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John Yamrus is widely recognized as master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, he has had more than 3,500 poems published in books, magazines and anthologies around the world. His writing is often taught in college and university courses. Three of his more than 40 books have been published in translation. Our interview today was done over the Zoom platform, while we were both comfortably seated in what serves for our individual offices.

This interview was prepared for MasticadoresCanada while listening to Milt Jackson and Miles Davis’s 1956 album “Quintet/Sextet.»

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RW: its good to see you! Modern day technology… sometimes it makes me feel like I’m being left very far behind.

JOHN YAMRUS: I am right now in my basement office. If you want to call it an office. 40 miles west of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

RW: Are you in Maryland?

JOHN YAMRUS: We’re in Pennsylvania, smacked up in the middle of Amish country. It’s not uncommon for us to see a horse and buggy going over an overpass, as we drive down the road.

RW: How do I pronounce your last name correctly?

JOHN YAMRUS: Most people screw it up and say Yarmouth, which is understandable but it’s Yam-rus. They used to call it Polish, but it probably was Greek way back.

RW: Thank you. This was too much of a coincidence to be ignored. You’ve been published on MasticadoresCanada three times in the last six months, and you’ve got a book coming out!!!  I was looking about to see who I was going to ask to be interviewed, all of that came together…. and I thought, “Well, might as well ride the horse in the direction it’s traveling, “ and ask you if you wanted to participate in this manner.

JOHN YAMRUS:  Well I appreciate it!  On my end, it’s good timing. 

I’ve always believed strongly in the ethic of working to promote books. You know, I’m not one of those guys who think the work stops the minute the book gets accepted by a publisher. Over the years, many of my, well all of my publishers, (and there’s been a lot of them) have been little mom-and-pop businesses.  These are the sort who have to decide whether, you know, if they’re gonna pay a bill —or bring out this book by this bonehead from Pennsylvania. 

I see that as as a debt I owe to them and as a responsibility on my part to be active and do whatever I can to get those books seen, read and sold.

RW: Right, well I really appreciate you taking the time to do this this morning. Well, I’ll edit what I can. 

JOHN YAMRUS:  Yeah, take out obvious stupidities!!!

RW: Right, and there’s no no ambush questions here,  This is strictly about your poetry and your relationship to it, and probably a little bit about why people should read your poetry and so forth.

JOHN YAMRUS: I appreciate that. Those are the ones I’m looking forward to. OK. let’s rock ‘n’ roll. 

RW: So let’s just start off with your daily life. How much time do you spend writing? Where do you like to write and what do you like to write with? 

JOHN YAMRUS: I write into… occasionally, I’ll do things by hand, you know, pen and paper.  Usually, it’s just with my keyboard here. I started out you know, as everybody of a certain age wanting to be like Jack Kerouac.  So I was a fast typist.  I was a two-finger typist, but I was fast as anything. In fact, I told the story the other day… somebody asked how I got into the lowercase writing for my work, especially the lowercase «i?»

I told her that was in me, at least, an interesting story in that being someone who wanted to be like Kerouac… I typed fast into my all at that time Smith Corona portable typewriter, and to get fast I just type with two fingers. It was faster if I didn’t hit the cap, and didn’t hit the shift to make a capital. I so I finished a novel that way. Sent it off to the publisher. The publisher was at that time publishing also a first book by Billy Collins. Yes, he went on to become THE BILLY COLLINS. 

In any case I sent the publisher of the manuscript, and it was all lowercase. At the time, I figured well that’s what editors are for. I’ve since learned differently. Because I’ve learned how to take take charge of my own work. In any case I sent up the manuscript all in lowercase, and for some reason, he liked it! 

So that novel got published in lowercase and I’ll never forget it. One of the few very few reviews of the book that came out. talked about my engaging use of the lowercase, especially in the proper product. The personal pronoun “I,” which illustrates the diminishing role of the individual in modern society. This “I” had no clue, no intention, no nothing [about that context]. I was just a two-finger typist, and that’s all I was doing with that. 

RW: I love that part about it being purely mechanical. That’s what’s really great. And I am glad you cleared that up, because I was wondering about the philosophical ramifications of all lowercase myself.  So very good of you to do that.

Are you highly-educated kind of guy? Are you a PhD kind of person? 

JOHN YAMRUS: My first book came out in 1970. I was in college at the time, one semester of college. I thought I was gonna tear the world apart… in fact, at that time, the 1960s had just ended. In 1970, when I would do poetry readings, I did a lot of poetry readings with my friend Rick, who would play guitar behind me. 

At that point, there was an article in the paper, and because of the article, I picked up an agent.  An agent for me, with my poetry, and a guy playing guitar behind me… and so I quit school.  Like I said, I thought I was gonna tear the world apart — and I’ve since learned differently. But I’m kind of thick-skinned, and I’m definitely not educated. I just keep on doing the same thing: writing and banging my head against that wall. 

RW: I think you and I are the same similar age and I understand that. Do you try to be all original, or do you have something in mind for readers and then write toward that?

JOHN YAMRUS: Oh, no-no… I found I’m old enough to learn at least some of the things to avoid in my writing and I’ve learned that, for me at least, if I go into writing anything with an agenda, you know, like: “With that I’m gonna start here. And, I’m gonna end here.”  It’s really a load of crap when I do that.

If I go in and and just let things work out… and let the story, let the poem tell me where it’s going, you know, because that it’s smarter than me.  So, if I follow the poem’s lead, things work out better.  

I’m not one of those guys who saves a lot of work in progress right now. My file of poems in progress, is literally —that I looked this up before our conversation— is literally three lines. Because I don’t save anything. Because when I save anything, and come back to it and hammer away at it, and work at it, I find that those nails and patches and fixes are very apparent.  The reader sees them and it’s usually crap. 

So I’ve learned to trust my gut and just wing it again. That goes back to being a fan of Kerouac. And those people like that, right? 

RW: I’m gonna come back to what you just said in one of the later questions. Do you find it easier accessing the reader who reads on a tablet, or computer, or mobile phone? Does this help you to read more? Do you think do you think you’re reaching more people by using all these electronic devices?

JOHN YAMRUS: I don’t know, it’s easier for me to submit things with the devices. It’s easier for me to find venues who want to publish my work.  Once it’s out, past that I have no control over it, and I personally am very technologically challenged. My wife has to turn on the toaster for me. So all I do is write the stuff, put it in a format that I can read, and I send it out. After that, you know, I have no control. 

In fact, people have talked to me about, doing my books on Kindle, and all those kinds of things. I personally don’t like reading a book on a computer. So you know, that’s that’s the only way I could look at it. I like holding a paper book in my hand. 

RW: I just took a couple of screenshots of our work here together and you’re way more photogenic this morning than I am. [Both laugh] Are you working on a new book now? 

JOHN YAMRUS: I am always working on a new book or a poem. I don’t have an agenda. How do I put together a book, a poem, or even my memoir of the street with the book or a poem? 

It sounds egotistical but I gotta say, its intuitive with me. I know when I’m ready, when the poems are ready for a book. And then what I do is I print out hard-copies of all the poems… and then I’ll lay them out on the table. Or if there’s too many for a table I’ll lay them out on the floor. Then I go through them and make sure that there is a progression of flow. Every book of poetry, to me, should have an ebb and flow. It should have an ebb and flow in the poem… telling me like a conversation. There’s a beginning, a middle. and an end. Sometimes I’ll go through all those poems that I printed out and find that there are two or three or four left out. I’ll save them for the next book because they just didn’t feel right for this one. 

Like with my book, The Street, with my memoir about growing up in the in  the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania back at the late 50s… when I was writing it, I wrote it in two weeks. I hoped, when I was writing it, that it would be much thicker, much longer, but the book told me when it was done. And I was smart enough to to listen to the book . 

RW: OK I’m fascinated by the story that you’re telling me. I appreciate your candor.  But let’s move along to your new book. Tell us more about it.  What made you choose that particular title?

JOHN YAMRUS: OK, new book.  Well, it’s very intuitive. The book, for people who don’t know, is called: Don’t Shoot The Messenger, Just Give Him A Good Place To Hide. It just felt fitting and proper in this day and age. In this climate, all I am is the messenger… and in fact, I see myself not as a poet. I really do cringe when people refer to me as that, I personally don’t use that “P” word. In referring to myself. I see myself more as a reporter, and I talk about this when I talk about my poetry. 

I see the poems not as complete stories, they’re snapshots of a moment in time. Picture yourself in a train going down the tracks and you’re looking out the window, and all you see is what’s in that little square going past you, really fast.  And you take that screenshot and everything else that’s outside. That window is the reader’s imagination. 

It was the big AH-HA moment as the writer, where I understood the importance of bringing the reader onto onto my side of the page.

There was a little short 17-word poem that I wrote, and it went like this: write a poem about what she said, sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling, and that’s it. A year before then, I probably would’ve been describing the bed, what she looked like. Or, you know, the weather outside the room, but for some reason, the light finally, finally, finally, went off inside my head, and I understood that the reader is much more than a reader, and their imagination is much more powerful than anything I can say.  So wisely, I let the reader figure out what that was.. and that just gave me -as a writer- a whole lot more power.  Once I figured that out, once I cracked that code, man, everything just became so much easier for me as a writer. 

RW:  The poem here, next, is an answer to the last question…. 

take a walk around

the old
neighborhood
where i grew up.
on
the street
where i lived.
take
a left
at the corner
and walk down the
hill, toward the tracks.

there
used to be
an old oak tree
we called the old oak tree.

it was
the biggest
tree i ever saw
and hard as hell to climb.

the lowest
branches were high
and you
had to jump
to grab one and it
was always kinda cool

if
you made it
and got to sit there

on
the branches,
waiting for a train

or
to watch the
kids on their bikes

flying
down the hill
toward the gas station.

it’s
gone now.

all of it.
right
after the flood
they got rid of the tree

and
put in a road
where the kids used to ride.
the road’s
smooth and new
and there’s nothing there

to
give you
any shade or
even a reason to climb.

RW: Wow, I’m a big fan of letting “them” use and take control of the writing. You’ve mentioned that in a couple of different instances, in a couple of different ways, without using the word Muse, and I’d like to go back to that. You said a few minutes ago, “the poem is smarter than me,” and can you go talk a little about that?

JOHN YAMRUS: People ask me, as a writer, who do I look up to? I’ll often say, you know, that you want to say the usual John Steinbeck, Bukowski, or something.  But as a writer, I look up to people like Groucho Marx. His movies and his humor taught me a lot about writing. 

I learned a lot about writing from listening to Miles Davis. That taught me the importance of silence in a poem.  When you’re writing a poem, especially a poem, you gotta use the whole page, and by that I mean, even the white on the page. That’s important. Those silences. Those positives are very important, and Miles Davis, in general gave me an appreciation for, as you say, listening to the muse. And you know, following the inspiration — wherever it leads — that’s part of the trick of learning to let go. To let go and let the poem take the lead. 

RW: I’m a big Miles Davis fan as well. 

JOHN YAMRUS: My wife says she’s gonna bury me with all my Miles Davis albums. I have exactly 164 Miles Davis CDs. I have everything that he put out during his career, and of course, since he passed away.  They’re putting out a whole lot of live stuff, in concert stuff, so I have all of them —164. 

RW: The relationship with Billy Collins. Can you talk a little bit about that? You said something about that earlier.

JOHN YAMRUS: My publisher,  Hubert Lloyd, Hubert really, really is an interesting man. His press is out of Long Beach, California, called Applezaba Press, which I came on board with. This is 1969-1970, right on the edge of when Bukowski and that whole crew were really hitting their stride. I was very, very, very, much on the fringe of that, but I had a decades-long friendship with Gerald Locklin.  Who was part of that whole group at Locklin’s, wrote books about Bukowski. And, Oh God, Neeli Cherkovski. In fact, we did a book release with the publisher in Romania. It was me, and Jeff Weddle. We did a book about Bukowski — in the whole range of people of publishers. Cherkovski started back in the 70s, and it was made that it was a book by Jeff Weddle. That was coming out in Romanian, with Neeli Cherkovski.  

There was supposed to be a triple book release in Romania, and all three of us were supposed to participate via Zoom.  But Neeli, who is even more computer-dumb than I am, wasn’t able to sign into the to the reading, so it was just me and Gerald Locklin, and they had some college professors there. It was really kind of cool, but it was only just a few weeks after that that Neeli passed away. Very sad. He was a nice man.

RW: Real interesting, that you’ve been interviewed quite a bit. 

JOHN YAMRUS: You know, it comes with the territory.  You gotta do that to get out, and get the stuff read.  You and I talked about that before we went live on this interview, we talked about the importance of getting the stuff out there. 

You know, a lot of writers think that the work stops the minute your work gets accepted. For me, and I mentioned this before, I owe a great debt to these small publishers who have to decide between maybe paying a bill, and maybe publishing my work. And growing up in the country, in Pennsylvania, I’ve learned to appreciate the value of hard work… and I’ve always prided myself on being a hard-working writer. I was never one of those guys who sat back and gave their readings years ago, and after the reading, you know how you start talking to everybody. Usually, at a poetry reading, everybody’s a writer… so I’m talking to this one guy. I asked, “What are you doing now?” after I found out he was a writer. I asked him, “You write anything now?” 

He said, “Oh no, no, no, I’m not writing anything. I’m waiting for the inspiration.” And I wanted to punch him right in the face.

You don’t wait for inspiration. You go out and do the work, and if you’re lucky enough, you will get inspired. But while you’re waiting for inspiration, you go out and do the work!  And that goes back to my work ethic, being from my parents. Yeah you know, my father went to work in a coal mine, and carried a lunch basket every day.  I’ve always seen myself as a lunch-basket type of writer. Somebody who just gets up, does the work, not very flashy, but I’m consistent. I do the work every day. Which is: I’m proud of that.  

RW: I read your brief bio that you sent this morning and it doesn’t say much about the multitude of books that you’ve put out. Could you say something about that?

JOHN YAMRUS: 50 years as a working writer… oh, here are 40 books. I’m either getting really old, but I think I’ve lost count. I think the new one’s gonna be number 41 but I’m not quite sure. I’d have to count.

RW: If you’ve been writing for 50 years and you’ve got 41 books out, you’re turning them out one per year practically. Are you finding publishers for all these? Or, are you self-publishing some of them? 

JOHN YAMRUS: I’m finding publishers. Also, another thing of pride with me is that I’m proud that people want to publish my work. It takes work. You know, back in the old days, back in the days back in the mid-80s, it was really a struggle finding publishers for my work. But I refuse to pay to get published, so I looked all over. I had two books published in England. I had a book published in Sweden. You know, I had to look all over to find people who were crazy enough to wanna put me in print… and I’m sorry to say, it is possible I’ve driven a lot of publishers bankrupt after they spent their money to put me in print. But I’m thick-skinned — and thick-headed — and I just don’t know when to stop.  So, I keep on writing and keep on looking for publishers, and you know as you get older as your name gets a little bit bigger, wrong word there, but as your name gets a little more known, I find it easier to find publishers! And yeah, I’m having a good time. 

RW: Well that’s really interesting. I’m sure it’ll be a real inspiration for a lot of people who are running aground on reaching a publisher that wants to publish their endeavor. You know, there are a lot of people that don’t suffer rejection well. Care to comment on that?

JOHN YAMRUS: I’ve always said that rejections are those kind of obstacles, like rejections are put in our way to weed out the unwilling. I’ve always been willing. An optimist point of view.  

RW: I really like that. Elizabeth Gilbert says as well, creative writers are much more inclined to be pessimists and heavier drinkers than a chemical engineer. She illustrates this in one of her TED Talks, is like her dad was, a chemical engineer. He was much less inclined to be a heavy drinker… all together I’m just very very fond of her work… so the optimist that you are showing up as, in reaching out to other publishers for your 41 books… how many different publishers have you had?

JOHN YAMRUS: Oh God, luckily, the last three publishers brought out a lot of my books. I was for a long time with Epic Rights Press out of Canada.  In fact, they’ve brought out nine or 10 of my books. Unfortunately, once Covid hit — like a lot of small businesses — they went belly up and closed shop. 

I was exactly 2 weeks without a publisher. Again, that goes back to the fact that you know I work hard to make sure my book sells. Yeah and so, I was two weeks without a publisher, and I hooked on with Brocker, and he published five of my books. Now I’m with Anxiety Press, and I think I’ll be either with Heath or Anxiety Press for as long as either one of them will have me. I’m comfortable now. 

RW: Well, this is really good. You’ve answered my questions… very, very, very, full of information. Is there something else you’d like to say in our interview today?

JOHN YAMRUS: OK.  The one thing I can give to aspiring writers is, you need enthusiasm! You need professionalism! You need a big, thick skin. One can’t be afraid to deal with rejection, you just gotta keep on putting one foot in front of the other. 

RW: Thank you very, very much for this time that you spent with me this morning.  I think we’ve covered a lot of really interesting ground, and I appreciate your willingness to just stay focused with it. That is, I really appreciate, as well, your sharing of your poetic experience. I’m sure that this interview will be an incredible inspiration to other poets.  

JOHN YAMRUS: Cody Sexton and his Anxiety Press published this latest collection. This will be (I think) my 41st book, and Cody has published PRESENT TENSE and my little memoir THE STREET.

Like I said, DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER is officially out and available for purchase! You can find it on my amazon page where you can also find all my other books that are still in print.  Here’s a link to that page: