Re: Charles Bukowski "Bluebird" review

Will Dockery wrote:
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Another one from Bukowski, "Bluebird":
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https://youtu.be/lyMS4qJ8NXU

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Blech.

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Wow! It's a good thing I read "Bluebird" for myself. I might've formed
the wrong opinion of it.

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For continuity, the George Dance review of "Bluebird":

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George J. Dance wrote:

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On 2022-07-21 7:00 p.m., NancyGene wrote:

On Thursday, July 21, 2022 at 10:51:22 PM UTC, blackpo...@aol.com

wrote:

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https://youtu.be/lyMS4qJ8NXU

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It's really just a paragraph or two being read.

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No, it's not 'just" a prose paragraph. Just from Bukowski's reading, you
can tell he's reading a poem: you can hear the line breaks.
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That said, we don't like the last line ("But I don't weep, do you?").

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It reminds us of a former first lady's coat, which said "I don't really

care, do you?" although the Bukowski quote predates that.
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I don't know, but I'd bet it was her husband who said that. That's
always a problem in a poem (when a line or phrase unintentionally echoes
something more familiar, resulting in a mixed image), but it's probably
one that will go away: the Nixons have been consigned to the dustbin of
history, where they belong.
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Having the line end with "do you?" is a totally obvious choice and hurts
the poem.
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It may detract from the poem for some; it turns it from a purely

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introspective piece into a didactic or 'message' poem. But there's

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nothing wrong with didacticism per se. And I admire Bukowski for going
there.

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I think "Bluebird" was written as a spoken piece (from all that

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repetition); that Bukowski was considering his audience, whom he was

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writing for; and that his audience -- tough guys, hard workers and hard

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drinkers, rebels without a cause -- are the men most likely to have

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their own bluebird problem, and (for the same reason) most likely to

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suppress that knowledge. He cannot count on that sort of man (he knows,

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since he's been one himself) to just suddenly think, "Gee, he's not only

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talking about himself -- he's talking about a general truth about man,

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which might be true of me as well." Especially in a spoken reading,

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where he and his audience will have passed on to another poem a few

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moments later. For the poem to be most effective, he has to give his

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audience that thought explicitly.