Michael Basinski, curator of University At Buffalo, New York Rare Books/Poetry Library Collection, interviews Gerald Locklin, writer, poet, teacher, and co-editor of The Chiron Review, at Bob Borgatti's office at Niagara County Community College on February 6 1996, transcribed by Sue Michael.

MB: I just received notice from Water Row Press about your upcoming publication on Charles Bukowski, Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet.

GL: I hope you ordered it.

MB: Yes. I was just wondering if that book is an homage, or a memoir, or a grief book.

GL: It was Water Row's idea to collect those essays and poems on Bukowski that I had written. Jeff Weinberg is a publisher, an editor, and a rare books dealer. He saw a number of things that I had written on Bukowski in periodicals and books over the years and so he had the idea of collecting them into one volume and we went back and forth communicating on them. It is 72 pages, and a limited edition, very specially designed and all. I don't know much about book producing so a lot of the details of that are lost on me, except I did see a bibliography of R. Crumb that Jeffrey sent me a copy of which was a collector's item. That was a beautifully done book. I am very excited about my Bukowski book and am looking forward to it.

MB: What is an homage?

GL: Well, certainly I have paid homage to Bukowski. He was a friend and I owe him a great deal, as we all do. So in that sense, it is, but it wasn't put together by me as a particular homage. I did write various things dealing with Bukowski after he died. I had written some before that. I wrote a eulogy for the L.A. Reader which was published a week after he died. I wrote a thing on the funeral of Bukowski which I went to and that was in Sure: A Charles Bukowski Newsletter and I wrote a thing on meeting Charles Bukowski, which was in The Beat Connection. I had an essay in my book of stories, The Gold Rush and Other Stories. It is called Barfly: In The Presence of Greatness and is about going to the premiere and reception for Barfly when it came out in L.A. [the 1987 movie Barfly starring Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunawaye as a young Bukowski and his girlfriend-Ed.]. So the book contains things like that and a few poems.

MB: You are going to have part of that in Blue Jacket magazine?

GL: So I understand. Yeah, I don't know much about that but that could be the first time I had anything published in Japan. I am sure Bukowski had stuff over there. I don't know Yusuke Keida, but maybe I will get to know him now.

MB: I think I read some of your writing on the early meetings, some of the things you have written about meeting with Charles Bukowski and those pieces that were written and published around. What was the name of the bar?

GL: The 49er Tavern.

MB: The 49er Tavern?

GL: And the guy who owned it just sold it and they are having a going away party. In those days it was Carl Beck and Roger Corbin and then Carl Beck sold his interest in it and Roger Corbin has owned it for 28 years. The bar has been there longer than that, but he is finally selling. I haven't been in there too much in recent years. I kind of gravitated out of the bars for other reasons (laughter). But yeah, it was the 49er Tavern, and Bukowski used to drive by and he would say to Linda Beighle, "I think I see Lock in there. I think I see Lock in there playing pool," and maybe I was in there. But that is where I took him.

MB: Where exactly was it?

GL: It's right near the campus at Cal State Long Beach. It is at a big intersection of the Pacific Coast Highway and Seventh Street and Bellflower Boulevard in Long Beach. There is a big VA hospital right across from it. And so it was fairly accessible to both the students and to people who worked at the Steam Plant and other places in the area. The bar did a booming business for years and years. In my early years of teaching that bar was like a second home. I was there all the time, but less so over the years as i slowed down a little.

MB: What were the names of the other places that you gravitated to?

GL: One was the Honeybucket for a while, when Carl Beck owned it, and another was the Reno Room. We spent a lot of time in there. People like Rafael Zepeda, who writes poetry and teaches at Long Beach State, and myself. More recently O'Connell's. A lot of the people from the Reno Room, after it got too popular, moved to O'Connells.

MB: What Room?

GL: The Reno Room?

GL: The Reno Room, yeah. They are neighborhood bars. They are Long Beach old time neighborhood bars. There aren't many of them left from the days when the drinks were cheap and the jukebox played oldies but goodies and they had, you know, semi-nude photos, or nude from the waist pictures on the walls. There aren't too many of them left. As with every other place, things have become more corporated, and vinyl and fern. But there are still a few of the old time bars in Long Beach.

MB: What was your beer? What brand?

GL: Well, I didn't like American beers much, but I drank a lot of them out of necessity in the old days when that was all that was there. Bukowski always claimed that Schlitz was the greatest. I always thought it was one of the worst. I drank Budweiser. I like Miller, but they were less apt to have Miller on tap. I can remember at the 49er Tavern we used to get 15 cents beers on Friday, happy hour, 50 cent pitchers. We would open up the place at 11 a.m. and we would stay until 2 in the morning. We played pool, ate pickled eggs, and drank beer all day long. But I was in my 20s then. Bukowski wasn't with us in those days.

MB: Who were the other ones you were with?

GL: Oh, people from the school, teachers and students, and local workers.

MB: When you were with Charles Bukowski in this tavern, this bar, tell me a story.

GL: I could tell you a few. I wasn't there that often with them. The first time I met him, we went in there because I was bringing him down for a reading at Long Beach State, and I picked him up in LA and drove him down and we were early and so we went in there. I have told about this in the essay on meeting Charles Bukowski. He was terribly hungover that day. I saw him making eggs for himself. I couldn't believe that some one could actually look at eggs when they were hungover. So I brought him in there for a couple of beers and we came out and he puked in the parking lot, and we went over and he gave the reading. We were there for a whole afternoon once. Some of the things I don't want to talk too much about. For instance, David Barker unfortunately wrote that book Charles Bukowski Spit In My Face which took place in the 49er Tavern. But I would rather not comment on that.

MB: Just dull stuff, I mean, did you shoot pool?

GL: No, we never shot pool, but I remember we mainly just talked and on another occasion a lot of the students came over after a reading at noon, and he was going to give another one in the evening, and they just hung around and talked about this or that and then Bukowski got progressively drunker. Bukowski wasn't really someone you would want to be around when he had been drinking a lot. He would be very gracious and an ordinary person up until a point and then a click took place and he would start to say, "Now we are back to the literary chit chat again." I think all the bitterness of his life would well up and he would be quite hostile to people or unfair to people at that point. So, mainly it was drinking a lot and the good times that I remember with him. His behaviour would depend on what stage of drinking he was at.

MB: What whiskey's What was your brand? What did you like?

GL: Well, for a period of time I remember I liked seven-seven quite a bit and at the end of my drinking career a lot of vodka tonics, gin and tonics.

MB: Shots?

GL: I was never that crazy about shots. I always like the mixers. I drank so much that I had stomach problems and it was easier to get them down with a little mixer. I always had a sweet tooth anyway. All the real drinkers would say, oh no, that is too sweet for me. Nothing was ever too sweet for me (laughter). I was a mixed drinker. At the end of my drinking career I loved cream sherry. I could go through, I won't say even how much of that in a day, and when I quit drinking, I cut out, you know, hundreds of thousands of calories a day probably from that stuff alone. I always had a sweet tooth. I wasn't crazy about the beer. I liked the German beers, and the Guiness Stout, and Pilsner Urquell and the European beers.

MB: What brand did you smoke when you did smoke?

GL: Well, I think Winstons, and I used to alternate I remember between Winstons and Newports, Newtons, Newports I guess they were and sometimes Marlboro. I would generally smoke whatever I could bum from people, too, because i would smoke all day long. In those days it wasn't like there was no smoking in the classroom or anything. Everybody smoked in class and you would borrow from the students and they would borrow from you and everybody smoked every place then. I am afraid even after I quit smoking I hung out in bars so long that I probably smoked plenty without even smoking in those days. I am still against them banning smoking in bars. I don't like that.

MB: How long have you been at Cal State?

GL: Since 1965. I was at Cal State, Los Angeles, the year before that, 64/65.

MB: So you have been a teacher for 30 years?

GL: Yeah, I'm in my 32nd year in the system and in my 31st year at Long Beach State. I'm on sabbatical this spring.

MB: Do you consider yourself a working man, or is poetry a career?

GL: No I don't contrast the two. I know a lot of people say that they are teaching just to support their writing habit. I don't do that. I am not the least bit ashamed of teaching. I love the teaching and hope that I have done a good job of it, and would like to continue doing it as long as possible. And wouldn't mind dying with my boots on. I take the teaching very seriously and it is a major part of my life and writing is also. I always intended to be a writer. I never intended to be a teacher. But I am not one who disavows or disclaims the teaching at all. I am very much a teacher.

MB: Your favorite book 30 years ago?

GL: Maybe The Sun Also Rises, which still might be my favorite book.

MB: Any from the 70s you remember?

GL: Well, from the 60s I liked Portnoy's Complaint and awful lot. Oh what were some from the 70s. The Fan Man was a lot of fun by Kotzwinkle. I read so much. There was a time when I read a book a day no matter what. I don't read quite that much now. Recently I have been reading a lot of crime fiction including just about everything in the Mathew Scudder series by Lawrence Block. I love his stuff and some of the Crumley things are very good. Walter Mosley, the LA writer from South Central LA, his things are very good. They made a movie out of Devil In A Blue Dress, which wasn't bad. Bukowski, of course, was somebody I loved reading, and I started reading him about 1970 or a little before.

MB: At some point did you read a book that made you say I want to be a writer?

GL: No, I decided I wanted to write when I was about 3 years old. My Aunt used to stand me up by the window and have me dictate poems by looking out the window, and write poems about the stars, moon, or sky or whatever. She kept a lot of them. I don't know whether a hand can be put on them now. They might be in the Special Collections at Long Beach State where they have the Locklin archive. So I always thought of myself as being a writer. Practically every time I read a book or saw a movie, it reinforced that desire to be a writer. But I always thought of myself as someone who was going to be a writer. I always thought I would combine it with something else, probably, like being a football coach or basketball. None of the schools that I went to had coaching programs though. I backed into being a teacher in a way. But I am very glad that I did. Actually, Bambi influenced me because I wanted to become a writer and give all stories happy endings. But of course I don't.

MB: At this stage in your career, a writer like yourself, Charles Bukowski, Steve Richmond, they are all senior writers now, and have given a lot of permission, I think, to people like Mark Weber, and Joan Jobe Smith. Do you see yourself as a mentor to younger writers?

GL: I don't think I see myself as a mentor to them. If I have been any use to them then that is good. People like Joan Smith and Fred Voss who have been writing for a long time and are wonderful writers, I like their stuff a lot. And Mark Weber has been writing a long time and Chris Daly. I think Mark is a real throwback to the 1960s in the best sense. He has all that spirit of freedom and creativity and writing about everything and writing spontaneously. I just wrote a preface for a book of his poems which Pearl Press is putting out of which Joan Smith is one of the editors, the others are Marilyn Johnson and Barbara Hauk, about what an American writer Mark Weber is, the individualism of Thoreau and the self-reliance of Emerson and the vernacular of Mark Twain and the road novels of Twain and Kerouac and the spontaneous composition of Kerouac, and other things, He is quintessentially an American writer, I think, of the people, by he people, for the people. I think very highly of what he is doing a s a writer and as an editor.

MB: You write a lot.

GL: Yeah, in streaks. I write a lot and I write in streaks and I write quickly when I do. I may not be able to write for days, not because of blocks. I always have stuff backed up to work on, because of other commitments to my job, my family, or whatever. But then when I write I usually have the stuff pretty well in my mind or in notes and I will write very quickly. I will write a lot in a single day if I can have a good long day in which to write; I will write quite a bit.

MB: Do you write with a typewriter, computer, pen, pencil?

GL: I write with a ball point pen and a pad. Yeah, I don't work at a computer so far, at all, and I sort of quit writing even as much as a typewriter as I used to because of some circulatory problems, which are not that terrible right now, but I still prefer to sit with my feet up at a chair writing on a pad, rather than sitting at a typewriter hunched over. But they may force me to come into the computer era, just to keep my job, pretty soon. I am about the last person left there, I think, who doesn't use a computer.

MB: If you leave Southern California, are you going to go any place else? Australia or India?

GL: I'm not planning to move. A lot of people have, and Southern California certainly hasn't gotten better over the years since I have been there. My Aunt asked me that yesterday, if I would ever move back (to Rochester, NY). I don't think I would ever move back to where I grew up. I think I am kind of spoiled by the weather. If I were to move, I might move to Arizona or some warmer place. About the only cold place would be England or Ireland, maybe. There is a nice literary scene there and I have just enough published in different places there and I like those places, I like going to Europe. SO I can consider living in England, or Wales, or Ireland. But who knows? Some times, most of the time, those decisions are made for you, by what you can afford.

MB: How many books have you actually published?

GL: I think I have about 70 out now.

MB: Let me just throw a couple words out, a couple of things here and you can respond quickly: war.

GL: War, well I was spared the experience.

MB: L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry.

GL: Um, in small doses it opens up some possibilities.

MB: Love.

GL: For my children.

MB: Henry Rollins.

GL: I met Henry Rollins. I like him. He is a nice guy and I think he is very good for his audience. Yeah, I have a generally positive attitude towards Rollins.

MB: Magic Johnson.

GL: Uh, I hope it works out. I hope it works out well.

MB: Earthquake.

GL: You don't think about them too much out there.

MB: Internet.

GL: I have almost no experience of it.

MB: Newt Gingrich.

GL: I thought Newt had some good ideas, but he seems to have sunk back into an old-fashioned conservative.

MB: La Brea Tar Pit.

GL: I haven't sunk into it yet. Otherwise, I don't know too much about it, except for Woolly Mammoths.

MB: What are your favorite magazines? The ones that you read on a regular basis, let's say.

GL: Of poetry magazines?

MB: Poetry magazines.

GL: The Wormwood Review certainly which has been so hospitable to me over the years, Slipstream, Ambit in England and Tears In The Fence in England. A couple new ones. Staple, and what is the other??? Rustic Rub, a nice magazine over there. Pearl, definitely Pearl. And where else? I am going to slight some people this way. There used to be Poetry LA and they folded after ten years, or they just decided not to publish any more. It was a good magazine. Oh, Exquisite Corpse, which I guess now would be Corpse. It is a good and interesting magazine. I tend to like places that like my writing. I do read The New Yorker.

GL: What about the underground publishing going on? The zine world?

GL: I am still in some of those. They rise and fall, kind of quickly. I still send things to them when I hear about them. A lot of times Mark Weber will tell me about them. Or some times Bob (Borgatti) and Dan (Sicoli) will send me the name of one to submit to and I usually have things around to send. That is all fine. I am glad that is always there. It is a good, vital part of the literary scene. Yeah.

MB: I see you as a mature writer. Who do you like as a young writer? Not necessarily age, but coming on the scene?

GL: Well, let's see, just coming on the scene. Lisa Glatt, who is a teacher at Long Beach State and UCLA now, and I believe has been in Slipstream. Hayley Mitchell, out there. I see a lot of good writers come out of Long Beach State. Also, people like Mark Begley. And Mark...in Ohio?

MB: Wooden Head Review. Mark Hartenbach.

GL: Yeah, Hartenbach, right. Mark Hartenbach. He is a good young writer. Very definitely. I am thinking of people very much younger than all of us. Paul Agostino in New York State is very good. I do some of the poetry editing for Chiron Review, so I see a lot of stuff come through there. The editor, Michael Hathaway, is very talented. He is quite good. Um, yeah, I hope again that I am not slighting some of the younger people because I do see a lot of them and recommend a lot of them to send things to Chiron and other places. But I am sure I am forgetting...Oh, Linda Rocheleau. And Dave Newman. And Micki Myers. And T. Thrasher. And Jay Alamares.

MB: Are interviews and interviewers crap?

GL: I don't think so, no. But Bukowski felt that he did too many of them, but then I see the video, (In/Word/Out) for instance, and Bob (Baxter) did that interview and I enjoyed that. I enjoy seeing what they did with the interviews and all. Some times you like to see a transcript before it comes out. People might think that is censorship or something but it is to catch errors. The other thing that is scary is when the campus newspaper sends over a freshman journalism student to interview you who has no knowledge of journalism or of poetry or anything and it can be embarrassing. I might say, as I said before, that I kind of backed into teaching, but I am glad I did. It almost came out in the student newspaper that I backed into teaching, I hated it, and I couldn't wait to get fired.

MB: Any questions? BB: Ever meet Andrei Codescru?

GL: I believe I met him years and years ago at Bukowski's, at a party. And I think it was Andrei Codescru. He wasn't well known or anything then, but I'm pretty sure it was he. From Romania. I haven't met him since then. He has been publishing some things of mine in Exquisite Corpse. I like that magazine. Yeah, I guess they changed it to The Corpse for some reason. Exquisite Corpse is from one of the symbolist poets. Of course the other great influence, (besides Bukowski), the one who urged me to publish in that magazine, was Edward Field, the New York poet, Edward Field. I am still in very close correspondence with him and we, you know, co-edited with Charles Stetler A New Geography Of Poets. He is a wonderful poet, a great person, and a good friend and benefactor to me. I think he publishes a fair amount in Exquisite Corpse. BB: What was your first published poem?

GL: I believe the first published one that was in an off-campus magazine, you know, not some student publication, was in The Wormwood Review and was called "Johnny Rigoletto". It must have been about 1963, I think. I believe I had one accepted before then by a magazine called Approach which was at Bryn Mawr College an that was "Hart Crane". Marvin Malone had published hundreds of them since then. So it would be appropriate. Approach doesn't exist anymore. I was published in Western Humanities Review quite a bit in those days, and New Orleans Review when Miller Williams was editing it there. he is Director of The University Of Arkansas Press now. I ended up more in the little magazines and less in the University magazines as the work I was writing became geared in that direction.


Johnny Rigoletto

I have a vision
of a scarred old dwarf in woolens
hunching down a cobblestone alley
beneath a flat yellow moon,
and his rind face
which he lifts and opens for the merest second
is the emptiness of a cold volcano.
That is Johnny Rigoletto
whose daughter lost her cherry to the Duke,
the nobles tickled her feet while he did it,
now her father hunches down the alley,
sniffed by dogs
an archetype of The Fool
musing on the greater evil

--Gerald Ivan Locklin

Tucson, Arizona

Johnny Rigoletto as it first appeared in Wormwood Review.

Charles Bukowski: A Sure Bet available from Water Row Press, P. O. Box 438, Sudbury, MA 01776

Telephone (508) 485-8515 Fax (508) 229-0885

Thanks to Gerald Locklin and Michael Basinski for permission to reprint this interview.

--Ralph Haselmann Jr., editor Lucid Moon poetry magazine and lucidmoonpoetry.com web site