Discussion: Charles Bukowski

[wordsheff]

Ha, i hate to kick off a discussion by admitting I know very little about the man or his work, but tonight I did watch the first half of the documentary on him called "born into this," it was on TV. I really liked the poem with that line in it by the way...pretty spot on.

I'm just wondering if anyone would like to share any faves of his. It seems to me that it's his work, along with the beats, that is the most obviously influential still today.

So anyway, i couldn't finish the doc cause i really felt like i should know his work before i take in anything biographical.

For the sake of discussion I'll just add that I haven't made up my mind about him yet...do i like him or not. I'm not particularly fond of his style...but I've only read a few of his pieces so i guess hence the discussion.

I look forward to reading what you guys think of his work and the poems you put up. Here is the one I mentioned earlier, it's called Dinosauria, we:

Dinosauria, we

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

[poetinahat]

I look forward to this one. Nice choice, WS.

A while back, one of the Rate-A-Poem series involved a Bukowski poem; I fell afoul of the general discussion, because that piece did basically nothing for me. This one does.

I'll add it to the Table of Contents. Thanks.

[wordsheff]

Cool...I found another really great one last night...I'd heard it before but didn't realize I had it here in an anthology...

So You Want To Be A Writer

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

[Bret]

I've read a lot of Chuck. Sadly I'd never heard of him till a couple people said some of my poems sounded like Bukowski so I got a hold of some of his books-

What Matters Most is How you Walk Through the Fire

Rooming House Madrigals

The Days Run Away

Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain

Betting on the Muse

Bone Palace Ballet

I'm a fan. A crusty curmudgeonly but loveable guy. I read that he didn't consider himself one of the beats for many years. I'll try to recall where I read it. He was influential to those who followed the beat movement but I don't think he hung out with any of them.

[C.bronco]

I wish I'd seen that documentary. I never knew he was classified with the Beats, I just like his poetry. I wonder if he considered himself as a part of that group? He didn't seem like he was the part of any group, really.

There are some good websites about him. One is called Buk's Page, don't recall the actual web address.

"there is no other way.
and there never was."
... one of my favorite lines

[ddgryphon]

From Liner notes on a spoken word Album by Bukowski:

"My contribution", he wrote in 1974, "was to loosen and simplify poetry, to make it more human... I taught them that you can write a poem the same way you can write a letter, that a poem can even be entertaining, and that there need not be anything necessarily holy about it."

And while a enjoy much of his work, I fundamentally disagree with him on this point -- and probably with a number of folks here. To me, a poem is a Holy thing -- there is a sacredness to the images frozen in words that are more than a photograph. If a poem is no different than a letter, then there is nothing more important to a poem than there is to a letter, or a laundry list, or a list of chores.

Like I said, I've enjoyed and not enjoyed his work -- so it is with most.

But to me, it is fundamental that a poem is sacred, and speaks of mysteries and hard realities in a way other words can not.

So, my disagreement doesn't keep me from enjoying his work, but I do have problems with it on a philosophical level.

[wordsheff]

I don't think i meant to say he WAS a beat...i was just sayin in the general population he AND the beats are still very popular/influential.

i actually heard he despised them (tho i saw him read at ferlingetti's city lights on the doc).

WS

[DeniseK]

I didn't think I liked Bukowski upon first reading, but after a little investigating, I've done a complete reversal of that opinion. He told the truth about his life in all it's ugliness, there is even some beauty thrown in here and there. I like that about him, as obviously millions of others do!

[Silver King]

There's a movie, Barfly, based on a short story by Charles Bukowksi. The story is semiautobiographical and stars Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. For fans of Bukowski, the film is worth a look: dark and tragic, with plenty of serious binge drinking.

One line I've repeated on occasion when nosey people ask, "What do you do?"

"I drink."

When this statement is followed by a slug of whisky, it's a conversation stopper that works better than anything else I could say.

[DeniseK]

There's a movie, Barfly, based on a short story by Charles Bukowksi. The story is semiautobiographical and stars Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. For fans of Bukowski, the film is worth a look: dark and tragic, with plenty of serious binge drinking.

One line I've repeated on occasion when nosey people ask, "What do you do?"

"I drink."

When this statement is followed by a slug of whisky, it's a conversation stopper that works better than anything else I could say.

I LOVE Barfly! I didn't know it was based on a short story by Bukowski, now I like him even more. ;)

[gromhard]

Okay.
Some facts on Bukowski, he's like my god.
1. His full name is Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. He went by "Hank" and never "Charles" or "Chuck".
2. Barfly was not based on a short story. It was written BY Mr. Bukowski. He felt the actors tried really hard but he didn't like Rourke's performance. He makes a cameo as a barfly in the movie. He later wrote his fifth novel based on the experience called "Hollywood."
3. The new movie starring Matt Dylan named "Factotum" is based on Bukowski's second novel of the same name.
4. Bukowski began getting noticed for his poetry in the late 50s early 60s and he was from California so a lot of people put him with the beats but in truth he despised them. He despised Ginsberg for trunking "Howl" all across the world and trying to sell his poetry and friends as a movement. He didn't "hate" Bourroughs but both of those two guys were about 10-15 years older than Corso and Keruac and them, Both Buk and Burroughs had substance abuse issues (Buk: Booze/Burroughs Heroin) so everyone always wanted to put them together to see what they'd do...so once they got booked at the same reading, they sat in silence at a bar drinking and then Burroughs went to his room to spike up. Basically non-eventful.
The one beat that Buk is actually known to have gotten along with was Neal Cassidy who Buk wrote a beautiful description of in one of his short story collections, painted Neal as an aging man trying to live up to his image.
Buk WAS friends with Ferlinghetti though from City Lights.

So I'm OBVIOUSLY biased but I feel he was a master, not just ANY master but the best American(if not international) poet to ever live. He was a damn fine novelist too. Lived in Hollywood his whole life.

And if you look left you can see that Gromhard now lives in Hollywood. Gromhard was inspired by Bukowski to quit his job, move out to Hollywood and become a drunk. (everyone needs a role model)

If you want to read his best(imo) you'll pick up "Love is a Dog From Hell" my favorite Buk poem is in it, called The Escape:

the escape

escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she'll embrace you
then when she's satisfied
she'll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.

I escaped my black widow
because she had too many males
in her web
and while she was embracing one
and then the other and then
another
I worked free
got out
to where I was before.

she'll miss me-
not my love
but the taste of my blood,
but she's good, she'll find other
blood;
she's so good that I almost miss my death,
but not quite;
I've escaped. I view the other
webs.

[DeniseK]

thanks, Gromhard. I will be delving deeper into Mr. Bukowski's life and writing.

[Silver King]

Good stuff, Grom. Bukowski did write the screenplay, though I thought it was adapted, in part, from a short work which spans about the same time frame depicted in the film. I can't think of the name of the story, so I'm probably wrong.

The character, Henry Chinaski, is based loosely on Bukowski, and also appears in two novels that I know of, Ham on Rye and Post Office, as well as some of his poetry.

Say hello to Hollywood for me while you're out there. And try not to drink as much as Bukowski did when you're writing (message boards excluded).