Thanks Neely! You've given me a great starting point! I will start with your recommendation.
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Thanks Neely! You've given me a great starting point! I will start with your recommendation.
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:p. 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.Quote:
Originally Posted by stlukesguild
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.
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
That's ok glad to help.Quote:
Originally Posted by Cellar Door
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by JBI
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by mortalterror
Thought so;).Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgil
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!)
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)
On the other hand, too much name-dropping just becomes a pathetic attempt at raising one's own status by alluding to another's.
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...
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.
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
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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$$.
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
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
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.
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.
yawn.
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...:D
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by imthefoolonthehill
-
Please do not personalise your arguments.
-
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.
I liked that language you used in that post. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Jozanny
[
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lynne50
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.
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.
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.
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.