# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  Charles Bukowski

## shortysweetp

what is everyone's favorite Bukowski poem? and thoughts on his other work.
I have read Post Office, Hollywood, and Women. doing a report on "young in new orleans" for english right now

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## mono

I apologize that I never responded to this thread earlier, being a fan of most of Bukowski's work. I recently saw an independent film made after him, mostly biography, called _Bukowski: Born Into This_; I would recommend it, if you have access.
Some of my favorite poems:

The Blackbirds Are Rough Today

lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.

shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.

taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.

a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.

the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail---
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.

and everywhere is
nowhere---
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:

why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school---
you tell
me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.

we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.

don't be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.

---

Young In New Orleans

starving there, sitting around the bars,
and at night walking the streets for
hours,
the moonlight always seemed fake
to me, maybe it was,
and in the French Quarter I watched
the horses and buggies going by,
everybody sitting high in the open
carriages, the black driver, and in
back the man and the woman,
usually young and always white.
and I was always white.
and hardly charmed by the
world.
New Orleans was a place to
hide.
I could piss away my life,
unmolested.
except for the rats.
the rats in my dark small room
very much resented sharing it
with me.
they were large and fearless
and stared at me with eyes
that spoke
an unblinking
death.

women were beyond me.
they saw something
depraved.
there was one waitress
a little older than
I, she rather smiled,
lingered when she
brought my
coffee.

that was plenty for
me, that was
enough.

there was something about
that city, though
it didn't let me feel guilty
that I had no feeling for the
things so many others
needed.
it let me alone.

sitting up in my bed
the llights out,
hearing the outside
sounds,
lifting my cheap
bottle of wine,
letting the warmth of
the grape
enter
me
as I heard the rats
moving about the
room,
I preferred them
to
humans.


being lost,
being crazy maybe
is not so bad
if you can be
that way
undisturbed.

New Orleans gave me
that.
nobody ever called
my name.

no telephone,
no car,
no job,
no
anything.

me and the
rats
and my youth,
one time,
that time
I knew
even through the
nothingness,
it was a
celebration
of something not to
do
but only
know.

---

man in the sun

she reads to me from the New Yorker
which I don't buy, don't know 
how they get in here, but it's 
something about the Mafia 
one of the heads of the Mafia 
who ate too much and had it too easy 
too many fine women patting his 
walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good 
cigars and young breasts and he 
has these heart attacks - and so 
one day somebody is driving him 
in his big car along the road 
and he doesn't feel so good 
and he asks the boy to stop and let 
him out and the boy lays him out 
along the road in the fine sunshine 
and before he dies he says: 
how beautiful life can be, and 
then he's gone. 

sometimes you've got to kill 4 or 5 
thousand men before you somehow 
get to believe that the sparrow 
is immortal, money is piss and 
that you have been wasting 
your time.

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## Helga

this one is amazing, I love his work but I haven't found a book by him in bookstores here in Iceland...

"question and answer" 
he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that--
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.

putting the blade on the table, he
flicked it with a finger
and it whirled
in a flashing circle
under the light.

who the hell is going to save 
me? he
thought.

as the knife stopped spinning
the answer came:
you're going to have to
save yourself.

still smiling,
a: he lit a
cigarette
b: he poured
another
drink
c: gave the blade
another
spin.

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## Basil

from http://todayinliterature.com/
*Bukowski and the Barfly Life*

On this day in 1994 Charles Bukowski died. He published over fifty books of poetry and prose in a career spanning a half-century, becoming the Grand Old Man of the fringe presses. He came by his skid-row, blue-collar themes honestly, enduring decades of bosses ...

"...with bad breath and big feet, men
who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk
as if melody had never been invented.... 

and the inevitable landlady,

execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for rent
because the world had failed us
both" 



Bukowski's gravestone bears the inscription, "Don't Try."

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## Scheherazade

Haven't read any of his work but love the poem you posted.

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## Jay

Second that. Not a Bukowsi fan but after reading that part (?) of the poem you posted, I might be getting interested.

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## mono

R.I.P. Charles Bukowski. For those who have not read his amazing, yet often shocking, work: http://www.online-literature.com/for...ead.php?t=3815

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## Basil

I always preferred his novels and short stories to his poetry, which (to me) just seemed like his prose cut into the shape of poems. His childhood memoir _Ham on Rye_ is my favorite--an unflinching depiction of a child's dawning realization of the nature of the world around him. He owed a lot to Hemingway in terms of style--tough, terse dialogue with the underlying emotion remaining unstated.

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## Surfer

I think he owed more to Henry Miller, and the nihilism of Celine.

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## mister_noel_y2k

im reading "post office" and yeah i can see a lot of henry miller in the prose. its a great novel by the way and such an easy and interesting read. apparently he was classed along with the beat generation but i think he was far better than kerouac and co who were always overrated in my mind. yeah so if youre into writers making fun of bosses from the perspective of the downtrodden everyday worker...no scrub that, if youre interested in a good read then give charles bukowski a go! 


 :Banana: 

i meant to write, he also reminds me of hunter thompson's style of writing. bukowski's great, has anyone read john fante's "ask the dust"? its apparently bukowski's favourite novel

 :Banana: 

anyone realise that in charles bukowski's last novel "pulp" the character of nicky belane is similar to the cedric the entertainer's character in the coen brothers film "intolerable cruelty"? cedric's character busts into rooms yelling "IM GONNA NAIL YO' ***!" while brandishing a camcorder to film the adulterous liasons of a married person and someone else, just like nicky belane does in "pulp". those unoriginal thinkers, the coens....

 :Banana:

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## PistisSophia

> anyone realise that in charles bukowski's last novel "pulp" the character of nicky belane is similar to the cedric the entertainer's character in the coen brothers film "intolerable cruelty"? cedric's character busts into rooms yelling "IM GONNA NAIL YO' ***!" while brandishing a camcorder to film the adulterous liasons of a married person and someone else, just like nicky belane does in "pulp". those unoriginal thinkers, the coens....


Post Office was the first piece of work I'd read by Charles......rest in peace...I enjoyed this genre quite a bit...albeit could make you "go postal" for sure.

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## coffeestained

> those unoriginal thinkers, the coens....


While I could only stomach about 10 minutes of the flick and blanch at the thought of ever having to watch someone named whatever the entertainer I wouldnt chastise the Coen Brothers for being unoriginal (although their last few movies have suuuuucked), moreso as fairly well read chaps. 
Aside from the William Faulknerness in Barton Fink, theyve had several other nods to the Faulkner (the carpet being defiled in The Big Lebowski, etc).

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## mister_noel_y2k

very true old chap, despite their last coupla movies sucking they have had a brilliant run of good movies like the big lebowski, the man who didn't (something) and o brother where art thou (based on homer i think) so theyre a good bunch of chaps when theyre directing their own material but when it comes to someone else writing the script like in intolerable cruelty then they tend to suck 


 :Banana:

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## starrwriter

I enjoy the writings of Charles Bukowski because they make me laugh for all the wrong reasons. How many writers can pull that off?

I admit that a writer nicknamed Buke the Puke for his habit of throwing up regularly is a little hard on the sensibilities. For one thing he looked like a frog -- the combination of acne scarring and a perpetual watery-eyed hangover. His characters are always on the john with a bad case of the beer ****s when they discover the toilet paper rack is empty. His alcoholic girlfriend once asked Bukowski if he ever wiped his *** after she found brown stains on their bed sheets. If that happened to me, I'd feel too embarrassed to put it in a book, but Bukowski believed in telling the truth, warts and all.

My favorite Bukowski book is "Factotum" about his hobo journeys around the country when he was a young man. He took crappy jobs temporarily to eat and rent dumpy apartments and drank every day to keep from going crazy. During those years, he learned an important lesson about the Protestant work ethic:

Frankly, I was horrified by work, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothedIt was true that I didnt have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, ****, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?Of all the ways you can spend your life, working a job is a low ignominious goal.

I also liked many of Bukowski's free-verse poems. One volume of poetry was titled "Love Is A Dog From Hell." Amen, brother.

Bukowski never made much money from his writing until he was an old man. Even then, his books sold much better in Europe than the U.S. Then came the film "Barfly," which was a financial windfall for Bukowski. I liked the movie and the hilarious performance by Mickey Rourke. The critics and most other people hated it. Bukowski laughed all the way to the bank and wrote a book about the experience titled "Hollywood."

In his old age Bukowski proved the addage that living well is the best revenge. He bought a nice car and a respectable house, where he lived with a woman who took loving care of him. He learned to drink good wine instead of beer and cheap whisky. He still gambled on the horses, but kept his losses to a minimum. He gave speeches to college students eager to learn about writing. In 1994 he died at the age of 74 happier than he had ever been in his younger life.

Bukowski was a unique success story. He lived the dream that all writers have -- of being lifted out of misery by the magic of storytelling. He just had to wait until he was almost too old to enjoy it.

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## Mark F.

I haven't ever read anything by him, mainly due to the fact that Bukowski novels are insanely expensive in France but one day (soon) I shall. Both his poetry and his prose.

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## Psycheinaboat

I have been reading Bukowski's poetry and plan on buying a few of his books when our X-Mas bonus comes in... happy days!

Aside: When I was in highschool I had a sticker on my alto-sax case that read "Barfly." A couple of kids started calling me barf-lee. Mean kids <pout>.

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## Zippy

Great post Starrwriter, I couldn't agree more - Bukowski is a genius. Post Office is probably one of the finest books I've ever read. He's the ultimate proof that brutal honesty is what makes great literature.

As for his comment "there ought to be a place for people without ambition", there is - it's called the civil service.

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## starrwriter

> Great post Starrwriter, I couldn't agree more - Bukowski is a genius. Post Office is probably one of the finest books I've ever read. He's the ultimate proof that brutal honesty is what makes great literature. As for his comment "there ought to be a place for people without ambition", there is - it's called the civil service.


I noticed you are in public relations in the Royal Navy. As a former U.S. Air Force drone, I want you to know that you have my deepest sympathies.

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## A Hard Rain

Love is a dog from hell, You get so alone at times that it just makes sense, and Septugenarian stew are really good. ham on rye is my fav. novel of his.

His poetry is subsidiary with a good drink.

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## subterranean

Ok, the posts in this thread managed to interest me. I have ordered a copy of Post Office, expected to be delivered by end of this month. Let's give it a shot  :Nod:

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## amuse

here's a link to some of his works.

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## starrwriter

> Ok, the posts in this thread managed to interest me. I have ordered a copy of Post Office, expected to be delivered by end of this month.


Why buy when Post Office and most of Bukowski's other work is available free from your local public library? When I was younger, I practically educated myself in libraries. Now there seems to be an aversion to libraries. What's the deal -- too much disposable income?

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## subterranean

Starr, I don't live in the "west" , there's no such thing as public library with books like Post Office in display. Not everyone as luck as you...

And no, I don't have too much disposable income. As a matter of fact, I have to save my lunch money in order to be able to buy those kinds of books you can freely borrow from your sophisticated library.



Please excuse me, I'm not really in a very good mood now.

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## starrwriter

> Starr, I don't live in the "west" , there's no such thing as public library with books like Post Office in display. Not everyone as lucky as you...


Sorry, I didn't know where you lived. (You might want to mention your home country in your profile.)

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## Zippy

I found a great link to Charles Bukowski's FBI files. There's quite a lot of repitition, but a few good pieces from magazines he was writing for:

http://www.smog.net/writers/bukowski/fbi/

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## subterranean

No problem.

Yes, good idea.

You might want to ask first in the future.

And yes, it's a good review on Bukowski you wrote there.

Cheers





> Sorry, I didn't know where you lived. (You might want to mention your home country in your profile.)

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## Sandrine

I did it backwards. I read (almost) all of John Fante's work first--Ask The Dust, Dreams From Bunker Hill, The Road to Los Angeles, Wait Until Spring Bandini and The Brotherhood of the Grape. _Then_ I started looking into Bukowski because he was so enthralled by Ask The Dust. I mean, Bukowski has never been out of my reading-choice league, I just never got around to him. My dinky, disorganized library has little to no Bukowski so I'm forced to purchase it, which is fine, but yet I never quite seem to get around to it...finances, forgetfulness, whatnot.

So does anybody have a quintessential starter book for Bukowski or should I just wing it?

And does anybody here read Fante???  :Smile:

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## starrwriter

> So does anybody have a quintessential starter book for Bukowski or should I just wing it? And does anybody here read Fante???


I started with "Factotum" and after I read all of Bukowski's books, I still thought it was his best.

I read "Ask The Dust," but I didn't think it was as good as Bukowski.

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## Koa

> Sorry, I didn't know where you lived. (You might want to mention your home country in your profile.)


It actually was there last time I had looked...she was like one of the rare ones who had their true location there...I don't know when it changed and I am not implying that you should have known...

No libraries there Subby??? Or no libraries that keep such books? I actually wonder if my local library has something like that...who knows, maybe it evoluted since the times I used to go there...I should go back there now that I dont have 'school' books to read anymore...

I think I read some Bukowski one, ages ago...I only vaguely remember alcohol and toilets, but if it's the book I'm thinking of and I remember who lent it to me, I must have been 13 or 14 years old...uhm...blurred memories... Who knows, maybe I'm not even talking of the right one. *sighs* I miss being a readaholic rather than an internetholic...  :Rolleyes:

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## subterranean

> It actually was there last time I had looked...she was like one of the rare ones who had their true location there...I don't know when it changed and I am not implying that you should have known...
> 
> No libraries there Subby??? Or no libraries that keep such books? I actually wonder if my local library has something like that...who knows, maybe it evoluted since the times I used to go there...I should go back there now that I dont have 'school' books to read anymore...



Many libraries here Koa, but most of them have same collections that you'd feel you're in the same place eventhough you have moved to the other . My college has good library, but the collection is only for registered students. As I'm working, I can only visit it on Saturday, but in Saturday it only opens until 12 PM. So there..
I could go to the national libary, but I'm to lazy to take the one hour travel by train. Well, maybe I'm just being spoiled. I mean they say no pain no gain...

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## Koa

Just had a look for fun in the online catalogue of my Uni library, which gives me no matches for Bukowski...

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## Mark F.

They have a few of his novels but none of his poetry at my Uni library.

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## Lautschrift

> I haven't ever read anything by him, mainly due to the fact that Bukowski novels are insanely expensive in France but one day (soon) I shall. Both his poetry and his prose.


to add bukowski also is insanely wicked hence influence of the schnaps 

i had very mixed emotions reading some of his text
at times i was not sure if i felt sick or amused by his vivid bluntness




> Just had a look for fun in the online catalogue of my Uni library, which gives me no matches for Bukowski...


 try this link
http://www.charlesbukowski.com

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## MirrorImage

Has anyone seen Factotum yet? I saw it had mixed reviews from Cannes but hope it doesn't turn out to be a disappointment.

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## mono

> Has anyone seen Factotum yet? I saw it had mixed reviews from Cannes but hope it doesn't turn out to be a disappointment.


I have yet to see _Factotum_, though I would love to see it sometime soon. I, too, have heard some mixed criticisms - some praising, some detesting, but thus seems the work of Bukowski - either loved or hated with no medium.  :Biggrin: 
For anyone who does not know of _Factotum_, click here.

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## Mark F.

I first saw Factotum before getting into Bukowski's work, and back then I really loved it. Since then I have read "Post Office", "Factotum" and "Tales of Ordinary Madness", I've also seen the excellent "Bukowski : Born into this" documentary. From what I remember Dillon's portrayal of Bukowski was spot on and very touching, the film is very close to the novel but also has some of his poetry spoken by the narrator (Matt Dillon) which really gives more depth to the character. Check out the film, you might not like it but it's really worth seeing.

The novels I read were both very enoyable, lots of off-beat humour. His prose is unique, he's one of the best writers of the last century. I'm planning on buying a collection of poems to read through this Summer.

One of my favourite Bukowski poems :

"As the spirit wanes, the form appears."

R.I.P. Hank

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale 
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that 
he's 
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that 
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in 
Europe ?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be 
sad.

then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that 
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to 
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

C. Bukowski

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## matteroftime

ya i love bukowski! ! ! i had no idea they were turning one of his books into a movie-- i looked up the release date and it shuold be AUGUST 15!!- cant wait. apperently it's soundtrack kicks butt too- kristin asbjornsen put some of mr.b's lyrics to music- shes a jazz artist from norway

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## MirrorImage

The Factotum soundtrack is great. She does puts 4 Bukowski poems to music. After hearing it, I found myself deeply enchanted by her version of "Slow Day." Brilliant...

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## Nightwalk

Good tribute to the man Basil. One of the great writers of the 20th-Century and perhaps the most relevant American author of the past 100 years. _Notes of a Dirty Old Man_ changed my life. I first read it in the toilet and came out a different young man. The sharp wit, skid-row humor, and the weary and sober depictions of real life were unlike anything I'd read prior to that time. It shattered the comfortable, smug, rose-colored pedestal-tower I thought myself secure in. I've seen the world since with a more grounded outlook, and am all the better for it.

_"All women are prostitutes, they just charge differently". - Charles Bukowski_

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## Dr_Chocolate

I remember finding a worn, tattered paperback anthology of confessional poets with vintage, yellowed pages in Speech class earlier this year. I immediatley flipped it open, and came across the poem "The Loser" by Charles Bukowski. I am positive that that particular piece of poetry isn't held in high esteem to his legacy, but for my part, I believe that is the stepping stone that led me into digging old Charlie.

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## mono

I remember also enjoying this poem, and I have no idea why I had not posted it earlier.  :Tongue:  What a triumph to literature --



first love

at one time
when I was 16
a few writers gave me
my only hope and
chance.

my father disliked
books and
my mother disliked
books (because my father
disliked books)
especially those I brought back
from the library:
D.H. Lawrence
Dostoevsky
Turgenev
Gorky
A. Huxley
Sinclair Lewis
others.

I had my own bedroom
but at 8 p.m.
we were all supposed to go to sleep:
"Early to bed and early to rise
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,"
my father would say.

"LIGHTS OUT!" he would shout.

then I would take the bed lamp
place it under the covers
and with the heat and hidden light
I would continue to read:
Ibsen
Shakespeare
Chekov
Jeffers
Thurber
Conrad Aiken
others.

they gave me a chance and some hope
in a place of no chance
no hope, no feeling.

I worked for it.
it got hot under the covers.
sometimes the sheets would begin to smoke
then I'd switch the lamp off,
hold it outside to
cool off.

without those books
I'm not quite sure
how I would have turned
out:
raving; the
murderer of the father;
idiocy;
hopelessness.

when my father shouted
"LIGHTS OUT!"
I'm sure he feared
the well-written word
immortalized
forever
in our best and
most interesting
literature.

and it was there
for me
close to me
under the covers
more woman than woman
more man than man.

I had it all
and
I took it.

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## Mark F.

Great poem Mono, thanks for posting it.

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## Nightwalk

That's one of his memorable poems mono. It quite deeply shows the importance of literature to those graced by it's substantial hand.

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## Dirt McKert

_art_

as the
spirt
wanes
the form
appears.
***

so simple, so good.

(i think it's obvious i like bukowski...just see my avatar)

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## Geoffrey

Yes Yes by Charles Bukowski

when God created love he didn't help most 
when God created dogs He didn't help dogs 
when God created plants that was average 
when God created hate we had a standard utility 
when God created me He created me 
when God created the monkey He was asleep 
when He created the giraffe He was drunk 
when He created narcotics He was high 
and when He created suicide He was low 

when He created you lying in bed 
He knew what He was doing 
He was drunk and He was high 
and He created the mountains and the sea and fire at the same time 

He made some mistakes 
but when He created you lying in bed 
He came all over His Blessed Universe.

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## Nightwalk

Those are good poems Dirt McKert and Geoffrey. Brilliant in fact in their own simple way. The man did have a knack for the word.

Here's the great man's take on the City of Light.

*Paris*

was just like not being there.

Celine was gone.

there was nobody there.

Paris was a bite of bluegrey air.
the women rushed by as if you would never
DARE to go to bed with
them.

there were no armies around.

everybody was rich.
there were no poor in view.
there were no old in view.

to sit at a table in a cafe
would get you careful stares from the other 
patrons
who were certain that they were
more important than 
you.
food was too expensive to eat.
a bottle of wine would cost you
your left hand.

Celine was gone.

the fat men smoked cigars and became
gloried puffs of smoke.

the thin men sat very straight and spoke
only to each other.
the waiters had big feet and were sure
that they were more important than
anything or
anybody.

Celine was gone.

and Picasso was dying.

Paris was absolutely nothing.

I did see a dog that looked like a white wolf.

I don't remember leaving Paris.

but I must have been there.

it was somewhat like leaving
a fashion magazine in a
train station.

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## babafats15

i just finsihed ham on rye by bukowski and loved it, it reminded me a little of Dostoeosky's notes for the underground(which is my all time favorite story) interesting he had a brothers k reference in it.

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## dharma-bum

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, and so far i'm hooked. I was curious to what the general opinion of the poet Charles Bukowski is. His poetry is more often than not, totally vulgar and sometimes very offensive. In my own opinion he is a great poet, i wouldn't compare him to great classical poets such as Wordsworth or Shakespeare, I would however say he is in a class of his own.

Enough from me, whats the general opinion?

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## dharma-bum

one of my personal favorites...




having the flu and 
with nothing else to do 

I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal 

this seems to happen all too often. 

what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-*** radical 

however:
young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it's a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock. 

but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution. 

such is our politics and you can have it
all. 

keep it. 

sail it up your
***.

two kinds of hell 

I sat in the same bar for 7 years, from 5 a.m.
(the day bartender let me in 2 hours early)
to 2 a.m. 

sometimes I didn't even remember going back
to my room 

it were as if I were sitting on the barstool
forever 

I had no money but the drinks kept
arriving
to then I wasn't the bar clown
but the bar fool
but at times a fool will find a greater
fool to
admire him,
and,
it was a crowded
place 

actually, I had a viewpoint: I was waiting for
something extraordinary to
happen 

but as the years wasted on
nothing ever did unless I
caused it: 

broken bar mirrors, a fight with a 7 foot
giant, a dalliance with a lesbian, many things
like the ability to call a spade a spade and to
settle arguments that I did not
begin and etc. and etc. and etc. 

one day I just upped and left the
place 

like that 

and I began to drink alone and I found the company
quite all right 

then, as if the gods were bored with my peace at
heart, knocks began upon my door: ladies
the gods had sent the ladies to the
fool 

and the ladies arrived one at a time and when it ended with
one
the gods immediately--without allowing me any respite--sent
another 

and each began as a flash of miracle--even the bed--and the
good ended up
bad 

my fault, of course, yes, that's what they told
me 

but I remembered the 7 years in the bar, I hardly ever bedded
down with anybody 

the gods just won't let a man drink alone, they are jealous of
his simple strength and salvation, they will send the lady
knocking upon that door
I remember all those cheap hotels, it were as if the women
were one: the delicate little rap on the wood and then:
"oh, I heard you playing that music on your radio...we're
neighbors, I'm down at 603 but I've never even seen you in
the hall..." 

"come on in..." 

and there go your balls and your sanctity, Men's Liberation,
they say, is not needed
and then you remember the bar
when you walked up behind the 7 foot giant and knocked his
cowboy hat off his head, yelling:
"I'll bet you sucked your mother's nipples until you were
12 years old!" 

somebody in the bar saying: "hey, sir, forget it, he's a mental
case, he's an *******, he doesn't know what he is
saying!" 

"I know EXACTLY what I am saying and I'll say it again:
I'll bet you sucked..." 

he won but you didn't die, not at all the way you died when the
gods arranged to get all those ladies knocking and you went for
the first flash of miracle 

the other fight was more fair: he was slow, stupid and even a
little bit frightened and it went well for quite a good while,
just like with the ladies those gods
sent 

the difference being, I thought I had a chance with the
ladies

----------


## Idiotque

I love most of what I've read of Bukowski's poetry, but I read Factotum and must admit that I didn't get much from it. I enjoyed it but I was disappointed. The only scene that really stuck with me was the ending one (great last line, though "And I just couldn't get it up" or something of that sort). Since I love his poetry so much I don't want to give up on his prose. Does anyone have any suggestions?

----------


## rob91

Opinions?

I just started reading "Tales of Ordinary Madness" and have to say everything about it seems a bit juvenile. I'm surprised, as I considered "Ham on Rye" a great novel, and Post Office and Factotum both very good. I've also read "Hollywood" by him, which I thought just good.

I know opinions vary greatly on the guy, but I think he has some real talent and has produced some great work (Ham on Rye probably his best). But I can understand the dissenters, as much of his work is often very similar, in terms of themes and even content; Ham on Rye, Factotum and Post Office could function as a trilogy.

Okay, that's all I got for now. What do yall think?

----------


## Geoffrey

When I read him I read him compulsively. He does stir some madness in me for sure. 
My favorite stories of his come from 'Hot Water Music.' I'm sure some people don't see value in his work, but I have to disagree. Beneath the dingy surface there is a great deal of social commentary, insight, and perspective.

----------


## NickAdams

I have only read one of his stories. What was the name-- 
It was about to boozers, who make a plan to steal from a clothing store.
I have put Bukowski on my readins list since then.

----------


## Moira

I am curently reading 'Women' by Bukowski and i cannot say whether i like it or not. I have mixed feelings about his writing. Often vulgar ........ but also very direct and honest. I love his poetry though.

"I've always been accused of being a cynic. I think cynicism is sour grapes. I think cynicism is a weakness. It's saying "everything is wrong! EVERYTHING IS WRONG!" You know? "This is not right! That is not right!" Cynicism is the weakness that keeps one from being able to adjust to what is occurring at the moment. Yes, cynicism is definiteiy a weakness, just as optimism is. "The sun is shining, the birds are singing -- so smile." That's bull**** too. The truth lies somewhere in between. What is, just is. So you're not ready to handle it...too bad."
-- Charles Bukowski

----------


## rgdmalaysia

I don't know if Bukowski is a great writer but he certainly has a great sense of humor....Post Office is one of the few books that make me laugh out loud.

Ham on Rye shows a heavy Celine influence and I consider it his most serious work....His dad is a memorable character.

Never cared much for his poetry at all....I think one appreciates Bukowski more when they are younger.

----------


## Cellar Door

I wonder if anyone is a fan of Bukowski?

I am particularly struck by 1992's The Last Night of the Earth Poems.

I enjoy his gritty style, and his focus on working people.

“Humanity, you never had it to begin with.” -C. Bukowski


Friends Within The Darkness

I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as long
as possible--
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers -- Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me and
they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewed for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take away my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the
critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
{excerpt}

C. Bukowski

Well, what do you think?

----------


## Virgil

I'm not a Bukowski fan. Not only is he crude and frankly uncivilized but more importantly I don't see the poetry there. What is poetic about that?

----------


## quasimodo1

Mostly, I agree with Virgil on Bukowski but others apparently see some merit here. The Poetry Foundation has this to say by way of intro: "Charles Bukowski (1920 - 1994) 
Charles Bukowski was a prolific underground writer who depicted in his poetry and prose the depraved metropolitan environments of the downtrodden in American society. A cult hero, Bukowski relied on experience, emotion, and imagination in his works, often using direct language and violent and sexual imagery. While some critics found his style offensive, others claimed that Bukowski satirized the machismo attitude through his routine use of sex, alcohol abuse, and violence. "Without trying to make himself look good, much less heroic, Bukowski writes with a nothing-to-lose truthfulness which sets him apart from most other 'autobiographical' novelists and poets," commented Stephen Kessler in the San Francisco Review of Books, adding: "Firmly in the American tradition of the maverick, Bukowski writes with no apologies from the frayed edge of society, beyond or beneath respectability, revealing nasty and alarming underviews." Michael Lally, writing in Village Voice, maintained that "Bukowski is . . a phenomenon. He has established himself as a writer with a consistent and insistent style based on what he projects as his 'personality,' the result of hard, intense living."

----------


## Cellar Door

I can certainly understand some people's dislike of Bukowski-- he is what he is, love him or hate him. I like the subjects discussed- they aren't pretty, and sometimes to discuss them with pretty, flowery language is to demean them. People with a really traditional view of poetry sometimes get hampered by the rules. This leads to a stifling of poetry, at times. Done well, it can be a beautiful thing. Bukowski, along with many others, threw those rules out the window, leaving an ugly lump, which, to some (myself) is beautiful in its own right. I think Bukowski had something to say, which transcends rules of traditional poetry. What he did, in my view, is hold a mirror up to society, which is inherently ugly and crass.

----------


## Virgil

Well, that's a good defense Cellar Door. I guess we won't agree.  :Wink:  No sweat. Enjoy his work.

----------


## Etienne

Such verses as: "I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside" strikes me as being boring. I think this poem is boring both on an aesthetical level as well as the thought expressed. I have never really read Bukowski otherwise and don't intend to...

----------


## Cellar Door

That's okay Etienne, I welcome your input. Plus, it leaves more Bukowski for me  :Biggrin:

----------


## Etienne

It's all yours  :FRlol:

----------


## JBI

I'm with Virgil as well - that isn't very talented writing. Any kid who picks up a pen and fashions himself a poet could probably scribble that. He seems an extension of the beat generation, key word generation, I.E. sooner or later they die off.

----------


## stlukesguild

There are writers and even poets who deal with the disconcerting, ugly, disturbing, even distasteful of subjects... and do it well. Look at Paul Celan's _Death Fugue_, check into Baudelaire, Rimbaud, etc... Poetry need not mean flowery language. It can use stripped-down minimal language. It can be colloquial and even crude. It can follow traditional formats or be incredibly innovative... tearing apart every expectation. The problem I have with Bukowski is that he is not good at any of this. He strikes me as the sophomoric "poet as rebel/anti-hero" who is appreciated by an audience that is unaware of the fact that everything he has done... his breaking of the rules... transcending the traditional... taking a walk on the dark side... embracing the ugliness that exists is but a pale echo (and sadly comic at that) of poets far greater than he.

----------


## Jozanny

I hate to defend Charles, really, but this is an instance where I might have more sympathy with mortal terror's sympathy for the aesthetics of the masses... because I think to dismiss Bukowski's narrative voice as trite and sophomoric misses the point of what Bukowski was *about*, and that *about* is closer to Andy Warhol's mass media ironies, actually, more so than any of the original Beats sincere attempt to stick it to Ike's generation.

Charles didn't give a flying ***** about craft, and this attitude is part of his aesthetic, the chip on the shoulder devil may care the 25 year old groupie I am sleeping with has _fleas_ man. He lets his audience in on the joke, and this is part of his staying power. I respect the populist appeal he generates as a phenomena; his name recognition certainly lent me a helping hand in the eighties.

----------


## mortalterror

I like Charles Bukowski, but I don't like this poem. He has a dirty, low down, mean, authoritative voice which appeals to me on a personal level, although I don't believe he has done as much with persona or the art of writing as Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, or London whom he principally reminds me of. Whether his writing is of a stature equal to theirs, or as I suspect, it is more of the Norman Mailer, James Jones variety is for time to tell.

In recent years, I've mostly shunned literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. If I ever have the time though, Bukowski is definitely one of the artists I'd be interested in reading more of. As it stands, most of what I know of the man is second hand, and what I've been able to glean from the first pages of several novels perused in a bookstore one day. 

The man undoubtedly has a gift, more I cannot say.

----------


## curlyqlink

I have only recently discovered Bukowski, and I think he is profound. His poetry is eloquent and immediate, raw and beautiful. There is after all such a thing as raw beauty. Who's to say poetry should be civilized? Poetry can be brutal as well as mannered.

I have a certain admiration for Bukowski's unending refusal. His refusal to belong, to join the team. He was an ugly man with an eye for tragedy. Real tragedy, not mundane failure. He saw nobility in life, in the midst of squalor.

----------


## Cellar Door

He appeals to me on a different level than "the great ones", but I think poetry should have more than one level- if it only had one, I would grow bored with it. That is part of the intrinsic beauty of poetry; it is multi-faceted. This gives depth, inspiration, character, even life to the whole art form. Just as there are different styles of paintings (Renaissance is much different from Cubism) there should be different styles of poetry. There are those whose primary interests are in Renaissance styles, and who shun Cubism. And that is the beauty of poetry!

the schoolyard of forever

the schoolyard was a horror show: the bullies, the dragons, the
freaks

the beatings against the wire fence
the eyes of our mates watching
glad that they were not the victims
we were beaten well and good
and afterwards
followed
taunted all the way home to our homes of hell
full of more beatings

in the schoolyard the bullies ruled well, and in the restrooms
at the water fountains they owned us and disowned us
but in our way we held
never begged for mercy
we took it straight on
silently
we were trained within that horror
a horror that would later hold us in good stead
and that came around
as we grew in several ways with time
the bullies gradually began to deflate, lose power

grammar school
Jr. high
high school
we grew like odd plants
gathering nourishment
blossoming
as then the bullies tried to befriend us
we turned them away

(missing stanzas- don't want to go to jail  :Smile:  )

new bullies
deeply entrenched
almost but not quite worthy
they kept us under for decades
we had to begin all over again
on the streets
and in small rooms of madness
it lasted and lasted like that
but our training within horror endured us
and after so very long
we outed
oblique to their tantamounts
we found the tunnel at the end of the light

it was a small minority victory
no song of braggadocio
we knew we had won very little against very little
that the changing of the clock and the illusions beat everybody
we clashed against the odds just for the simple sweetness of it

even now we can still see the janitor with his broom
in his pinstripes and sleeping face
we can still see the little girls in their curls
their hair so carefully washed and shining

and the faces of the teachers
fall and folded

(missing stanzas, again the jail thing)

and Herbie Ashcroft
his fists coming against us
as we were trapped against the steel fence
as we heard the sounds of automobiles passing but not stopping
as the world went about doing what it did
we asked for no mercy

and we returned the next day and the next and the next
the little girls so magic as they sat so upright in their seats
in a room of blackboards and chalk we began badly
but always with a disdain for occurrence

which is still embedded
through the ringi-ng of new bells and ways
stuck with that
fixed with that:
a grammar school world
even with Herbie Ashcroft dead

from "Third Lung Review" - 1992


I always really liked this one. It echoes my life in strange parallels.  :Goof:

----------


## JBI

You need to chop some of it - it's illegal if you don't.

----------


## Cellar Door

Thanks JBI! An unfortunate oversight on my part, I'm afraid. I really do know better, I swear.  :Wink:

----------


## stlukesguild

Jozanny... I'll say no more on Bukowski. My position is clear. Andy Warhol however :Sick: ... Trust me, there were no mass-media ironies ever intended by Warhol. If you go through any of his journals you would find that his thinking is not far from that of an uneducated adolescent who worships celebrity and incessantly ponders over "whether Bobby likes me or not (in this case Bobby being Robert Rauschenberg) and imagines that the fact that he just might not is the most profound tragedy one might experience. The notion that Pop Art was all about some Post-Modenist ironic view of popular culture and mass media was an idea hoisted upon the movement by the marketers in order to sell the work to the more sophisticated art audience, yet it completely ignores the fact that for the most part the Pop Artists were some of the dumbest, least educated artists to ever break upon the art scene. It also ignores the fact that they actually worshiped the very popular culture they supposedly were lampooning. There wasn't the least intention of satire or irony, because in reality they lacked little or no knowledge or appreciation of the history of that art which had gone before. They were merely painting what they loved. Warhol began as a commercial artist... an illustrator... and remained a commercial artist. 

Certainly there were some Pop Artists who were exceptions. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, for example, who were much more responsible (and earlier) for the development of Pop Art, were certainly ironic in their intentions. The vast majority of American Pop Artists, however, merely embraced the subject matter of popular culture as any adolescent awed by celebrity... film icons and rock stars... never questioning it, let alone imagining it might have some dark side. There is nothing so much wrong with this... except for the fact that they offered nothing beyond a recreation of that which popular culture, by its very nature, did far better. They merely recreated the imagery and the techniques of the mass-media within a fine-art gallery context. If there was any genius (and if there was it owes far more to the marketing savvy of their dealers, Leo Castelli foremost among them) it lies in the fact that they were essentially able to do the same thing that endless anonymous T-Shirt and poster designers... that Hallmark Cards continues to do... and convince an audience (grown weary of abstraction) that the mere change in context was enough to raise the work to the level (and the value) of fine art. 

The justification for this notion was always Marcel Duchamp, whose _Fountain_ and other "ready-mades" had thrown out the possibility that context was everything... and an artist need do nothing. Duchamp merely threw out the question... the dealers and theorists and critics leaped upon it. Such a "conceptual" idea of art seduced academics, and critics, and art writers who found much more to write about in such work than in the more traditional concepts of art which were not so dependent upon words and theory, but instead relied upon a language of color and form and shape, and line that they were not fluent in. 

The dealers became enamored when they discovered that such art could be rapidly mass-produced and marketed to an audience raised on popular culture and suspicious of the intellectual demands of "high art"... thus guaranteeing astronomical sales figures. In this manner Pop Art dragged painting into the world of mass-media, mass production, public relations and marketing, and fashion. The artist became a designer... and essentially nothing but a name... like Gucci or Prada... Figures like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst follow in this "tradition"... in complete opposition to those artists who actually create their own works and reject the notion that the highest goal of the artist is celebrity... Warhol's 15 minutes.

You need to chop some of it - it's illegal if you don't.

It might also be an improvement. In fact... it most decidedly will be. :Biggrin:

----------


## Cellar Door

hey now st luke's! I'm laughing, you're funny.  :FRlol:  I guess you'd like me to delete the whole thing?  :Smile:  No, it wouldn't be fair to the discussion. Maybe some people will like this one more than the last one. But I know and respect the fact that you do not care for his works. If everyone liked him, there would be no discussion, would there?

sample discussion:

random user:
I like Bukowski

some other user:
yeah, me too

random user:
okay

some other user:
well then

 :Biggrin:

----------


## Virgil

> I hate to defend Charles, really, but this is an instance where I might have more sympathy with mortal terror's sympathy for the aesthetics of the masses... because I think to dismiss Bukowski's narrative voice as trite and sophomoric misses the point of what Bukowski was *about*, and that *about* is closer to Andy Warhol's mass media ironies, actually, more so than any of the original Beats sincere attempt to stick it to Ike's generation.
> 
> Charles didn't give a flying ***** about craft, and this attitude is part of his aesthetic, the chip on the shoulder devil may care the 25 year old groupie I am sleeping with has _fleas_ man. He lets his audience in on the joke, and this is part of his staying power. I respect the populist appeal he generates as a phenomena; his name recognition certainly lent me a helping hand in the eighties.


Jozy, I think you put your finger on it perfectly. That is exactly the essence of Bukowski. Still I have no desire to read him. You said it best: he "didn't give a flying ***** about craft." And that is why he will never be considered a great poet. He is a transient phenomena.

----------


## LitNetIsGreat

Cellar Door, are you a fan of his novels as well? I have read a few of them and they do more for me than his poetry, I am not a fan of his poetry.

----------


## Cellar Door

I have not read any, Neely, though I have been meaning to for some time. Any particular recommendations?

----------


## quasimodo1

THE JAPANESE WIFE



O lord, he said, Japanese women, 
real women, they have not forgotten, 
bowing and smiling 
closing the wounds men have made; 
but American women will kill you like they 
tear a lampshade, 
American women care less than a dime, 
theyve gotten derailed, 
theyre too nervous to make good: 
always scowling, belly-aching, 
disillusioned, overwrought; 
but oh lord, say, the Japanese women: 
there was this one, 
I came home and the door was locked 
and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife 
and chased me under the bed 
and her sister came 
and they kept me under that bed for two days, 
and when I came out, at last, 
she didnt mention attorneys, 
just said, you will never wrong me again, 
and I didnt; but she died on me, 
and dying, said, you can wrong me now, 
and I did, 
but you know, I felt worse then 
than when she was living; ... {excerpt}

----------


## LitNetIsGreat

> I have not read any, Neely, though I have been meaning to for some time. Any particular recommendations?


I have read _Post Office_, _Factotum_ and _Women_, of these I prefer _Factotum_, then _Post Office_, although _Post Office_ is perhaps technically a little better written of the three.

_Post Office_ is more or less centred around autobiography, or at least it draws heavily from his days working in the post office, I would certainly recommend this as a great place to start. In _Factotum_ Bukowski's alter ego Chinaski, floats from meaningless job to job, as he struggles to make it as a writer, with some hilarious observations. _Women_ for me is too tiresome and boastful of his obviously mostly imaginary conquests with women.

What does seem a little odd is that mostly in his prose he almost degrades himself, he is happy with the label of "bum" or "alcoholic" but in his verse he seems to strike himself as a great writer.

Extracts from Factotum:

After losing several typewriters to pawnbrokers I simply gave up the idea owning one. I printed out my stories by hand and sent them out that way. I hand-printed them with a pen. I got to be a very fast hand-printer. It got so that I could hand-print faster than I could write. I wrote three or four short stories a week. I kept things in the mail. I imagined the editors of _The Atlantic Monthly_and _Harper's_ saying: "Hey, here's another one of those things by that nut..."

I was finally hired on at an auto parts warehouse. It was on Flower Street, down around Eleventh Street. They sold retail out the front and also wholesaled to ther distributors and shops. I had to demean myself to get that one - I told them that I liked to think of my job as a second home. That pleased them.

I arrived in New Orleans in the rain at 5 o'clock in the morning. I sat around in the bus station for a while but the people depressed me so I took my suitcase and went out in the rain and began walking. I didn't know where the rooming houses were, where the poor section was. 

I had a cardboard suitcase that was falling apart. It had once been black but the black caoting had peeled off and yellow cardboard was exposed. I had tried to solve that by putting black shoe polish over the exposed cardboard. As I walked along in the rain the shoe polish on the suitcase ran and unwittingly I rubbed black streaks on both legs of my pants as I switched the suitcase from hand to hand.

Well it was a new town. Maybe I'd get lucky.

 The hours at the dog biscuit factory were from 4:30 p.m. to 1 a.m.

I was given a dirty white apron and heavy canvas gloves. The gloves were burned and had holes in them. I could see my fingers peeking through. I was given instructions by a toothless elf with a fim over his left eye; the film was white and green with spirdery blue lines.

He had been on the job for nineteen years.

[...] I worked for several weeks. I came in drunk each night. It didn't matter; I had the job nobody wanted. After an hour at the oven I was sober. My hands were blistered and burned. Each day I sat aching in my room pricking my blisters with pins I first sterilized with matches.

One night I was drunker than usual. I refused to punch in "This is it," I told them.
The Elf was in trauma. "How will we make it, Chianski?"
"Ah."
"Give us one more night!"
I got his head in the crook of my arm, squeezed; his ears turned pink. "Little bastard," I said. Then I let him go.

----------


## Janine

Humm.....I could have sworn awhile back there was another thread on this poet or am I thinking of someone else. I really don't know his work so I can't judge.

----------


## Virgil

> Humm.....I could have sworn awhile back there was another thread on this poet or am I thinking of someone else. I really don't know his work so I can't judge.


There was and that may not have been the first either. This seems to come up once a year.  :FRlol:

----------


## Cellar Door

Thanks Neely! You've given me a great starting point! I will start with your recommendation.

----------


## Jozanny

> The dealers became enamored when they discovered that such art could be rapidly mass-produced and marketed to an audience raised on popular culture and suspicious of the intellectual demands of "high art"... thus guaranteeing astronomical sales figures. In this manner Pop Art dragged painting into the world of mass-media, mass production, public relations and marketing, and fashion. The artist became a designer... and essentially nothing but a name... like Gucci or Prada... Figures like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst follow in this "tradition"... in complete opposition to those artists who actually create their own works and reject the notion that the highest goal of the artist is celebrity... Warhol's 15 minutes.


Mmm, again luke, I have to raise something of an objection, even if Warhol himself was handicapped by a mild form of autism, which wasn't recognized when he was an ailing child, to me his Marilyn reproductions do have a powerful iconic irony, and my sense is the critical winds have been shifting on him since the days in the 80's when he paraded his personality cult in the streets for the critical elite to despise :Tongue: . Not that I can embrace the tasty cake whole-heartedly, but it is in this sense that Bukowski plays in the poetry pond much as Warhol plays in the illustrator's pond and holds it up.

My unease is that critics dismiss both men without asking why they have the fan and audience base which they do.

I have been something of a mild name dropper on the board :Blush: , but even though I did not know Charles personally, I knew his publishers who included my work with his--and it is this looking at him as a small press marketing force who breaks the mainstream that has earned some of my regard. I have some of his last-produced chapbooks for one of my editors, and I should sell them, now that I think about it. As a poet they made me angry at first, but they also mock the force of celebrity itself. Denigration for its own sake may have a limited merit, but if it makes Bukowski a doorway writer for readers who think they hate literary arts otherwise, then what Bukowski achieves by drawing them in isn't necessarily a bad thing.

----------


## jikan myshkin

the only of his that i have read gives me the impression of a man with nothing to say except to swear and be angry

----------


## LitNetIsGreat

> Thanks Neely! You've given me a great starting point! I will start with your recommendation.


That's ok glad to help.

----------


## JBI

Honestly though, he is like all that is bad in Irving Layton's verses without any of the good ones (judging on 3 volumes). Layton at least destroys his put-on personality in at least a few of his poems, Bukowski doesn't seem to ever do it.

----------


## Cellar Door

JBI- Though I am not overly familiar with Layton, I think I know what you are saying; I think Bukowski doesn't do it because he is trying to appeal to Mr. Every Man. It is unlike most humans that I know to admit fault, let alone destroy a personality. I feel as though he uses that front which a lot of you forum readers find so offensive and terrible to try and create one character- a "poetic person", if you will, in order to speak his messages. In other words, I think Bukowski did it with a purpose; I never met the man, nor have I researched this. This is just what I surmise from the tone of the poems as a whole to me.

----------


## JBI

I disagree - I think he uses that front because he knows it is controversial. He is trying to play off some macho man's man fantasy that seems to captivate the want-to-be man's men macho-nobodies, no offense meant - his verses never alter, and he might as well have written one poem as 1000 poems because they all have the same voice, and say the same thing. When reading the first example you posted I thought the poem, that is, that exact poem, sounded familar, yet when I reread it, I figured out why - He used that same image of the knife in another poem of his which I had read, posted by Virgil I believe, a while back. That sense of recycling I find is what makes him so appealing -

Those who want the same junk only want more of the same junk - no body walks into MacDonalds wanting a steak, let alone anything worth eating. Likewise the readers of Bukowski go in with the same assumption, and, ironically, are never displeased at what they find.

He is a culture icon yes, but not a poet icon - his words and ideas aren't knew, they are just collected into countless volumes of repetition, spewing out what we expect it to.

This is merely my own critique, keep in mind, feel free to disagree at any period, yet I cannot bring myself to think higher of a poet who recycles so obviously.

----------


## LitNetIsGreat

What is strange is that this persona character seems very different from his poetry to that in his novels. I have not read many of his poems but from what I can gather he sort of builds himself up as a tough, uncompromising, underground writer, I may be wrong here though. In his novels he tends to pull himself down and even degrade himself completely, at times at least. Of course it goes without saying that you shouldn’t mix the narrator with the author, but his work is deeply autobiographical that at times it is hard not to.

----------


## mortalterror

> He is trying to play off some macho man's man fantasy that seems to captivate the want-to-be man's men macho-nobodies, no offense meant


I disagree. I think his persona is a breathe of fresh air and a necessary counter-weight to the dominant literary culture. His authorial voice is more authentic and down to earth than the effeminate sentimental abstractions commonly pressed upon the public as poetic language. He shows by his writing that you don't have to be a limp wristed nancy boy, no disrespect, who's bad at sports, no disrespect, and drives a Prius, no disrespect, to write verse, no disrespect.

----------


## JBI

> I disagree. I think his persona is a breathe of fresh air and a necessary counter-weight to the dominant literary culture. His authorial voice is more authentic and down to earth than the effeminate sentimental abstractions commonly pressed upon the public as poetic language. He shows by his writing that you don't have to be a limp wristed nancy boy, no disrespect, who's bad at sports, no disrespect, and drives a Prius, no disrespect, to write verse, no disrespect.


Counter-weight what? All he does is write the same poem, and the assumed voice can hardly be his own. The reason why he works is because people think "hey this is easy, this is poetry, This guy is macho and cool, there is no underlying layer, I'm having fun." There's nothing profound, nothing witty, nothing creative about his work. Sure, you can argue it goes against the concept of poetic voice, but simply because it is not a poetic voice. It is an opportunist voice which mocks its readers. Take the above poem of the Japanese Woman, Bukowski is playing off of our inherent racism, and not going against it, or at best, beyond it, but is merely feeding it with more stereotyping.

----------


## Janine

> There was and that may not have been the first either. This seems to come up once a year.


Thought so :Wink: .

----------


## Jordon

Charles Bukowski is FANTASTIC, one of my favourite writers of the 20th century. The great thing about him is that he goes to great lengths to name his influences throughout his work, so you can start with Buk, and if you like what you see, give some of his recommendations a try. Through the work of Charles Bukowski I was introduced to Celine, Hamsun, Fante, Robinson Jeffers, Sherwood Anderson and more.

If you can only pick up one Bukowski offering, I would suggest his short story complitation "South of no North". It's as good a starting place as any. If you're looking for poetry, I'd consider starting with "Love is a Dog from Hell", although my personal favourite is (the grossly underrated) "Play the Piano Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit" (Extra points for one of the sweetest titles of all time!)

----------


## jikan myshkin

it is good when a writer says who has shaped him, it's a door that is opened so you have to respect him for that regardless of your thoughts of his writing, (i'm nor personaly a fan)

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## stlukesguild

On the other hand, too much name-dropping just becomes a pathetic attempt at raising one's own status by alluding to another's.

----------


## jikan myshkin

of course it has to be done correctly and they need to have something to say fior you to be interested in what they have to say like in dostoyevsky, kerouac, poe, dylan, cohen, curtis, ballard, tolstoy, blake...

----------


## imthefoolonthehill

I really enjoy Bukowski's stuff. One of them, in particular stuck with me. It was his poem, "I want a mermaid"

One of my favorite poems is the love song of j. alfred prufrock, and that poem's mermaid ending now only seems complete with Bukowski's mermaid addition.

----------


## Vicarious

He's such an *******, I love him.

This one is my favourite 

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

----------


## honeyleroy101

How is your heart?
during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment-
I wouldn't call it
happiness-
it was more of an inner
balance 
that settled for
whatever was occuring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships 
went wrong
with the 
girls. 
it helped 
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the 
hospitals. 
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade-
this was the craziest kind of
contentment

and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a 
cracked mirror- 
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all. 
what matters most is
how well you 
walk through the
fire. 



i love how Bukoski doesn't try to make everything sound poetic and pretentious, he uses brutal language which i absolutely love.

----------


## stlukesguild

i love how Bukoski doesn't try to make everything sound poetic...

Yep. Not much of anything actually poetic in him at all.

and pretentious...

The only pretense being that this schlock... rehashed from the Beats and "confessional" poets... is actually poetry at all.

he uses brutal language which i absolutely love.

I'm not seeing the "brutality". Jacques Villon, John Wilmot, Jonathan Swift, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, even Whitman can be every bit as "earthy"... even "ugly"... and yet ever far more poetic for ultimately they recognize shock value only goes so far.

----------


## Lynne50

> i love how Bukoski doesn't try to make everything sound poetic...
> 
> Yep. Not much of anything actually poetic in him at all.
> 
> and pretentious...
> 
> The only pretense being that this schlock... rehashed from the Beats and "confessional" poets... is actually poetry at all.
> 
> he uses brutal language which i absolutely love.
> ...


 Yikes! Are we to assume that you don't have any favorite 20th century contemporary poets? Isn't the purpose of poetry to evoke a strong emotion? I think that Charles Bukowski does that quite nicely. His subject matter is very personal, as it should be. Being obscure in a poem, does not make it a good one. I don't think that Bukowski wrote poems to shock us, instead he just wrote to let us in to a little of his world.

----------


## stlukesguild

Yikes! Are we to assume that you don't have any favorite 20th century contemporary poets? 

And that would be a rather flawed assumption. Among my favorite 20th century poets I would count T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Ranier Maria Rilke, Federico Garcia Lorca, Fernando Pessoa, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak, Paul Celan, Paul Valery, Paul Eluard, Yves Bonnefoy, Anthony Hecht, Pablo Neruda, Rafael Alberti, Cesar Vallejo, J.L. Borges, Octavio Paz, Miguel Hernandez, W.B. Yeats, Hart Crane, Dylan Thomas, W.S. Merwin, Louis MacNiece, Richard Howard, Charles Simic, Anne Carson, Seamus Heaney, Ceslaw Milosz, Geoffrey Hill, etc... I am more than comfortable with modern poetry... modern literature... and modern art in general.

Isn't the purpose of poetry to evoke a strong emotion?

Is that truly the purpose of art... or just poetry? So the guy who cut me off on the highway today leading to my giving him the finger and yelling out a few choice words is actually an artist?... a poet? 

I think that Charles Bukowski does that quite nicely. 

So does a teenage girl's diary... but I don't want to read such self-indulgent crap.

His subject matter is very personal, as it should be. 

Again... according to whom? There is art that is deeply personal and there is art that maintains a degree of distance or is artifully theatrical and public and there is no guarantee that one strategy shall lead to better art than another.

Being obscure in a poem, does not make it a good one. 

No... but neither does writing like an illiterate.

I don't think that Bukowski wrote poems to shock us, instead he just wrote to let us in to a little of his world.

I largely agree with JBI. Bukowski writes in a manner that strikes me as a lame attempt at perpetuating some macho-man fantasy that he knows will appeal to a certain audience base. After a while they strike you as being as ridiculous as the 55-year-old balding and overweight biker with a pony tail still trying to come off as a real bada$$.

----------


## quasimodo1

Let me support Stlukesguild in this...completely...I've never seen anything poetic or worthwhile in anything he wrote. He thought so highly of it, I believed he took a header off a high bridge. q1

----------


## Virgil

If you look through this thread, you will see that not only do I not think Bukowski is a good poet, I think he out right stinks as a poet. Count me in with St Lukes too.

----------


## imthefoolonthehill

Bukowski's great crime is that he is accessible. 

Most people who like poetry that i've met have a strange superiority complex about it. Then someone comes along, gives the finger to all the crap they read that makes them feel intellectual. 

Bukowski didn't give a darn what other people thought. He wrote his heart, and out of it came some beautiful poetry that doesn't require a certain sense of elitism to understand.

I'm not accusing the bukowski critics here of being snobbish etc etc... but A. is this really the place for this weird, post-humous put down?  

B. Bukowski is one of the most imitated modern poets. The people who call his stuff crap remind me of the people who say that a monkey could have made a better painting than picaso.

----------


## Virgil

> Bukowski's great crime is that he is accessible. 
> 
> Most people who like poetry that i've met have a strange superiority complex about it. Then someone comes along, gives the finger to all the crap they read that makes them feel intellectual. 
> 
> Bukowski didn't give a darn what other people thought. He wrote his heart, and out of it came some beautiful poetry that doesn't require a certain sense of elitism to understand.
> 
> I'm not accusing the bukowski critics here of being snobbish etc etc... but A. is this really the place for this weird, post-humous put down? 
> 
> B. Bukowski is one of the most imitated modern poets. The people who call his stuff crap remind me of the people who say that a monkey could have made a better painting than picaso.


What can I tell you. Some people know poetry, some poeple don't.

----------


## imthefoolonthehill

poetry, as with any art, evolves over time. Bukowski is a widely recognized, critically acclaimed poet. This is what poetry looks like now. It has transcended rhyme and meter. It is condensed.

----------


## stlukesguild

Bukowski's great crime is that he is accessible.-

No... there are plenty of accessible poets. Bukowski's "crime" is that he's just a bad poet.

Most people who like poetry that i've met have a strange superiority complex about it. Then someone comes along, gives the finger to all the crap they read that makes them feel intellectual. Bukowski didn't give a darn what other people thought. He wrote his heart, and out of it came some beautiful poetry that doesn't require a certain sense of elitism to understand.

Actually Bukowski didn't give the finger to all the "crap" those of us who love poetry read. Anton Chekhov, Franz Kafka, Knut Hamsun, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Robinson Jeffers, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, D. H. Lawrence, and e e cummings are among those whom he declares as being influences. Writing "from the heart"? All well and good... but poetry is an art and it involves the intellect as well. Those who imagine him to be a great iconoclast usually don't know enough about poetry to recognize that A. He's not that innovative and B. He's not that good. Does that make me an "elitist"? Very well, then I'm an elitist. Of course you might wish to learn now that the whole of art is elitist. 

I'm not accusing the bukowski critics here of being snobbish etc etc... but A. is this really the place for this weird, post-humous put down?

Where exactly should we offer an opinion of Bukowski's work that is not adulatory. I didn't know this thread was limited to worship of the poet only... and what exactly is weird about offering an opinion of his work as a poet? 

B. Bukowski is one of the most imitated modern poets. The people who call his stuff crap remind me of the people who say that a monkey could have made a better painting than picaso.

I doubt there is a single critic in his or her right mind who would think to place Bukowski anywhere in the realm of Picasso. The analogy is weak at best because most of those who dismiss Picasso in such an off-hand way dismiss the vast majority of Modern art... and yet I think that I and others who have responded here have made it more than clear that we are quite appreciative of Modern poetry... we simply find that Bukowski rather bad as a poet... Modern or otherwise. By the way... who are all those poets of any merit who have been so influenced by Bukowski?

poetry, as with any art, evolves over time.

Oh... I didn't know that. I thought Anne Carson was the same as Donne.  :Rolleyes: 

Bukowski is a widely recognized, critically acclaimed poet. 

By whom. He is largely ignored in most critical circles, rarely mentioned by any major contemporary poets, and seldom shows up it the literary surveys or curriculum. We're not talkin' T.S. Eliot here... not even Allen Ginsberg.

This is what poetry looks like now. 

If you believe that you don't know the first thing about contemporary poetry. There are contemporary poets who follow strict classical forms of structure, rhyme, and meter... and there are contemporary poets who blur the very boundaries between poetry and prose and narrative fiction and even drama. 

It has transcended rhyme and meter.

Blank verse has been around for quite some time now. Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson, etc... all regularly employed blank verse. Whitman employed free verse... abandoning not merely rhyme but set meter. More than a few Modern poets continued in Whitman's wake. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Malarme all employed the form as early as the late 19th century and Anne Carson continues to employ such today.

You are making some large and largely incorrect assumptions when you assume that those of us who dismiss Bukowski do so because we don't like modern poetry, only like difficult and esoteric work, and don't have any idea about how poetry has evolved over the years.

----------


## Jozanny

What Bukowski does is to belittle the genre of poetry, and by inference, the persona of the poetic narrative voice; this is what the reverence is all about, whether his admirers admit it or not.

I have published with the man, and published with his editors who chased after his cult like a witch in heat for the money. Charles was never about being a poet, good or bad. He was about nearly being the anti-Beat Beatnik, and it was only on rare occasions that I enjoyed the joke--and his little poem about his sex object Jo, who had _fleas_, (his italics), wasn't one of those times his irony engaged me. I'm a better poet than he was, and some of his last editors who bought me in on the game knew it.

----------


## imthefoolonthehill

yawn.

----------


## stlukesguild

yawn.

That, unfortunately, is the response I feel to most of Bukowski's work. Not outrage. Certainly not dismay at something incomprehensibly new. No... just boredom. SOS. Same Old S... :Biggrin:

----------


## Jozanny

> yawn.


Your response probably signifies why you enjoy Bukowski's oeuvre, and I don't care, as I have richer and better tastes, but even within the literary genre, con artists, fool, will take your money, laughing on the way to the bank, and that is all the cult of Bukowski is, a marketing ploy, the chip on the shoulder snigger supporting his family and his publishers, but mindless acolytes don't often stop to think about why they pay for pop culture vapid pap.

----------


## Scheherazade

*-
Please do not personalise your arguments.
-*

----------


## Virgil

> Your response probably signifies why you enjoy Bukowski's oeuvre, and I don't care, as I have richer and better tastes, but even within the literary genre, con artists, fool, will take your money, laughing on the way to the bank, and that is all the cult of Bukowski is, a marketing ploy, the chip on the shoulder snigger supporting his family and his publishers, but mindless acolytes don't often stop to think about why they pay for pop culture vapid pap.


Jozy, check out what you wrote on page five of this thread months ago and my response a few posts down. I think it's posts #66 and 74.

----------


## Jozanny

That was my easier version Virgil--or in other words, the kindest thing I could say, but I sort of hope for something better than insolence in defense of insolence. I did not, and do not, know the Beat movement originals _well_. I was coming of age on the tail end of their influence. Ginsberg, who I also published with, had to "raise his voice" to paraphrase one of my professors, but Allen had something to _say_; Dr. Creeley, who I met, and nearly swooned over, but found me funny, has something to say, and if you're careful in listening, he engages Romanticism and the Renaissance--granted, he is not to everyone's taste, and can falter, like anyone, but I can teach Bob Creeley.

Charles, in the best of all possible worlds, apes himself, and by extension, the essence of 60's radicalism, without saying much of anything. 

I was in this bubble, and knew those who chased his tail. The youthful can take it or leave it, or yawn, for that matter.

----------


## Virgil

> That was my easier version Virgil--or in other words, the kindest thing I could say, but I sort of hope for something better than insolence in defense of insolence. I did not, and do not, know the Beat movement originals _well_. I was coming of age on the tail end of their influence. Ginsberg, who I also published with, had to "raise his voice" to paraphrase one of my professors, but Allen had something to _say_; Dr. Creeley, who I met, and nearly swooned over, but found me funny, has something to say, and if you're careful in listening, he engages Romanticism and the Renaissance--granted, he is not to everyone's taste, and can falter, like anyone, but I can teach Bob Creeley.
> 
> Charles, in the best of all possible worlds, apes himself, and by extension, the essence of 60's radicalism, without saying much of anything. 
> 
> I was in this bubble, and knew those who chased his tail. The youthful can take it or leave it, or yawn, for that matter.


I liked that language you used in that post.  :FRlol:

----------


## Lynne50

[
Of course you might wish to learn now that the whole of art is elitist. 

Can you please elaborate on your statement..The whole of art is elitist? I'm not sure what you mean entirely. Also, I would like to know if you have ever read any Billy Collins. He was the Poet Laureate of the US 2001-2002 and then reappointed the next year. I'm almost afraid to say that I like him as a poet, too, since I was shot down with C. Bukowski. earlier.

----------


## Virgil

> [
>  Of course you might wish to learn now that the whole of art is elitist. 
> 
> Can you please elaborate on your statement..The whole of art is elitist? I'm not sure what you mean entirely. Also, I would like to know if you have ever read any Billy Collins. He was the Poet Laureate of the US 2001-2002 and then reappointed the next year. I'm almost afraid to say that I like him as a poet, too, since I was shot down with C. Bukowski. earlier.


I'm not sure if you're referring to me Lynne. Did I use the word elitist? There is a line between discriminating good from bad poetry that is not elitist. Look, if I were to look at some of the personal poems here on lit net I think I could distinguish someone who was a beginner or not up to par and someone who excells. I think I can descriminate between a poet who uses metaphors, similies, original imagery, rhythm, rimes and alliteration to connect language and ideas, and careful structure all to show complex relationships. Bukowski has almost none of that, and when he attempts to, it's crude and sophomoric. If that is elitist, then I guess I'm elitist. I consider it having good judgement based on a lifetime of experiencing poetry. 

Yes, I've read some Billy Collins and though I can't recall any particular poem I do remember having a positive reaction to his work.

----------


## Lynne50

In my last post, I wasn't clear as to who I quoted. It was stlukesguild. My questions were directed toward stlukesguild, but I would welcome any feedback from anyone who's interested. Thanks in advance.

----------


## stlukesguild

One of T.S. Eliot's most important essays is the one entitled _Tradition and the Individual Talent_ found in his seminal work of literary criticism, _The Sacred Wood._ In this Eliot expounds upon the notion that every writer (and by extension every artist) engages in a struggle or competition... comparison with the past... with the whole of his or her art:

Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; *the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.* This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity. 

*No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.* I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; *what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered*; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities... 

Art certainly evolves and artist must and do speak to and of their own era... but survival of an artist... of an art work... is based upon judgment in which an artist or art work is placed in comparison... in contrast... with the whole of the tradition in which one works. 50 years ago Jackson Pollack appeared earth-shattering in his innovation... a towering figure in Modern painting. Today... as a mere half-century has passed he is seen more within the whole of the tradition of Western painting. He remains an important figure... but no longer earth-shattering. We clearly see Monet's late waterlilies as a precursor along with JMW Turner. We also see who follows in his footsteps... and who rejected or ignored him. 

All art is Elitist in that it is competitive. Artist's struggle to gain attention and artists and art must strive to maintain whatever fleeting vestige of immortality. Artists are elitist in response to their own work (as well as that of others) recognizing greater or lesser successes... or failures... continuing to strive to surpass themselves. We, as art lovers, are elitist in that we continually make value decisions. We must make such decisions for we recognize that Mallarme's famous quote _"The flesh is sad, Alas! and I have read all the books..."_ was but hyperbole. The flesh is indeed sad in that we all have but a limited time here in which to spend doing what we love... including reading. As such we must make decisions... value judgments... based upon our experience. We must... and we do... we decide one writer is better than another... that our time would be far better spent in reading this poet than that. We also come to recognize that what we like or what we love are not immediately one and the same with what is good or great. There is no denying James Joyce' importance... and yet I will admit to a love/hate relationship with his works. Picasso is almost universally recognized as the single most important artist of the 20th century... probably since Rembrandt... if not Michelangleo... yet I will admit to a preference for Matisse, Bonnard, Beckmann, and Klee. But I would not think to suggest that Klee was Picasso's equal... let alone better. 

Of course Walter Pater says it all better than I:

*Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, — for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?*

*To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits:* for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike. *While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colours, and curious odours, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening.* With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy...

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of the _Confessions_, where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. An undefinable taint of death had clung always about him, and now in early manhood he believed himself smitten by mortal disease. He asked himself how he might make as much as possible of the interval that remained; and he was not biased by anything in his previous life when he decided that it must be by intellectual excitement, which he found just then in the clear, fresh writings of Voltaire. Well! we are all _condamnés_, as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve — _les hommes sont tous condamnés mort avec des sursis indéfinis_: *we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend this interval in listlessness, some in high passions, the wisest, at least among "the children of this world," in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.* Great passions may give us this quickened sense of life, ecstasy and sorrow of love, the various forms of enthusiastic activity, disinterested or otherwise, which come naturally to many of us. Only be sure it is passion — that it does yield you this fruit of a quickened, multiplied consciousness. Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake.

----------


## Jozanny

Yes, but luke, despite my fly swatter, let me push back a little against Eliot's unipolar thesis: No art can embrace all traditions, and I think Rothko's canvases which ask the observer to think about the enormity of infinity serve as a primary example of this. He isn't embracing abstract expressionism with those solid colors sometimes in perfect halves.

You need tradition, however, to get the full impact of what he is doing with those black and green and orange rectangles.

One can be aware of tradition in reading Charles too, but it only makes Charles himself sound the worse for wear, and again, as I tried to say before, what his loyalists probably admire is his absurdist reductionism of the genre. lyn lifshin, who is a generation ahead of Charles, practices a similar type of reductionism through her line breaks, but her redeeming value, possibly, is she is a better poetic satirist. I wrote to her once in a less than praiseworthy attitude and sent her my book--so this may be damning praise--but she at least recognizes that even a caustic, sardonic voice needs a poetic cadence.

As quasi told me today, bad chopped up prose is just that, bad chopped up prose. I've seen no one in this thread make a reasoned defense for Bukowski's poetic strength. Only quasi himself came closest to digging that up, and I did not agree with the defender he cited. Charles isn't modernist, post-modernist, or even a real Beat, he's just a narrative voice which relishes devaluation.

----------


## stlukesguild

...let me push back a little against Eliot's unipolar thesis: No art can embrace all traditions, and I think Rothko's canvases which ask the observer to think about the enormity of infinity serve as a primary example of this. He isn't embracing abstract expressionism with those solid colors sometimes in perfect halves.

You need tradition, however, to get the full impact of what he is doing with those black and green and orange rectangles.

Of course no artist can embrace the whole of the tradition... even less so than the mere art-lover who does not have as much at stake. Rothko certainly was not embracing the "tradition" of Abstract Expressionism as he was one of the central figures inventing that very tradition. He echoes Pollack's "field painting" composition... but not his gestural mark-making that owe to Rubens, Van Gogh, Soutine, and Asian calligraphy. Rothko is more rooted in the atmospheric tradition of the sublime landscape:

...Ralph Blakelock:





...John Atkinson Grimshaw:



...Caspar David Friederich:



...to say nothing of the touch and color of Bonnard:



...are clear precursors and influences upon Rothko:





Rothko was of his time... but he was also rooted in the past and whether his work last or not will depend upon how well he holds up in comparison... in contrast within this tradition. Personally... I find him an especially powerful and meditative artist... one that must be experienced in person.

One can be aware of tradition in reading Charles too, but it only makes Charles himself sound the worse for wear...

That... of course... has been my argument. He pales before Ginsberg and the best of the confessional poets (to whom he is deeply indebted)... to say nothing of Whitman or Baudelaire or Villon or many others with whom he shares certain elements.

...she at least recognizes that even a caustic, sardonic voice needs a poetic cadence.

Of course... and I recognize the problem in my own discipline. There are any number of artists... even older artists who no longer have inexperience to blame... who have a dual fear of "beauty" (and I do not limit this to cute babies, flowers, and pretty girls) and embrace ugliness believing that it bears honesty and a earthy truth. It's the same sort of Romanticism that led to the embrace of the "other"... the African or the Arab or the Native American, or the mentally ill, or the child with the notion that these were all far more in touch with feelings and what is truly important. Such Romanticism naively underestimates the sophistication of the traditions of others... and overstates the merits of the untutored artist. Yes, a child's art and the art of the schizophrenic may be closer to real feelings... but art is not reality. Art transforms reality. Again I think of our earlier discussion of "honesty" in art and Mortalterror's pointing out of Oscar Wilde's aphorism that all bad art is completely sincere. But then again... I even doubt Bukowski's sincerity. It seems too much about posturing to me.

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## Jozanny

I do not have your training luke, of course, and I was taught to be wary of digital reproduction online, but I think I could engage with Blakelock. I have never seen horizon interpreted with such magnitude. It seems to come through even in an online image. I have never been to Moma, or its like, and Philadelphia is just stodgy, even when it brings in a crowd, as when I saw Chagall there.

I suppose I've been too hard in dismissing Buke altogether, but I have yet to hear any of his advocates post what amounts to an intelligent appreciation of his work, and I have soured, myself, on being a reluctant apologist for a cheap nihilist when my work itself has more integrity.

I may never equal my master, as his simplicity is more complex than my convolutionist imagery is accessible, but there is more authenticity in one of my stanzas than in an entire Buke collection; hence, I cast him off!

No more Bukowski arguments from this poet.

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## slopeadope

I bumped into this and thought you all might be interested:

"Composer/arranger Nicholas Urie is back! In his new CD "My Garden," Urie honors Charles Bukowski's postmodern American poetry by wedding it to some of the most intriguing, scintillating and innovative big band music in the contemporary jazz landscape.

The CD features Jeremy Udden, soprano saxophone; Douglas Yates, alto and clarinet; Kenny Pexton, tenor; and Brian Landrus, bass clarinet; Albert Leusink, Ben Holmes, and John Carlson on trumpets; trombonists Alan Ferber and Max Seigel; Frank Carlberg, piano; Michael Sarin, drums, John Hebert on the contrabass; and vocals by Christine Correa.

Bukowski is best known for his "fratboyesque" musings on love and life that have branded him as a kind of chauvinistic literary bad boy. The poems in this cycle highlight a more personal and less veiled side of a very complicated and diverse figure in American literature. These works are more introspective and touch on the author's feelings of abandonment, depression, isolation and insecurities in the world as both a man and a writer.
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Urie's debut CD "Excerpts from an Online Dating Service" earned wide acclaim:

"Urie does not simply blow off the dust of the large jazz ensemble, he sandblasts it off with Uranium." Ø C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz. 

"Remember his name - judging by the music and scope of Excerpts From An Online Dating Service, Nicholas Urie has a great future." Ø Richard Kamins, Hartford Courant.

"If Kurt Weill had lived in the internet age, he may well have conjured something like composer Nicholas Urie's "Exerpts from An Online Dating Service." - DownBeat."

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