THIS INTERVIEW was conducted by the late Jim Nawrocki and is the last of his many contributions to this magazine. I didn’t realize how sick Jim was when he came to me with a proposal to interview his neighbor in San Francisco, Isak Lindenauer, an antique dealer whose shop, Arts & Crafts Antiques, is a Castro institution.
For the last forty years, Lindenauer’s shop has been devoted to showing fine art objects from the American Arts and Crafts movement. He has provided valuable scholarship on the metal artists of the Bay Area. He’s also a writer and a poet who has collected his work in a memoir titled Outpost, published by Norfolk Press, which contains poems, reflections, prose poems, and illustrations.
For the interview, the questions were submitted in advance by Nawrocki and answered in writing by Lindenauer.
— The Editor
Jim Nawrocki: You’ve been writing poems for most of your life and have had your work included in an anthology. Now you’ve collected your work into a memoir. Is this the first time you’ve collected any of your work into a book?
Isak Lindenauer: Yes, this is the first time I have set aside enough time to gather my thoughts and organize them into a book. The main reason is one I’m sure will be familiar to most people who write poetry: I was too busy working to pay the rent.
I was always very opinionated. My mouth always seemed to get me into trouble. Among other places, I did not seem to fit easily into the workplace. There was always some boss hitting on the women or asking me to do something that made little sense. Having grown up as a young man questioning his sexuality in a household that was more than moderately tyrannical, I didn’t take orders easily, especially if I disagreed with what they were directing me to do. So I had to leave corporate America.
That led me to opening a shop of my own selling American Craftsman-era antiques. From that point on, I devoted myself to building an inventory in order to keep the form alive, which gave me my basic freedom. I wish I had had the social skills to have fit in more with the rest of the planet, so that I could have been able to write and perhaps teach, which had been my original intent. But I have always been a misfit, an outsider, an outlaw, queer in a number of ways. So this was the way the universe led me to maintain an independent life as a gay man. I’m grateful to have found my way to it and have loved what I have done all these years. But as a consequence writing became a luxury that I rarely afforded myself.
JN: Having lived in the Bay Area for more than four decades, starting as a student at Berkeley, you had the opportunity to work with many poets of the Beat era, and were close to Denise Levertov. Can you describe your friendship with her?
IL: Well, while I had glancing moments with a few of the more famous poets, they were simple encounters, nothing like poet-to-poet exchanges. The exception was Denise Levertov, with whom I studied for two years. We truly became like older sister and younger brother. We were kindred spirits, and I will always be grateful for having had the honor of her friendship. She was an invaluable gift to me, a consummate teacher and a brilliant seer. She encouraged the young voice in me, which sang songs as she did. In my father’s house that voice was constantly combated and raged against. Once nurtured, I began to bloom. Outside of the classroom, we spent a good deal of free time together, talking mostly about poetry, but also about personal things in our lives.
When I think back on those days and on her spirit, authentic is the word that best describes her. She even wrote a poem about it. Denise was a little pixie of a woman with a gap-tooth smile and a voice that sounded like a songbird. But she was as powerful as a tornado if need be, had a righteous politic that included a compassion for all living things, and an ability to be so clear and to the point in a voice that was distinct, recognizable, and beautiful. She loved nature. It was so deeply a part of what she brought forth, as well as a caring for the small moment and what was large in it, or could be. She was looking with all her senses, and she could transmit that with a matter-of-fact lucidity that was impressive to almost every reader. Her sensibility was so present on the page. And she felt that we were countrymen. I would not be who I am without having had the distinct privilege of spending time with her and learning from her.
That said, I would add the following. I grew up in schools which in my day gave us the remnants of a classical education. So I read and loved many poets: Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Whitman, T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, Yeats, Auden, Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Frank O’Hara. The Beats were a very large combined influence: Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, and Gary Snyder. I did have a wonderful encounter with Allen Ginsberg. There was a little diner off Polk Street called the Grubstake, really just a counter. I sat down one evening, late, and who sat next to me, much to my surprise? We had a wonderful time talking. He made me feel as though I were the famous one. He was a gorgeous, devoted, revolutionary, loving soul, a poet who changed the landscape of American poetry.
JN: You were living in the Bay Area during many signal historical moments: the Free Speech movement, Vietnam, Harvey Milk, and AIDS. Do you feel that poets have a particular duty to address these kinds of issues?
IL: One hopes that poets whose voices in daily life or on the page are strong would find a need at some point to participate publicly in important issues and events of the day. Truthfully, the deeper, more personal answer is to say that each person’s life is their own to live as they choose. But I would hope that many people would feel compelled to [speak out]. Silence equals death. Those of us who lived through the ‘60s and those who witnessed the scourge of the AIDS years are well aware that we must bear witness forever, and that means continuing to speak up. Artists play an important role as leaders. People look to artists to reveal our world to us, to use the language of their art to describe the world in new ways.
JN: There’s a strong focus on the autobiographical in this book (as in “Elegy” and other poems), almost a reckoning, particularly with respect to your own sexual awakening and your first relationships.
IL: Reckoning is a good word to describe it. This book constitutes a life confessional for me, a memoir of one gay man’s journey to personal freedom. I hope that, by sharing my experiences regarding my growing into the expression of my individual sexuality, they will resonate not only for my generation but also for young gay men who are just coming out today.
JN: Your work clearly reflects the influence of the visual arts. Can you talk about your view of the relationship between poetry and the visual arts?
IL: I see a parallel between the beauty in the Arts and Crafts world and the truth one hopes to embody in one’s writing. Seeing beauty in objects gave me the ability to engage in the endeavor of buying and selling them as an art form as much as it was a means for me to earn a living. Keats made the connection in his famous line at the end of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
