He seems to me, quite simply, a natural writer of extraordinary talent. By this, I mean that everything I read by him fills me with pleasure because of a beautifully natural and easy use of language. —Colin Wilson, author
Here is a word slinger, A. D. Winans, a poet of clarity, an artful man who makes it all seem so easy. A captive within his home port, San Francisco. A voice nailed onto the soil of his native land, capable of writing as he speaks. —Neeli Cherkovski, poet and biographer
A. D. Winans is a man in search of his soul. He has great heart and compassion for people and his native city, San Francisco. I like his uncompromising spirit. He pulls no punches. —Jack Micheline, poet and writer
I find the title of your book (It Serves You Right To Suffer) admirable, and I like the poems too for their vigor and social relevance. Good work! —Hayden Caruth, poet
A.D. Winans is one of the few writers I have met (and I have met too God Damned many of them) who doesn’t act like a writer or think of himself continually as a writer, and maybe that is why he writes better than they do. I always prefer a poet I can tolerate for more than ten minutes; that’s rare, and so is A.D. —Charles Bukowski
Winans lays creeping myth on the reader as easy as Kenneth Patchen. —William Harold, English Profesor, Wisconsin University
I like your stuff (The Reagan Psalms) very much. It’s a fine tribute to the pronunciations of the White House Toby. —Studs Terkel
A.D. Winans has maintained a consistent dedication to his craft as the author of many books and hundreds of poems and short stories. —Peter Coyote, Actor and Writer
Beneath everything, above everything, in your work seems a human and humane compassion toward the human drama and its actors and actresses. —Antler, poet
A. D. Winans is an honest poet. He creates poetry that is forceful and also possesses a strong integrity. His poems are dark and beautiful at the same time. His poetry reminds me of a great blues song. Poetry at its best. —Fredrik Oster, Factotum Press, Sweden
A.D. Winans’ poems, in my opinion, more than matches that of any living poet I know in the USA —Trevor Reeves, Publisher, Square One Press, New Zealand
“Winans” This Land Is Not My Land demonstrates his wide range. Winans disowns much of modern America. He puts me in mind of that character in Paul Theroux’s Mosquito Coast. He takes Allen Ginsberg’s America to new places. —Richard Real, Beat Scene
If you expected the raw facts, hard hitting honesty of A.D. Winans, you won’t be disappointed. This Land Is Not My Land stings with the robust delivery of political comments that is Winans. —Black Bear Press
Your Panama war poems resonate for me more powerfully and memorably than any war poems I have read, including WW1 poets like Rubert Brooks and Wilfred Owen. —Harold Norse, Poet
Winans writes primarily in the first person, using the contemporary cadence of short sentences (in a manner similiar to Brautigan, Bukowski, or even John Rechy) to create a lucide transpatent style that presents a story with economy and directness, neither developing literary conceits nor reaching for involved metaphor. This deceptively simply narrative style creates a complex and subtly adept voice that presents (in the best tradition of short story writing) a singular, realistically detailed and personal moment in such a way that it becomes luminous, and a broader significance is revealed through the particular. —-Poetry Northwest Review of Books
I can read Al’s poems forever and always find something that excites me. Thanks, Al, for sharing your words with the world.
thanks, Pris.
enjoy your poems as well. and that’s not tit-for-tat.
Al, Your Poetry goes well with an E&J with water….reading it anchors me in things I want to stay anchored in. Ray