Re: Charles Bukowski

 Will Dockery wrote:

"baloney" wrote

On Jul 24, 2:56 pm, Will Dockery wrote:
>

It probably goes without saying that Buk's one of my favorites, though
his name hasn't come up much lately (the last time was prbably when I
compared Chuck's "shock" style to Buk)... Dale Houstman gave me a very
memorable paperback book blurb quote when he wrote that I was "...a
better poet than Bukowski..." or something similar.
>

It doesn't surprise me that you'd like Buk and Houstman wouldn't.

Well, the common dislike of Bukowski here is pretty interesting, in
light of
the firestorm of reaction here recently to another "poet" who has much
more
in common with Buk than Vera or Pandora, the
chopped-up-confessional-prose-verse, the "fucken" plain speaking
language,
the /punch-line/ zinger at the end... Houstman, in a candid moment,
might
call Bukowski's poetry "shit", as he would others using the style... in
a
candid moment, or a confused one.

I like Buk in small doses; he's not my favorite, but there is a certain

appeal.
Well, like Blue's poem about Bukowski, and the flood of Buk-wannabes,
sometimes the navel-gazings laced with "fuckens" and all that are
interesting and amusing, and liven up a poetry reading since there's
usually
always a punk or two to jump up with that and scare the manager of the
joint
(I remember a few years ago when a host was forced by the managment to
unplug the mic of Joseph Garcia when he went on and on with a poem about
"fucking the wide vagina of the universe" or something like that in
cosmic,
sloppy detail... miss old Joe...) but my real favorites are the ones
(like
Houstman, Rimbaud, Ginsberg and... yeah, again, Kerouac) who also
include
the brilliant flashing chains of images with the gritty facts of passing
out
and waking up in the gutter... as I wrote a couple of weeks ago in a
post
that seems to have been passed over (since it got no responses):

I can't agree with that since Kerouac is a quite brilliant poet, in my

Opinion.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
More Doc on Bukowski and Kerouac ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>

really? how so? how was Kerouac a "brilliant" poet?

>
Doc's thoughts on the poetry of Jack Kerouac, below:
>

In my opinion he was.
His poems, even more than the other writings, were intended to be
flowing
blasts of image and thought, conciously modeled after the feeling evoked
by
a free jazz saxophonist, and that he made it work, most notably in his
masterpiece "Mexico City Blues" was pretty brilliant.
Here's an example from MCB (and an aside to Baloney, if you're reading
this,
[Which I don't know if you did or not]
I think you might see why I relate Dale Housman's poetry to Beat poems
such
as this, as well as the example of William Burroughs I gave earlier),
that
shows the flow of image on image in Kerouac's brilliant poetry:
----
230th Chorus
Love's multitudinous boneyard
of decay,
The spilled milk of heroes,
Destruction of silk kerchiefs
by dust storm,
Caress of heroes blindfolded to posts,
Murder victims admitted to this life,
Skeletons bartering fingers and joints.
-Jack Kerouac
----
That's it, my non-expert opinion on why Kerouac was a "brilliant" poet,
take
it or leave it.
In fact, how about you follow your own "rules" and explain for a few
paragraphs how Kerouac's poetry was /not/ "brilliant"?
Nope, you'll no doubt just jeer at "Will Dockery" and manage to avoid
anything else, am I right?
Here's Kerouac's "mission statement" on what his poetry was intended,
and
did, achieve:
"I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an
afternoon jam session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses; my ideas vary
and sometimes roll from chorus to chorus or from halfway through a
chorus to halfway into the next." -Jack Kerouac
And, sorry, pal, but here's an expert opinion cut-n-paste that supports
my
opinion that Kerouac's poetry is indeed "brilliant":
"Kerouac is being popularized as an icon of culture - my regret is that
sight of him as an artist will be lost.. We'll know his name and some
work
considered typical. But we'll miss one of the finest, brightest
sensoriums
that has graced verse with intelligence and intellect. [...] Kerouac is
best
known for his novel "On the Road", but his masterpiece is "Mexico City
Blues", a religious poem startling in its majesty and comedy and
gentleness
and vision. [...] Kerouac is known worldwide as a novelist. He is
sometimes
also known as the writer of haiku-type poems or intermediate-length
poems on
the subject of Rimbaud or Budhism. But Kerouac is little known as the
author
of several major poems which he considered to be blues works. These
books
include the unpublished Washington D.C. Blues, San Francisco Blues, and
Berkeley Blues. They range in style from Dos Passos-like descriptive
verse
to poetrylike journals. Outstanding in all modern poetry is the epic-
length
Mexico City Blues. [...] The rules of Mexico City Blues were that they
should be written on the pages of a pocket notebook such as Kerouac
nearly
always carried. Each page of the notebook would be a chorus. Eventually,
in
the developing structure of the poem, each line becomes a complete, and
whole, independent image. [...] A further rule of Mexico City Blues was
that
it must all be spontaneous - all a risk - a free, inspired, or
noninspired,
flowing statement, liberated from judgements about its value. It was
done
for itself - as an organism lives for itself." -Michael McClure
Urm, well, that's where I'm at, or hoping to /get to/.

In case you haven't noticed, Earl Nelson's work is highly
influenced by Buk.

This is the "Ghost of C Earl Nelson", who had a flurry of posts here a
week
or so ago? I read through some of that, and I guess you're right... as
far
as that sort of thing goes, I guess I prefer Chuck's "Perfect Angel"
or....
"Spectre".

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
Doc's thoughts on Charles Bukowski, in case any here have missed it
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^