Digital Scupture of Julia Vinograd by Judy Joy Jones
                     
           Poet 1943  - 2018                     

                                  "the writing of poetry is one thing.  it's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch." ....maxine kumin

The interview with Julia Vinograd first appeared in "On the Road With Judy!"


JULIA:
  "Wanna buy one of my books?'

ME:
"What kind?"

JULIA:
"Poetry"

ME:
"Uh er, well let me think about it"

JULIA:
"Only three bucks"

Julia Vinograd sounded more like
a carnival barker than a poet who has
published 48 books of her poetry.
She is "The Berkeley Street Poet",
also known as   'The Bubble Lady".


ME:
"Yeah ok, why not.    If I can't
understand it I'm not out lots of money.
Only three bucks.  Your books look
pretty simple"   I said flipping through
the pages.

Poetry was something for Harvard Graduates not me.
In high school we dissected
an Edgar Allen Poe poem
and were given a grade. The experience
was so disgusting I avoided poetry ever since.

Julia Vinograds poetry changed all that.
Made me feel.  Yup, her poems made me feel and feeling made sense.

Getting a grade for dissecting an Edgar Allen Poe poem didn't.

In fact  'feeling'  made me want to read
more poetry. Julias poems turn me on.
Me a simple minded right brained artist
turned on by poetry!   And its because
of her poems.  She writes for the people, real people.

A new door opened in my mind and
I now considered myself  'refined'.
I enjoyed the luxury of verse.

Since I lived around the corner from
the Cafe Mediterranian on Telegraph
Avenue in Berkeley where Julia Vinograd hangs her hat, over the next couple years I ran into her often. I would see her draggin'
her crippled leg up steep bus steps that are hard for even the most able bodied person, moreless a person in braces .

Cruel bus drivers demanded  'Show me
your bus pass proving your disability!'  before Julia even had a chance to reachthe top of the steps.

I learned never to say hello to Julia.
She didn't say 'Hi' back...instead..
"Wanna buy one of my books?"

Mostly I did, but  never had money
being a starving painter.

Julia is the most single focused artist I
have ever met.  Driven.. And her focus
is on one thing, her poetry. Like she has
a 1000 watt light bulb inside her turned
up to high and the rest of us are operating on 50-75 watts max.

"The Stripdown Journey to God",
that's what I call our lives and
Julia Vinograd is three fourths 'Bare'.

Asking Julia if she would like to be interviewed for my online newsletter;
"On the Road With Judy" her reply was; "If you buy four of my books."

"Sounds fair enough"  I replied.  "So it's a deal?"

"Yup"  Julia answered.

"I'll email you the questions"  I said.

"Nope"  quipped Julia over the phone.
"I don't own a computer."

"Well"  I said,  "I'll snailmail them."
"Nope"   Julia answered.      "I don't
answer letters".

"Shall we meet oncemore at the
Cafe Mediterainne on Telegraph
Avenue to do the interview?"   I asked.

Our last meeting was several years ago
when I invited Julia to read her poetry
at the International Arts/Music show
I was producing for the Cafe Mediterainne in Berkeley.  After all, the
cafe is her second home.

"Ok!"  Julia said excitedly.

The following is our conversation, kinda.
I'm not good in person with people......
been called a "Social Idiot" so I confess
much of this interview came from
Julia's eighteen page autobiography she graciously lent me.

***************************************

ME:

"Julia you are a shining example of
a woman whose thrown away
her 'Eyelash Curler' and 'High Heels'
(well her braces took care of the heels)and you are everything I have wanted to become and more.
How have you ignored Societies pleas of  "Marry, Spit out Babies, Cook,  Clean and Spit out More Babies?"

JULIA:

"I can't even take care of a fish.
But I do love children, I really do."

ME:

"You've given birth to 48 books of
poetry which will live much longer than
any children, been in several anthologies and have three CD's of verse out in the world."


JULIA:

"Yeah,  I've been busy."


ME:

"Were your parents artists?"


JULIA:

"My Mother wrote poetry but  expected
me to write the strong understated
style where you don't know you've gained weight until you have trouble buttoning your collar.

She had the beginnings of Multiple 
Sclerosis and one day my Mother stopped dying."


ME:

"Stopped dying?"

JULIA:

"She was in a convalescent home and
every six months they would call my sister and I to tell us to rush to say goodbye to our Mother."
"We got on the plane and by the time
we arrived she would drift off
and in the morning would be better."
"For ten years this went on.  I jumped
everytime the phone rang.  Even bought
a candle at the flea market in the shape of an old fashioned telephone and stuck pins in it."


ME:

"Julia why do you limp?"


JULIA:

"Had polio as a child and had an operation.  The legs are different lengths."
"Also had grandmal epileptic seizures for about fifteen years and managed not to think bout it.  Now I'm on medication that controls the seizures.

"The epilepsy kept me from experimenting with drugs and the polio got me on ssi disability for fifteen years like most of the street people I write about."


ME:

"And your Father?"

JULIA:

"He was a professor of biochemistry
at Caltech.  I saw him mostly at breakfast when he talked centrifuges, recombinant DNA and late at night when we would raid the refrigerator."

ME:

"Other relatives?"

JULIA:

"My sister Debbie who is seven years
younger than me.  She is a painter and
we live close by each other.  We talk
on the phone everyday..I read her my
new poems and go see her latest paintings."
"She and her boyfriend are a stable place in my life and I use her drawings in my books."

ME:

"Julia why do you write poetry?"

JULIA:

"Nothing is real to me until I write
about it.  My life hurts or glows but its
only a jumble until I shape it with words."

"Grandpa Ben, Mother's father was the most important member of our family.  And it was his bookcase that got me hooked on books. I was forbidden to totouch it.  It had a tall glass front and was kept locked up."
"So I waited till everyone was asleep and stood on a chair that always creaked and threatened to tip over and stole the key from a candy dish on top of the bookcase and took a book to bed.  Most of the pages 
hadn't been cut, so I took a knife as well."

"I remember the fierce possessive feeling of slicing the pages.  These werevirgin books. I was going where no reader had gone before.
I haven't changed much."
" I eat and stain the pages, break the spine, do everything we were warned against. " 
"I started out my reading career as a rapist with a knife, and if I take a book to bed with me it remembers
my name in the morning."

"For quite a while I didn't even like the
idea that books had authors.  Me and all
those characters were so close it seemed an intrusion for someone I'd never met to have seen them first."

ME:

Who are your favorite poets?

JULIA:

"In high school I discovered Yeats and
spent a year writing bad imitations."

"Theres nothing so dangerous as a great poet..
I knew even then my own voice wouldbe very different but I wanted that lush music inside me against the dry seasons.  I was like a
python swallowing a harp."

ME:
"How did  you wind up in Berkeley?"
JULIA:

"Since my mother had been a college
English professor it was vaguely assumed I'd be one too.  I went to UC Berkeley and got arrested in the Free Speech Movement."
"I wanted a voice of my own.  I never did
get a voice from poetry.  My voice came
from what I needed to say and it came out as poetry."

"I got my BA from there and went to
Iowa Writer's Workshop for a Masters
of Fine Arts."

ME:
"When did you return to Berkeley Julia?"

JULIA:
"1967 and the world had changed. When I left girls looked like secretaries and the boys like law clerks.  Now everyone had
long hair, bare feet, and bright clothing.
I was in total culture shock and wanted to write down everything I saw."

ME:

"Didn't Cody's Book store publish some
of your first books?"

JULIA:
"My  first book was put out by
Oynez press and my second was a
chapbook put out by Fred Cody of
Codys Book Store."
"I rescued my book from the elegant
mortuary of the poetry section in the
bookstore and sold it on the street and
in coffee shops.  I sold 3,500 copies."

"I thought avoiding failure meant success...took years for me to learn if you don't expect to crash and burn sometimes you'll never set the world on fire."

"Often people would buy one of my
books just to make me go away and later come back and ask me;  "Are you sure this is poetry?  I actually liked it!"

"People that hate poetry liked my books.
My shorter poems began appearing on
bathroom walls all over Berkeley."

ME

"Julia how did you become
known as "The Bubblelady"?

JULIA:
"Peoples Park.  There was going
to be a riot there but I'm a pacificist
and didn't want to throw stones but
was angry and wanted to throw something."
"So I brought two bags filled with bottles of bubbles and started blowin' em'!"

"Two cops came up and asked if they
could blow some and we sat together
blowing bubbles.  I started carrying
bubbles everywhere and when I blew
them people would get so happy."

"And thus I became known as'The Bubble Lady' making me an
honorary street person."

ME:

"Julia thank-you for writing the words I can't."
***************************

Julia Vinograd's Epitaph which she wrote for herself......



My Own Epitaph, Which I better Write

Because I Know Too Many Poets



When I am dead,

please don't say nice things about me.

I wasn't tall and thin and friendly.

I was short and fat

and I stuttered between silences.

I was me, please don't remember

someone you would rather've known.

Don't just remember the poems I wrote

remember the inconvenient rides I begged

and I always seemed to have a cold

and I was me.

Every one of my toes were mine,

please don't remember someone else's toes.

I often went to the flea market

and bought things that reminded me of me.

I liked mangos, roast beef and science fiction.

Don't just say I was a good listener,

add that you sometimes wondered why.

Don't make me a one dimensional nice

with a tragic story or two

like everyone else.

I wasn't everyone else.

I carried a me black purse

and wore a me black dress

and I had a bad leg so I was usually looking

for a place to sit down.

I didn't smoke or drink or sleep around

and I was too shy

to be a fascinating conversationalist,

but I was very me.

Remember my ringed fingers,

my dirty fingernails,

my mouth playing tennis on the telephone,

the way my leg brace squeaked

when I went up to the microphone

to read a poem.

It was me the sun shone on.

It was me who escaped the suburb

and blew soap bubbles on the street.

It was me whose parents died.