Remembering Bukowski

by A. D. Winans. (with illustrations by Raindog). 48.pp. Lummox Press. P.O. Box 5301, San Pedro, CA. 96733-5301.

Book Review by Michael Basinski

I read within this little red book, which can fit in the back pocket of your pants easy enough for reading on the bus, in church, while not watching TV or screwing around with porn on the internet or emailing somebody about insurance or India or ordering a gazabutgoo bush to block your Nazi Republican neighbor’s view… I read that A. D. Winans published in more than 500 magazines and that he edited for years Second Coming Magazine. I knew that. But I didn’t know about the 500 publications and - how lame can I be? - I did not read, that I remembered, any of those more than 500 publications (I assume many poems). So I had a treat. So I had an intoxication. So I hear da voice as fresh as wet kittens and frank as jumping on a rusty nail. His poems about the Buk were crocodiles and I was an overweight drunk in the Nile. Now this poet is of the gut-philosophical beer can couch, bacon, working class shoes and a suit that is too small with an outdated tie that you only wear to weddings and the too frequent funerals of friends. Let me escape my own powerful pleasurable first impressions. Winans of short lined poems pours smooth. He remembers the great Buk as a man as much as a genius poet. Therefore, he is always fair, fart and candid and therefore finger on the trigger real. Apollo the sun. Moth for the moon. His poems are cans of tuna, starkissed. This is no easy thing to talk write without being behind the mask of the some far-stretched notion of what a poet is. Well - I am gunna tell you what a poet is: A. D. Winans.