SAN FRANCISCO, CA... The man we love to hate swatted Barfly up against the screen, wrote poetry that screams in the ears of the common man, and his stories began his glory. Charles Bukowski ruled the small press world during a time when the night was alive with poets living their words as fast as they could scribble them down. A time when poet and publisher A.D. Winans began his relationship with America's foremost notorious poet, a basis for his latest memoir, Holy Grail; Charles Bukowski and the Second Coming Revolution, from which he will read selected poems from at Café Sempione on November 16th at 7:00 pm.
"I had no intention of writing an essay on Bukowski, let alone a book," says Winans in a recent interview with Poesy Magazine, "the book evolved on its own." The book embarks upon a unique and interesting perspective within the poet and publisher relationship between Winans and Bukowski. Charles Bukowski got to know A.D. and referred to him as someone "who doesn't act like a writer, or think of himself continually as a writer. Maybe that is why he writes better than they do."
A.D. Winans was the editor of Second Coming Press and Magazine for 17 years. Second Coming Magazine published a special Charles Bukowski issue in 1974 and Bukowski became a regular contributor for the next fifteen years. The magazine progressed into a podium for poets like Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman, Wiliam Wantling, Harold Norse, and many other influential poets of its day.
Among the over thirty books of poetry and prose Winans has published are; North Beach Poems and The Reagan Psalms, which was praised by writer Studs Terkel. He has received numerous editor, publisher and writer assistance grants and received an award by the Pacific Arts and Letters Foundation in recognition for his contribution to Small Press Literature.
The open reading will be hosted by Mark Schwartz and is sponsored by Poesy Magazine who interviewed Winans for the current issue. Winans is a mentor for publisher, Brian Morrisey, who hopes to retrace his footsteps in the Small Press Literary movement. Café Sempione is located on Vallejo Street off Columbus Avenue in North Beach.
Poesy is a free newsprint publication which was noted as "the best idea in the small press for 2001" by poetry critic, Timothy Scannell. The idea of narrowing the focus to East and West Coast poetry came after Morrisey’s relocation to Santa Cruz from a Boston suburb in 1999. He noticed a vast difference of poetic styles between the two coasts. "There are huge gaps of communication between the two sides of the country. I’m working on filling them in."
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