GAS Featured Poet: John Yamrus

In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has become widely recognized as master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. He has had more than 3,500 poems published in books, magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are taught in college and university courses. Three of his books have been published in translation.  His newest volume of poems is PRESENT TENSE.

Photographs, moonbeams and me

by

John Yamrus

I first heard of Charles Jarvis when he wrote to me, asking if he could teach some of my poems in a college course he was teaching on the literary children of The Beats, or something like that.  I don’t really remember the name of the course, and it certainly wasn’t called The Children Of The Beats, but it was a class about younger writers who owed a debt to The Beats...whether the debt was in style or attitude or what.. It was maybe ’73 or ’74 or so, and I don’t remember how he had heard of me, because I was really just starting out and only had a couple of books out by then and wasn’t that well known.  I’m still not and the mystery persists as to how he heard of me...maybe it was because at that time it was the middle of the mimeo revolution and like anyone with aspirations and access to a spirit duplicator (mine was an old hand crank mess of a machine that I got for a hundred bucks or something) I “published” a little magazine, and even then I was lucky enough to publish some of the newer “names” on the scene like Locklin and Kherdian and Bennett and even a sculptor and writer named Linda King who was a one-time girlfriend of Bukowski, who published her own little magazine called PURR or something like that.

    

Anyway, like I said, it was maybe 1973 or so, and I was shocked and thrilled to have some college guy writing to me, asking if he could teach some of my poems in his class, and I guess as a bit of a door-opener he sent me a copy of this book he wrote about Kerouac called VISIONS OF KEROUAC.  I got the book here on my shelves somewhere and could look it up, but without doing so I have to say I don’t remember a thing about it except that it was a memoir of Jarvis and his friendship with Kerouac, and even back then, I remember reading it and getting the strong feeling that they really weren’t that close and Jarvis was really only trying to pick up some guilt by association in puffing up his friendship with Kerouac.

The book had a lot of pictures in it, and I don’t remember any of them except one and that’s one I’d like to forget and it’s the one that maybe gave me the impression of Jarvis as this wanna-be star-fucker hanger-on.  In the photo, which I can see right now in my rapidly aging mind, there’s Jarvis, standing next to a seated Kerouac, and he’s got his arm around the shoulder of a shockingly diminished and very obviously drunk (even in the photo) Kerouac.  Kerouac is bloated and very dark...probably red in the face...and Jarvis (like I said) had his arm around him and I got the very strong feeling of this being like one of those pictures hunters take with a dead deer or elk or moose.

     Jarvis is smiling and I got the very strong feeling of deep, dark sadness coming out of that picture, and right or wrong, it turned me off about Jarvis and even though he later on sent me a copy of a second printing of that book, we lost contact, and I don’t even remember what poems of mine he was teaching, but they were probably not very good...but he was the first one to ever teach my poems in a class and to this day it makes me nervous and wary and more than a little bit suspicious any time some teacher or professor or whatever writes and asks if he or she or it or them could teach my poems and I never wanted to end up like Kerouac, being a trophy on somebody’s wall...drunk and sad and very much alone...even in a crowd.

  

  Maybe at the end of the day I was wrong about Jarvis...but first impressions every now and then do matter...and that was the first impression I had about him, and here it is, now more than 50 years later and I’m now 73 years old and no longer the new kid on the block and Jarvis is dead and Kerouac’s dead and the only memory I have of the connection between the two is a picture in a book that’s right now on a shelf in the other room and one day I might get the urge to pick it up and open it and give it another read...but, just not now.  Even now, so many years later, it still feels creepy and messy and wrong.

John Yamrus

September 6, 2024

the place smelled like the blues

it 

smelled of 

sweat and poverty 

and last night’s turnip greens. 

but, 

it’s where he 

did his best writing. 

poems 

filled with sadness 

and 

the agony of 

a shot glass left empty 

in a sink filled with dishes, 

tears and more than a little regret.

he loved 

spending 

time with her...

especially 

when she’d decide 

to shut up for a minute.  

he 

didn’t know 

what he liked more...

her or the silence.

“you’re lucky”, she said.  

he 

rolled 

on his side 

and said half 

to the pillow and half to the wall:

“luck’s nothing to be proud of.”

it was 

one of those days 

when the wind seemed to be talking 

and 

the sun 

hid behind a cloud. 

i don’t see 

any 

more 

great poems 

happening anywhere.

the last 

(great one) 

was probably 

Bukowski’s Bluebird 

and 

before that, 

several by Ginsberg.  

and 

when i say great, 

i mean life-altering, world-changing, 

and 

that’s just not 

gonna happen anymore, 

and 

that’s good. 

that’s 

as it should be. 

right now, 

the only great 

poem left to be written 

is 

the one about me, 

taking my car to the shop 

for 

a new 

set of tires.

poetry is

not

a science...

the 

truth is not 

a secret for the few...

and 

this dog

sleeping in the sun

has it 

all figured out.