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A.D. Winans
Greatest Hits: 1995-2003
32 Pages $8.50
Pudding House Publications
81 Shadymere Lane
Columbus, Ohio 43213
Another in the Gold Invitational series from Pudding House Publications in Ohio, this collection of verse doesn't fail to deliver the goods. San Francisco's native son poet A.D. Winans, whose name and work are familiar to many, has been smithing away at the word for longer than most have been alive. His work celebrates and recognizes the common and the ordinary, elevating these to the extraordinary in a way that few seem to understand or stand under, especially those that like to flash the word POET in ten story neon hype. In this all too short assembly of poems, the words jump off the page, pulling you to the place where poems live: beneath the skin of a tradition that concerns itself only with content. And in a culture that likes to call the race before it begins, a culture mad with form masquerading as "it", it is a real treat and a pleasure to receive such content. A.D. has been labeled street and/or beat, but I would argue that he is more and better than this, for he is the people's poet; which is something more honorable and singular than being a part of any movement, or school of poetics, for he has lived thru and outlived it all. Rising above all the busy making bullshit and artifice of what is expected of a poet maker in America, as he continues on in his prolific position as the unnamed poet laureate of The Golden Gate.
In this Greatest Hits, A.D. Winans is a voice in the mainframe wilderness, shouting that time for change is long overdue, and quite possibly at hand. It's not that he expects this change to happen right now, like most true romantics, he simply holds out hope that it will. That maybe, his life and work as a poet and writer might have in its own small way, helped to affect such an ordinary thing. A.D. Winan's work in this latest assembly, is much like these words from San Francisco Streets:
"The city is like a strong cup of coffee
Stir her long enough and the
Flavor floats to the top."
The only dissent that I can offer here is that in such a "greatest hits" collection, I did not find one of A.D.'s real masterpieces, A Call To Poets -
"Poets unite;
forget about a career
in poetry
and concentrate on
the poem;
quit turning out
factory assembly line
poems;
quit trying to out-Bukowski
Bukowski."
(from A Call To Poets, North Beach Revisited by A.D.Winans, Green Bean Press, 2000)
The dozen poems found here should only serve to entice the reader (or poet) into reading more of his work. Buy this book and read it, then go out, find more and do the right thing by the poem - pass it along, for only then does it breathe and sing.
A.D. Winans is alive and well, and writing in San Francisco. Long live A.D.
- S.A. Griffin
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