Tributes to Gerry Locklin (1941-2021) by Clint Margrave, J.T. Whitehead, Ron Koertge

Click here to read Gerry Locklin's poems 

The First Time I Met Gerry Locklin

By

Clint Margrave

I was a 23-year-old community college dropout, working at Borders Books in Long Beach, CA. It was the late 1990s so it was the skinny, sober Locklin and he came into the store often. He didn’t know who I was, but I knew who he was. I’d been reading him for a few years by then, having discovered him through the letters of Bukowski and then eventually getting my hands on a copy of his chapbook The Last Round Up through the pre-internet archaic ordering system, Books in Print.

I was working the cash registers when he came up to buy something. He wrote a check as people did then, and seeing his name on the check gave me the perfect excuse to introduce myself. “You’re Gerald Locklin,” I said. “I’m a big fan of your work.” “Oh,” he said, shyly, “well, thank you, thank you very much.” He wondered if I knew him from the college, CSULB, just down the street. But I had no connection to the college yet or any college back then. I was just a fan and an aspiring writer myself, with the brilliant plan to work at a bookstore all my life and write.

From then on, I’d say hi to Gerry every time he came in. And he’d say, “Hello, Jim.” Yes, he called me Jim for about two years and it became a joke between some of my bookstore colleagues who knew it secretly bothered me, since I was a fan. But I also didn’t tell Gerry when I introduced myself that he, along with Michael Hathaway, had already published my very first poem in Chiron Review, only a year before, which helped validate my existence as an aspiring writer. The poem they published was about time and how short it is and how there’s only one way out of this world.

On the day before Gerry died, I’d heard he was in the hospital with Covid and it didn’t look good. I woke up that night and couldn’t stop thinking about him and hearing his voice and remembering the times we spent together. Finally around 5a.m., after lying awake for a couple hours, I got up and began to draft an early version of what became the poem I wrote for him, “Toad Dies and Goes to Heaven.” 

I think it was Yeats who said that he didn’t really write his stuff, that he merely transcribed it from God. I’ve always been jealous of poets who thought this way (and I don’t even believe in God.) How easy it’d be to write and get out of your own way if you just believed you were merely transcribing from a source you felt a direct connection with. The morning I drafted the poem, that’s exactly how I felt, except god wasn’t my source, it was the Toad. A few hours later Ray Zepeda called and told me Gerry was gone. But the good thing about when a writer passes away, is that he’s never gone. His voice remains. So here’s to you, Gerry, from your old pal Jim.

Toad Dies and Goes to Heaven

                                                In memory of Gerald Locklin (1941-2021)

Nobody is more surprised than he is.

First of all, Toad doesn’t believe in heaven,

and secondly, even if he did,

he never expected to visit.

In fact, he’s minorly disappointed.

Has he failed to achieve the properly 

debauched life he so often courted?

But the food tastes good.

And you can drink all the frothy beer you want

and never have to go the bathroom.

The salads are made just the way he likes them too,

with lots of crunchy iceberg lettuce

and a good Roquefort dressing.

(But who is he kidding?

Nobody eats salads here.)

At least there aren’t any pearly gates,

or saints with haloes,

just a dive bar with a few pretty angels.

They even have a poetry night!

And though the audience is dead

and the open mic literally goes on forever,

this time it isn’t annoying,

but filled with names like Dante and Homer

and Shakespeare and Szymborska…

“Hello Toad,” says his old pal Bukowski,

who approaches the bar and pulls up a stool.

“Good to see you again, Hank,” says Toad,

as they clink their glasses and take a drink,

not to their health, but ours.

In Memoriam: Gerald Ivan Locklin 

By

Ron Koertge 

Everybody loved him. It’s that simple. 

Let’s go back in time a little. 1962. When Gerry was a grad student in Tucson, he liked to drink beer and shoot pool at The Green Dolphin.   

Because I had to be somewhere, I was a grad student, but I preferred bars to seminars. I’d just graduated from the U. of I. and I didn’t want to live with my baffled parents. In Arizona I was away, safe from disapproving eyes, but I was a mess. Gerry threw me a life line without lifting a finger.

One night at the Dolphin, Gerry was on his way to get another pitcher of beer when he bumped into a cowboy-type who pushed back. Words were exchanged. Voices were raised. Pretty soon the cowboy and his pardner wanted us to “take it outside.” On the way to the parking lot Gerry said to me, “I always wanted to hear somebody  actually say that.” A small crowd followed. As we squared off, Gerry paused, grinned and said,” Hold my glasses.” I took the cue and  shook my head. 

“I can’t hold your glasses and fight too.”

“Well,” Gerry said, “I can’t fight with them on because they’ll get broken and then my wife will be mad.”

I said, “Yeah. That’s not good. Let’s re-think this.” I faced our opponents who—fists clenched—were braced for a brawl.

“Look,” I said. ‘”What’s this about, anyway?” I pointed to Gerry. ‘He’s almost blind. I weigh a hundred and fifty pounds soaking wet with my shoes on. This isn’t exactly a battle of titans.”

The biggest cowboy said, “Wise guys like you just piss me off.”

Gerry put his glasses back on. “I know,” he said. “We hear that all the time. We’re sorry. Or I am.” He looked over at me. “You’re sorry aren’t you, Ron?”  

I said that I was. “Heartily sorry.”

Just then a spectator asked, “Are you guys going to fight or  not?”

Everybody looked at the cowboys. They looked at each other. At us. The crowd. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” one of them snarled. And they stumbled toward their truck.

The small crowd dissolved. Two girls had been watching. One of them said, “That was pretty smooth. If it wasn’t almost closing time, we’d buy you guys a drink.”

Everybody loved him. Okay, maybe not the two cowboys, but the rest of the fight fans, the two tipsy girls. And me. 

One night after I’d had dinner at his apartment with Mary Alice and the kids, he gave me copies of sassy indie magazines like The Wormwood Review and Vagabond. I felt like the archeologist who peered into Tutankhamen’s tomb and saw, “Wonderful things.” Then Gerry handed over Edward Field’s books and I was hooked: Can poetry be like this?     

It didn’t take long before I said to him, “I’ll bet I could write stuff for Wormwood.”  He said, “Sure, why not? It’s fun to get published and all you need are stamps and some manila envelopes.”

It's fun. A lifeline, remember? 

I shook off some chronic depression, did my laundry more often, apologized to my girlfriend for a dozen things, and leaned into my studies because when I knew enough about the Pearl Poet or Thomas Hardy’s six novels, then I could sit down and write a few poems. 

Gerald Ivan Locklin. Gerry to everybody. I wish you were here so I could tell you again and not for the last time how much your friendship meant to me.

D-Day, 1980

coming out of the movie, “yanks,”

my little boy asks me,

did we do something good

in the second world war?

he’s ten years old

and all he’s ever heard of our military history

is napalm and radiation, washita

and the little big horn, cuba and

chile, and that george washington

had wooden teeth. 

i suspect that it’s not good  for a little boy

to grow up hearing that his country’s always wrong,

even if it usually has been.

this time i’m able to tell him,

“yes, the normandy invasion

was one of the greatest military operations

in history, and not only did we bring it off,

but it’s good for the world that we did.”

i grew up on “the sands of iwo jima;”

my son is growing up on “coming home.”

what adjustments he is having to make!

what adjustments i’ve made!

My Kinda Guy: Gerald Locklin

by J.T. Whitehead

There are a few things I would like to say about my friend Gerald Locklin. Even today I have a hard time calling him Gerry. This was a thing between us, as we corresponded. The friendship was an electronic one —we never met in person and only wrote to each other for many years, although I felt early that he was a friend, one to keep and trust. Anyway, I would write to him, “Dear Gerald” or even, early on, “Dear Mr. Locklin” and he would write back, early and often:

“It’s Gerry.”

Sometimes he would remind me, “It’s Gerry!” Sometimes: “GERRY!”

So, I knew Gerry, from afar, for many years. I remember how and when we first met. I was the Editor in Chief of a Literary Journal titled “So It Goes.” “So It Goes” was the literary journal for what was then the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library. I believe the name has since changed. Don’t look for it now: it’s still there, being run by my ex-wife.

(I’m joking of course. Please, actually, do look for it. It has a different name, I think. My ex-wife still runs it. And she’s still the mother of my children, and I wish it the best, for that reason, first, but also because it’s dedicated to the memory of Vonnegut. So: mother of my children first, Vonnegut second. But I would be remiss if I did not try to include at least one joke, good or bad, in any piece written about my friend Gerry.)

When I was editing the Vonnegut journal I wanted pieces that could make readers laugh. Vonnegut did, and this was always appropriate. We rotated themes. One issue was dedicated to veterans, another to the creative act, another to humor, another to political themes, another was intended eventually to resemble “science fiction” and we did an issue with all-Indiana authors. I don’t know what it is about Indiana, Vonnegut once wrote in the voice of one of his characters, but wherever you go, and meet a Hoosier, they’re doing something important. We thought we were. And if I wanted a poet that could make a reader laugh Locklin was the perfect fit.

The first issue was to be dedicated to veterans, and after the first Editor bailed on the library late in the year, and I was asked to step in, in the mid to late summer of 2012, with a due date for print at the time of Vonnegut’s Veterans’ Day birthday, I said okay, but I have to be left alone to do some things my way. One of those was to actively recruit writers already in print, instead of waiting for submissions, and even to use previously published works. Locklin was a perfect candidate for this time-saving approach, given his sense of humor, and he sent many wonderful poems.

I remember one of those poems especially though because it was short and sweet, and thematically it resembled two other poems we had from other poets. One was a translation of the Turkish poet Orhan Veli, and another was from Robert West (you can find his name in the big collection of Ammons, which he helped prepare, I think, and, I think, you might spot his name in one of the Holman Handbooks to literature). All three poems were in a completely different style, not one of them was longer than four lines, and they all, basically, said the same important thing: that when it comes to war, we are sheep to the slaughter for the powerful and rich, sacrifices for powers bigger than the rest of us.

Well at that time, the volunteer assistant editors spent a bunch of unnecessary energy debating which one we would use. After some back-and-forth with Locklin, the poet and professor, and without him explicitly suggesting it, I decided to cut the gordian knot, and use all three of them. It was Locklin’s friendship and advice that reminded me that when it comes to the creative acts, we can abandon the rules. We make them.

*

            Patriotic Poem

Alexander Haig says there are things

Americans must be willing to die for,

He is not talking to me;

He is talking to my children.

My children, let me only call to your attention

That no one asking you to sacrifice your lives

Has sacrificed his.

*

There was always something about him that insisted on all of us asserting our existential freedom, and this was one small example of that.

He was later a big part of the journal’s humor issue, of course. He always generously rose to the occasion. This contribution was one of my favorites:

*

            My Kinda Guy

Leaving the downtown bar at closing

I hear this one young guy say to his buddy,

“You got any beer at your place?”

And the buddy says, “I got some Columbian

And a little coke

And there’s this guy right in the neighborhood

Would bring over some heroin.”

And the first guy says,

“Yeah, but do you have any beer?”

*

It’s funny. He was funny. He made us laugh with clear observations about everyday life.

The poem also underscores just how unpretentious he was. Locklin was one of the least pretentious poets I ever met, if not the least pretentious poet. In one of our e-mail exchanges he made clear that while he was honored to be a part of the anthology, The Outlaw Bible of American poetry, he disdained such labels. I think the word he used was “over-rated” and he may have even used the word “pretentious” as something to be avoided when discussing such honors as that one. The point was, he put no stock in such labels. His poems addressed our everyday lives. He avoided editorializing in his work. He never pretended to have big answers to big questions. He was unpretentious.

He had a right to be pretentious. Let me rephrase. It’s not a right. It’s a privilege some assert. But he could have acted that way, and did not, and for many reasons, from an unexhaustive list. He published over 150 books. He published over 3,000 poems. Even early in my life as a poet I knew his name, from others, as a kind of “King of the Small Presses.” That reputation was not limited to my own understanding. He taught creative writing, twentieth century literature, and literary theory. He was on the board for the Pushcart Prize. He was a continuing student of art and gave us great examples of ekphrasis. As a literary  critic and novelist he was published internationally. He was hailed by Bukowski as one of our greatest undiscovered talents. Poets and readers, I ask you: having spent our lives in this world, can we not say that there are peers out there who, if so hailed, even if their credits were less than Locklin’s, would strike poses at various artsy gatherings to let us all know how much they do not give a shit about lesser beings like us?

I know right now he was unpretentious. I am looking at the cover of one of his books as I write this. It is a photograph of him, wearing a Los Angeles Lakers sweat jacket. My kinda guy. Wrong team, but right approach, meaning the real one, the honest one. He is not striking an elaborate pose to show the world that he does not give a shit. The beret and arm patches are missing, as is the French cigarette dangling from a face showing a cynical guise. He’s not posing to let us all know how serious he is. He’s just reading. While wearing a Los Angeles Laker’s warm up suit.

Talk about not giving a shit. Authentically, I mean. Not just pretending it.

Sometimes I think even my conservative and capitalist and old-school father could have respected poetry if I had just introduced him to Locklin’s books.

Locklin was one of my poetry Saints. He not only helped bail me out when I dealt with a short time-line for the Vonnegut Library’s first literary journal. He not only helped me put together later issues. He introduced me to other poets, who, unsurprisingly, were just as unpretentious and generous with their time and their talents. Had it not been for Locklin, I never would have had the opportunity to be friends with, or correspond with, or both, with so many others that prove we find our equals: Paul Fericano; Edward Field; K.Lipschutz; Richard Vargas; A.D. Winans. Through Locklin I first learned about these other poets, and through his work I learned about Ron Koertge as well. And through the writers he introduced me to, I learned about others, and was able to work with them on future literary projects, poets like those just listed, as well as Marge Piercy, and Denise Duhamel. Locklin first introduced me to some of these poets, and some of these poets introduced me to some of these poets, but it all began with Gerry’s big generous heart. He was a door-opener.

His sense of humor and his lack of pretension and his generosity all go hand in hand. They explain how democratic he was when it came to the world of poetry, and how un-competitive he was. In his world, there was room for every kind of poet. Those he taught, and not just those whose work resembled his own. Which means, of course, that he was also undogmatic. And this goes hand in hand with his love for all of our rights and abilities to live and express freely.

These are my biggest observations about my friend, Gerald Locklin. That he was a great giver of advice to other poets and editors, that he was very funny, that he was unpretentious, and that he was so generous.

I will always remember the beginning of my friendship and correspondence with Gerald Locklin, when I was editing the literary journal for the Vonnegut library. I was a much better Vonnegut scholar then, much better than now. After the divorce the Vonnegut books were the first to get sold, for daily budgetary reasons. It wasn’t bitterness. I live in Indiana. Vonnegut was the only author I could get good money for at the used book shops. So: I don’t have them on hand to look things up, now, as I write this. That said, Vonnegut, his library, that journal, that was just context. Over time, it had little, and always less, to do with the two of us, me and Locklin, or our exchanges.

But I once knew Vonnegut’s work well, and I remember reading, in an interview, or one of his essays, that he once considered writing poetry. I remember reading between the lines, when reading what he said about it. He was a great novelist, short story author, and essayist. Few authors have mastered that many genres. He also wrote a play, but he was easily great in three genres. But he balked at poetry, and if I remember my thoughts, I believe it was because he doubted his ability to meet the approval of the academics or critics, that he could not match his peers. In other words, he had his preconceptions, and he did not think he could live up to them.

I believed then, and still believe now, that if he had just gone ahead and abandoned his worries, or his notions (or his pretense?), that he would have written poems that were as clear as prose, poems written in a democratic spirit, poems that dealt with our everyday lives, and poems that eschewed form and that made us laugh.

When I was requesting Gerry to send us poetry, I told him this in so many words. I told him that it was a shame that Vonnegut never wrote poetry, because he was so worried about what constituted “the good poem.” That if he had tried his hand at it, and not worried about what was “acceptable,” his work would have resembled what Locklin did. And that he would have produced “the good poem” but just a different and new, American, iteration of that thing, the “good poem,” that must repeatedly appear, given so many opinions and so much literary history, and a country as diverse as ours.

I told Locklin, in one of our many correspondences: “You write the poems that Kurt Vonnegut would have written if he would have written poetry.”

I believed that, back then, when I wanted Gerald Locklin to be part of the literary journal that was dedicated to Vonnegut’s memory. And I still believe it now. If Vonnegut ever just got over it, and stopped worrying about what others (read: critics, academics) thought, and just wrote his own version of poetry, that his poems would resemble Gerald Locklin poems. They would surely have occupied pages in the same journals, and appeared in the same anthologies. The academics may have finally followed the culture’s lead, as they always eventually do, and they may have even come up with a name for a new school to describe them. Who knows.

But, as I told Gerry, Vonnegut never did that. He never gave us those poems. And as I also told Gerry, it’s okay, because Gerald Locklin did.

Here are some of my favorite poems of Gerry's, all of which show what a great sense of humor he typically displayed in his work.