Charles Bukowski

Righteous Jammer

Any fans around here?

catefrances

if i bet on humanity
i'd never cash a ticket.

Righteous Jammer

Yes!

catefrances

the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced,
and lest this be taken for wry sorrow,
drown the spider in wine

you are much more than simply dead:
i am a dish for your ashes,
i am a fist for your vanished air.

the most terrible thing about life
is finding it gone.

aoife

a poet wrote:

Any fans around here?

i read post office it was okay i thought

share

I look at this every day - I have it at my desk (I have two - the other is the eternal questioner by aleister crowley)

"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.

Ms. Haiku

Isn't EvilToasterElf a Bukowski fan? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else.

EvilToasterElf

Haven't really read him. But it's not because I don't like him.

I tend to avoid writers that I feel have attracted undue hero worship.

I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

catefrances

you'd have to wonder how anyone could hero worship bukowski. he was a drunken pig. but i like his writing.

Righteous Jammer

Yes he was a womenizer. Yes he was a drunk. But I loved his honesty. He didnt hold anything back.

EvilToasterElf

catefrances wrote:

you'd have to wonder how anyone could hero worship bukowski. he was a drunken pig. but i like his writing.

Well most of the good ones were both alcoholics and womanizers, that really does more to add him to the pantheon than reduce credibility, but at least in the little bit of the new york city scene I saw, people damn near worshipped him

catefrances

EvilToasterElf wrote:

Well most of the good ones were both alcoholics and womanizers, that really does more to add him to the pantheon than reduce credibility, but at least in the little bit of the new york city scene I saw, people damn near worshipped him

people are suckers and syncophants.

EvilToasterElf

catefrances wrote:

people are suckers and syncophants.

yeah, but that's why it's ok to be a womanizing alcoholic

catefrances

EvilToasterElf wrote:

yeah, but that's why it's ok to be a womanizing alcoholic

so in order to have people canonising me i have to drink more and become a whore. perfect . oh and get some talent.

EvilToasterElf

well all you'd really get is a legion of hipsters who'd bastardize everything you were writing about anyway

likepilateihaveadog

he had a great one about burning his nose in a bad cigarette lighting experience....

always stuck with me...




plus:
http://edisk.fandm.edu/william.montgomery/files/Yield/


maybe check out some of my prose....

orig_long red

the thing about Bukowski is that he never gave a shit. he didnt give a shit about fame and he sure as hell didnt give a shit about you or me. i have tremendous respect for him and he was one hell of a good fuckin writer. look for the poem Dinosauria, We.

catefrances

long red wrote:

the thing about Bukowski is that he never gave a shit. he didnt give a shit about fame and he sure as hell didnt give a shit about you or me. i have tremendous respect for him and he was one hell of a good fuckin writer. look for the poem Dinosauria, We.

well then charles and i have something in common, cause what people think of me is their problem, not mine. his poem 'so you want to be a writer?' is like my personal anthem.

catefrances

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 it.
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.

EvilToasterElf

catefrances wrote:

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 it.
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.

I disagree

In fact I strongly disagree

Writing is work, if you don't want to work, don't do it

If you don't like to think, don't do it

FinsburyParkCarrots

I go along with the Elf on this one. You have to work at writing and to know the material basis of literature as a means of production, if it is ever going to be readable or relevant to any culture or society. People who think writing comes best from some magical flash of inspiration are the ones consumed by self love. They think themselves to be sacred vessels for poetry. Anyone would think that the consciousness of an inspired poet determines our social being, our culture. No, it is the other way around. Our social being dictates our writing, and writing is work. It is a material means of production that reflects and subverts in its formal and thematic contradictions the material, lived ideologies of the people of its time, regardless of whether it is set in the past, present or future.

Even if a writer has no effective control over the many meanings of his or her work, they should know how the sound of a word suggests many nuances, associations and meanings to different readers. A word must be selected for maximum effect, to capture a mindset. If a writer relies too much on the gut, the heart and the mind are ignored where they might help the poetic process.

Never thought much of Buk. Too much polemic disguised as nonchalant reportage.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Having said that, I like poems that subvert form from within and play with time, consciousness and voice to produce stream of consciousness literature. Again, it takes skill to effect this successfully.

EvilToasterElf

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I go along with the Elf on this one. You have to work at writing and to know the material basis of literature as a means of production, if it is ever going to be readable or relevant to any culture or society. People who think writing comes best from some magical flash of inspiration are the ones consumed by self love. They think themselves to be sacred vessels for poetry. Anyone would think that the consciousness of an inspired poet determines our social being, our culture. No, it is the other way around. Our social being dictates our writing, and writing is work. It is a material means of production that reflects and subverts in its formal and thematic contradictions the material, lived ideologies of the people of its time, regardless of whether it is set in the past, present or future.

Even if a writer has no effective control over the many meanings of his or her work, they should know how the sound of a word suggests many nuances, associations and meanings to different readers. A word must be selected for maximum effect, to capture a mindset. If a writer relies too much on the gut, the heart and the mind are ignored where they might help the poetic process.

Never thought much of Buk. Too much polemic disguised as nonchalant reportage.

Class dismissed...

FinsburyParkCarrots

I'd never dismiss a class. I'd invite them all down the pub afterwards, and I'd buy.

Ms. Haiku

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I go along with the Elf on this one. You have to work at writing and to know the material basis of literature as a means of production, if it is ever going to be readable or relevant to any culture or society. People who think writing comes best from some magical flash of inspiration are the ones consumed by self love. They think themselves to be sacred vessels for poetry. Anyone would think that the consciousness of an inspired poet determines our social being, our culture. No, it is the other way around. Our social being dictates our writing, and writing is work. It is a material means of production that reflects and subverts in its formal and thematic contradictions the material, lived ideologies of the people of its time, regardless of whether it is set in the past, present or future.

Even if a writer has no effective control over the many meanings of his or her work, they should know how the sound of a word suggests many nuances, associations and meanings to different readers. A word must be selected for maximum effect, to capture a mindset. If a writer relies too much on the gut, the heart and the mind are ignored where they might help the poetic process.

Never thought much of Buk. Too much polemic disguised as nonchalant reportage.

It took a while to figure this out. Actually, it was something Elf wrote to the effect of - writers waiting for inspiration don't write - and it made sense. For many years I thought I was the vessel for inspiration because sometimes some feeling just flows from my gut to my brain and it's a draft of a poem that will make me proud . . .

now I'm a poet at work

catefrances

material basis of literature as a means of production.

what the hell does that mean?

FinsburyParkCarrots

From http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Marxist_criticism.html:

Marxist criticism:

Criticism based on the historical, economic, and sociological theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. According to Marxism, the consciousness of a given class at a given historical moment derives from modes of material production. The set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and ideas that constitutes the consciousness of this class forms an ideological superstructure, and this ideological superstructure is shaped and determined by the material infrastructure or economic base. Hence the term "historical materialism." Marxism assumes the ontological priority of matter over mind and sees mind as the product of historical forces. There is thus a dialectical relationship between the literary work and its sociohistorical background. Dialectical criticism focuses on the causal connections between the content or form of a literary work and the economic, class, social, or ideological factors that shape and determine that content or form. Bourgeois writers, for example, inevitably propagate a bourgeois ideology that seeks to universalize the status quo, to see it as natural rather than historical. The notion that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the class consciousness of the writer, the ideology of the work, and the sociohistorical background out of which it emerges is often labeled vulgar Marxism, even by Marxists themselves. Sophisticated Marxism, however, as Fredric Jameson points out, is concerned with "the influence of a given social raw material, not only on the content, but on the very form of the works themselves.... [The dialectical interaction of work and background], this fact of sheer interrelationship, is prior to any of the conceptual categories, such as causality, reflection, or analogy, subsequently evoked to explain it."

See also:

http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_marx.html

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-35144

http://www.lawrence.edu/dept/ENGLISH/COURSES/60A/marxist.html

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/marxism/marxism04.html

catefrances

fuckin' marx. it always comes down to class doesn't it.
and here's me thinking i just write what i know.

EvilToasterElf

If you try hard enough, it turns out that everything actually comes down to everything...class, sex, gender, location, environment, how much caffiene you've had, history of mental illness, how much sex you've had, what you've read, what you haven't read, fear of clowns, fondness for clowns, if you sit down long enough...it's all there

catefrances

i don't like clowns.

Ms. Haiku

EvilToasterElf wrote:

If you try hard enough, it turns out that everything actually comes down to everything...class, sex, gender, location, environment, how much caffiene you've had, history of mental illness, how much sex you've had, what you've read, what you haven't read, fear of clowns, fondness for clowns, if you sit down long enough...it's all there

However, although poetry should be anchored in the here and now, the best, while grounded in those subjects mentioned in your post, last generations, and can be felt by all as particular to their experiences. That's why a haiku is my favorite poetry. A moment of importance a couple hundred years ago, can become just as important with the AHA! feeling wrapped around the heart and breath.