Charles Bukowski

[Janine]

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

Thought so.

[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)

[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.

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.

[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.