moocher, or dead beat. By 1930 it was the rhythm with
which someone beat a rap, or beat someone’s time for a girl, and by the late 40s
the term dead beat referred to those who drained whatever scene they happened
into.”
Be it as may, today the Beats have by and large died off, with only
Ferlinghetti, Mc Clure, Di Prima, Kyger, and David Meltzer still residing in the
San Francisco Bay Area, but their Influence remains, their spirit carried by
post-Beat poets, who are too numerous to mention.
2-Is today's American literature characterized by any determining
trend?
I don’t follow or subscribe to trends. American Literature since the
beginning of thee 21st Century is exceptionally diverse, with rapidly growing
multicultural influences. The biggest and fastest-growing minority group is the
Latino population, which is now more than 40 million strong. The Asian
population, although stabilized, also makes up a sizable number of the overall
population. New voices continue to emerge within the Native American, African
American, Asian American, and Hispanic American communities. “Bilingual” is a
popular theme among American authors, reflecting both the alienation and the
strong cultural identify that come with being a non-native English speaker
living in the U.S. Gender issues remain popular in 21st Century American
Literature, and Gay and Lesbian authors continue to publish and make their
concerns known within their particular communities.
American writers as a group continue to respond to the important issues of
the country and the world at large, while creating unique worlds within their
own communities. America’s diverse literary voices reflect the unique
characteristics of its land, its people, and culture. The same holds true for
Latino writers in their native land.
3-Horace Engdahl, Nobel Prize Secretary, said on the eve of
declaring Le Clézio winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, that the US
were too insular and ignorant a country to compete against Europe for the
world's main literary prize. “Europe is still the center of the literary world,”
he said, "not the United States. The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They
don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of
literature. That ignorance is restraining.” What is your opinion about this
statement?
I think his statement is both arrogant and misguided. There is just as
much junk literature cluttering the shelves of Europe as there is here in the
U.S. Perhaps Engdahl forgets that William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John
Steinbeck, Saul Bellow, and other recognized writers were also awarded a Nobel
Literature Prize, the very prize Mr. Engdahl holds in such high esteem.Faulkner
said, “I believe that man will not merely endure, he will prevail. He is
immortal, not because he alone among creatures, has an inexhaustible voice, but
because he has a soul, a spirit, capable of compassion and sacrifice and
endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty, is to write about these things. It
is a privilege to help man endure by lifting his head, by reminding him of
courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity. The poet’s voice
need not merely be the record of man; it can be one of the props to help him
endure and prevail.”
Could a European writer have said this any better? But more importantly,
poetry is not, and should not be, about competing. Poetry comes from the heart
and soul of the poet, and poets should not be in competition with each other,
let alone nations competing with each other.
Mr. Engdahl says the U.S. is “too insular and too ignorant a country.” He
fails to realize poetry does not originate from the core of any one country, but
from the poet himself, regardless of what country he resides in. Most poets
outside the Academy are by their very nature outsiders, some even
outlaws.
He is perhaps right that not enough translations are being done in the
U.S., but this is slowly changing. PEN (of which I am a member) encourages and
rewards translations, and its writers have actively participated in the
“dialogue of literature.” However, I would respectfully point out that no
translator can fully catch the full beauty of a poem written in the native
tongue of the poet. As for the “big dialogue of literature,” I leave this up
to the Academics.
4- You were close to the Beat Tradition. What is the legacy of its
authors? How valid are Ginsberg, Kerouac or Burroughs' writings in 2008? Have
they been studied enough?
Kerouac will always be the Godfather of the Beat Generation and Ginsberg (a
self-marketing genius) will be remembered, if for nothing more than his poem,
HOWL.
For my money Ginsberg’s Kaddish is the best poem he wrote. I’ll discuss
Burroughs later, as you have a question directly addressed to him. However, I
feel it’s important to point out there were many Beat writers who were as good
if not better than Ginsberg, but who never received the proper recognition. An
example is Bob Kaufman, one of the original voices to come out of the Beat
Generation. Kaufman is rightfully considered as one of the most influential
black poets of his era, though his poetry transcends race identification. Like
many of the Beats he started out in New York and later migrated to San
Francisco’s North Beach.
He was an amazing poet who early in his life served in the Merchant Marines
and traveled the world over. Like Kerouac, he was heavy into the jazz scene. In
later years, he became the victim of drugs and forced shock treatments at New
York’s Bellevue Hospital. He took a vow of silence in 1963 after watching
President Kennedy assassinated on TV, and kept his vow until the end of the
Vietnam War. And yet he had the poems of the masters memorized. You would be
sitting next to him in North Beach and all of a sudden he would start reciting
lines from T.S. Eliot, William Blake, and Lorca, this despite his diminished
capacity.
Today, literary critics and academics alike recognize the Beats as
legitimate poets, writers, and artists, but the legitimacy did not come without
a cost. In later life, Ginsberg sold out to the establishment, and as a result
his work suffered. He applied for and received not one or two, but three NEA
fellowship grants, and years before his death sold his archives to Stanford
University for one million dollars. William Burroughs made commercials and had
a small roll in a popular movie. Today, Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore
can’t be distinguished from other commercial bookstores, and he is second only
to Ginsberg in marketing himself, receiving thousands of dollars for
readings.
It’s unfortunate that Beat historians and translators have by and large
limited their study of the Beats to Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Di Prima, Mc
Clure, and Burroughs, while largely ignoring other Beat poets who left their
mark on the Beat Generation. This extends to non-Beat poets who were an
influence on the Beats; Kenneth Patchen and Kenneth Rexroth are an example of
two excellent poets and writers who seem to have fallen out of favor with the
literary elite.
5- You were close, among other writers, to Burroughs. To what
extent is his work enriching and influencing other authors?
Actually I only met Burroughs twice. The first time was at a New York
Book Fair and the last time at City Lights Bookstore, for a total conversational
time of probably no more than fifteen minutes. There is no denying he was an
important voice that went beyond the “Beat” image.
His was a literary voice that influenced many young people, both at home
and abroad. He is considered by many to be one of the most important literary
figures of the twentieth century. Jack Kerouac called him, “the greatest
satirical writer since Jonathan Swift,” and Norman Mailer went so far as to say
he was quite possibly the “only American Writer possessed by genius.”
He was a Harvard-educated man and the grandson of the inventor of the
Burroughs adding machine, whose family was listed in the Saint Louis Social
Register, who gave it all up to write drug-induced literature that bridged
generations and made him immensely popular both at home and abroad.
After graduating from Harvard, Burroughs moved to New York and became part
of the underground drug scene. It was in New York that he met and became
friends with Kerouac and Ginsberg, who were both students at Columbia
University. Ginsberg and Kerouac convinced Burroughs to write about his own
personal experiences in life, which resulted in his first book, Junky. In his
early literary career he wrote straight narrative prose, having burst forth on
the scene at a time when conventional methods of writing were becoming boring.
It’s said his intention was to create a “literature of risk,” in which the
writer was an outlaw in the midst of society and the accepted writers of the
day.
His greatest contribution to literature came with the publication of later
books such as Naked Lunch, which was banned in many places due to its sexual
content and biting political satire. The book revealed a new writing style,
with Burroughs presenting numerous characters and personalities within the
course of the book, shifting from one to the next without any warning. He
spliced in what he called “routines,” small skits of humorous anecdotes. Rather
than the standard practice of progressing from beginning to the end as the book
evolves, the chapters were presented in random order. He ignored the standard
rules of the day, and manipulated the language to suit his purposes.
The most radical change in his writing took place in 1959, when he began
to employ what is known as “cutups,” the process of cutting up pages and
rearranging them to form new combinations of word and image. A page, for
example, might be cut into quarters, and then the top right would be paired with
the bottom left, and the top left with the bottom right. The composite text is
then read or typed to form the new text.
There is little doubt Burroughs played an important role in the evolution
of modern writing as well as other artistic mediums. His style broke through
previous literary standards and barriers and made it possible for other writers
to openly experiment with different writing styles.
6- Speaking about your personal work, what moves you to write? Who
do you consider as your main influences and why?
My most immediate influences were writers and not poets. Writers like
Ernest Hemingway, Steinbeck, Camus, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. My early poetry
influences were William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra
Pound. It was not until I returned from the military (Panama) in 1958 that I
discovered the Beats. Early Beat influences were Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island
off the Mind, followed by the work of Ginsberg, Corso, Jack Spicer, Richard
Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline, and the non-beat poet, Charles
Bukokwski.
But I have never said I was a poet. I would be hard pressed to tell you
what a poet is. If I’m a poet, I’m a blue-collar workingman’s poet. I find
poetry wherever I go. I have no national sense of poetry. I write because I
have to. I write to appease the demons inside my head, voices that demand to be
released, but there are times too when I write for the pure pleasure of
it.
It seems like today everyone calls himself a poet. The Internet is
flooded with some of the worst poems imaginable. You can’t simply call yourself
a poet and be one.
I believe there are a large number of poets out there who write poetry
because they want to be called a poet. They want recognition and crave awards
and court favors, when in reality the real poet struggles to just survive and
make a living. I will never write to become part of the literary mafia or the
cliques that exist in San Francisco and beyond.
A good percentage of my poems are about the dispossessed: hookers, drug
addicts, alcoholics, the homeless, and the like. But I’m also a political
poet, having opposed the Vietnam War and the unlawful invasion of Iraq by the
criminal Bush administration. When I saw that young naked and crying girl
running down the village road in Vietnam, after it was napalm bombed, well that
was something I had to write about. I witness the police brutality of cops
beating a man on the street, that’s another poem in waiting. I write what I
feel, but also what I see. I leave the leaves and trees to poets like Li Po.
So you can say social injustice and tragedies move me to write, but then so does
a sweating Black musician blowing his horn in a jazz club, or the women I have
loved in my life. It’s all writing material. It’s why I never took a writing
workshop. They don’t teach subject matter like this in the classroom.
I’m not sure when I discovered the potential influence of the written
word, or when I first realized its revolutionary power. Politically speaking, I
was inspired by Folk musicians like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and later on
by Bob Dylan. But I don’t confine myself to any one writing style. My short
chapbook, 13 Jazz Poems is lyrical in nature, and my book Crazy John Poems is
written in a narrative style, laced with humor. I like to keep experimenting
with language. I don’t want to be labeled under any one particular
category.
At a recent reading during an invitation to participate at a literary
festival in Oaxaca, Mexico, one of the students raised his hand and said he
didn’t understand poetry. That’s one of the problems I have with poetry. Too
many poets write for other poets. They don’t write in a language the common man
and woman understands. They don’t write about what goes on in the daily lives
of the average American. The Language Poets search for the perfect line, but
there is no gut feeling in those lines.
You can arrange lines in a near perfect order, and play around with
metaphors and similes, but what does it mean to the average person in the
street? That’s not the kind of poetry I write. I’m not interested in the
clever use of words that lie lifeless on the page. I do not write to impress
other poets or the Academic world.
7- What are your favorite topics, your main literary
interests?
My main topic is the human condition. I address this by the laying down
of words on paper as I see, feel, and live them. So the human condition is my
main interest. I’m pretty much a recluse when it comes to the San Francisco
Literary Scene. I don’t go to coffee houses, or carry a notebook to write down
my every thought. I don’t go to weekly meetings at Spec’s Bar in North Beach,
where a small group of poets meet and talk the night away. I’d rather have a
beer at Gino and Carlo’s bar and talk life with a secretary or a
longshoreman.
My main interest today is exploring how to take my poems and arrange them
side-by-side with photographs I have taken over the course of my life, since I
am also an amateur photographer. I’m interested in art films and art
galleries. I am interested in people and politics.
8- How would you describe your own path, your personal
poetry?
I have walked many paths in my life. I have tried to walk the walk, as well
as talk the talk. I’ve been a poet, a writer, a supporter of the arts, as well
as having worked in Education, at the Office of Civil Rights, investigating
discrimination against minorities, women, and the disabled. I’ll soon be 73,
and I’m still learning and nowhere near to seeing the light at the end of the
tunnel.
As for my personal poetry, even though I like to consider myself a
“People’s Poet,” I refuse to be pigeonholed. I have experimented in other forms
and styles from lyrical to haiku and humor. In baseball terms, I see myself as
a fastball and curve ball pitcher, who sometimes crosses the batter up with a
knuckle ball or a change-up. I like to keep them guessing.
9- What is the present situation of American authors vis-à-vis
Latin America and the rest of the world?
I am not sure how to respond to this question. I think American writers
and Latin American writers have much in common, as both share a common ground in
responding to the important issues of their country and the world at large.
American writers, Latin American writers, and writers across the globe have
diverse literary voices reflecting the unique characteristics of their land,
people and culture. There is much we can learn from each other.
As for my own familiarity with Latin American Poets and Writers, I am
limited by the fact I am not bilingual. Like most American poets, I discovered
Lorca, early on. There is no doubt he is one of the truly great Spanish writers
of the 20th Century. In his short life, he produced a great body of work. His
tragic death at the hands of Franco’s fascist henchmen is also what drew my
attention to him.
Octavio Paz left behind a beautiful web of words of things seen and
unseen. He was a true master of mixing in elements of surrealism with the grit
and bone of natural objects. I recall his saying, “Wouldn’t it be better to turn
life into poetry rather than to make poetry from life?”
I discovered Jorge Luis Borges rather late in life, which I regret, because
I understand he is considered to be the foremost contemporary Latin American
writer, and only now am I acquainting myself with Carlos Fuentes, a marvelous
writer, dealing with the themes of Mexican identify and history.
And who cannot identify with Cesar Vallejo, if for no other reason than his
identifying himself with the sufferings of the underprivileged.
Here at home, while working with the San Francisco Arts Commission
(1975-80), I became familiar with Isabel Allende, who was at the time was living
in California. During this time I also became friends with Victor Cruz and
Alenjdro Murguia, two fine bilingual poets and writers.
As I said earlier, I think American and Latino writers share a common
ground in that they both write about important issues of their respective
counties, and both reflect diverse literary voices of the unique characteristics
of their land, people, and culture. We both have the opportunity to enrich our
lives through the eyes and words of the other.
10- Finally, your country faces a very severe economic crisis. What
can a poet say when his country stands at such a difficult
juncture?
This is not an easy question to answer. It’s up to each individual poet
and writer to determine his response to these difficult times we find ourselves
in. In my opinion a poet must say what needs to be said, without any thought or
consideration as to the consequences.
We have war criminals in the Bush Administration who condoned and set
policy allowing the torture of prisoners. Our Constitution has been whittled
away, little by little, and the average person on the street doesn’t seem overly
concerned. The Bush Administration used FEAR as its weapon and the people were
all too willing to give away ordinary freedoms for the promise of a false
security.
Poets need to speak out against these and other abuses of power. They
need to join workers on the front lines; those brave enough to take their
beliefs to the streets; protesting against the injustices perpetuated against
the working class. Poets need to do more than just write a poem and read it to
an audience and take satisfaction in the applause. They need to become active
participants in the community they live in.
There is no easy solution to the economic crisis we find ourselves in. The
banks and Wall Street are largely responsible for putting us in the position we
find ourselves in, with their greed for the almighty buck. The poet and average
citizen does not have a real opportunity to put an end to this greed other than
to hold the politicians accountable and vote them out of office.
If the U.S. sinks into a depression like the one we experienced in the
thirties, it may actually be good for the country. We have become a
commodity-obsessed nation. We live beyond our means. We put everything on
credit. We pass a homeless person on the street, and we don’t look him in the
eye, let alone drop a coin in his cup. The Government isn’t the answer; it is
only a player in the game. We need to examine our very heart and soul.
