What does Veeky Forums think about Bukowski?

What does Veeky Forums think about Bukowski?

>m-maybe if i drink alot and write about my ugly girlfriend ill be a famous writer too

...

300 lbs whore

ham on rye is great

What kind of women did he fuck?

He always went on about getting constantly laid but he was a drunk chubby below average looking guy. So was he nailing fat 2/10s?

yes, or at least I know he lost his virginity at 24 to an obese woman

In his unfamous days he was literally banging bearded ladies and amputees.

When he got famous he'd occasionally land 6s until they figured out how crazy he was.

A hack that insults writers who were on a completely different level than him. It's like a 2 buck chuck talking poorly of a Chateau Margaux.

women like your mom

dude take it back

>
Just linking my much better Bukowski thread

Yea, I know, he's a pretty good read. But God, who'd want to be such an asshole?

He's easy to read and a good writer and has an edge to him that attracts many people. But I think few people can relate to the thorough, unglorified low-life he is and understand why he is one. I'm surprised he wasted most of his life working at the post office because by all accounts he knew he wasn't fit to live and he knew his life was just a waste of time and I'm sure he thought about suicide often. That's why I'm surprised that he didn't do it. Then again, I'm in the same spot, and I haven't either.
He introduced me to Voyage au bout de la nuit, and I'm grateful for that.

He's fine

here I'm supposed to be a great poet
and I'm sleepy in the afternoon
here I am aware of death like a giant bull
charging at me
and I'm sleepy in the afternoon
here I'm aware of wars and men fighting in the ring
and I'm aware of good food and wine and good women
and I'm sleepy in the afternoon
I'm aware of a woman's love
and I'm sleepy in the afternoon,
I lean into the sunlight behind a yellow curtain
I wonder where the summer flies have gone
I remember the most bloody death of Hemingway and
I'm sleepy in the afternoon.


some day I won't be sleepy in the afternoon
some day I'll write a poem that will bring volcanoes
to the hills out there
but right now I'm sleepy in the afternoon
and somebody asks me, "Bukowski, what time is it?"
and I say, "3:16 and a half."
I feel very guilty, I feel obnoxious, useless,
demented, I feel
sleepy in the afternoon,
they are bombing the churches, o.k., that's o.k.,
the libraries are filled with thousands of books of knowledge,
great music sits inside the nearby radio
and I am sleepy in the afternoon,
I have this tomb within myself that says,
ah, let the others do it, let them win,
let me sleep,
the wisdom is in the dark
sweeping through the dark like brooms,
I'm going where the summer flies have gone,
try to catch me.

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

the only thing i ever read by him was a preface in "ask the dust", written by john fant. as far as i remember, fant was his inspiration to start writing.

David Foster Wallace, but look how he ended up.

I liked that novel. I still remember his apartment on the sloped hill.

His work is amazing. Yes, he's a chubby, drunk loser... but aren't we all...

This

A lot of rich (or at least solidly middle class) college kids idolize/emulate him (I found much like HST) while never truly grasping how poor and how shitty he was


His work is easy to read,and has a simplicity and honesty to it tht makes it worth a look.
But hes like a pseud version of pulp,you can enjoy your pulp but dont try to argue its extreme literary merits

Venerable fraud

Sometimes I wish the Internet wouldn't have exposed us to so much information. This sounds so derivative, but I know it wasn't, and I know Buk couldn't have anticipated it to be derivative at the time.

Poetry is generally derivative, if you read the Avant Garde you'll see how unpoetic they actually are.

spot on

bukowski is to writing what eggleston is to photography. and people get pissy when they buy the typewriter, or the camera, only to discover they can't do it.

they both get shit for not giving a shit while being paid for it.

>"""""""""""poems"""""""""""

how can anyone read this and think it's good?

Too prolific but his best stuff is really very good.

I tend to think most poetry is garbage
Buk's novels are cool though

s a v a g e

Decent at best, absolute trash at worst.

This is actually worse than savannah brown poems.

He had really good words about shitty living. He's a really good read when life doesn't work and you find no hope or comfort in anything. He lived through life eating shit and laughed about it.

I think that most people who show hate for him do so because he's not as complex or verbose or adherent to a particular academic structure but he never claimed to be that, he was just a sad bum with a lot of shit luck and that's what he talks about, sad lives with shit luck.

I like him but I can see why a lot of people are not going to. Still, the man's words are though and sharp and crisp for those of us that lead lives that come from nowhere and are heading nowhere.

Well, we sat on the edge of the river.
The crowd screamed "sacrifice the liver!"
God takes life, he's an Indian giver,
So tell me now what you'll tell me never

(I got your back bro)

Great shit but they'll never top The Lonesome Crowded West. Good music about shtty living that one.

he was an alcoholic pole who only wrote to fund his drinking

his gravestone literally says "dont try"

Agreed, Moon and Antarctica is my shit to though

You keep posting the poems of his that the critics praised. His stuff was never meant for the critics, it was a rationalization of a meaningless life,the significance of which only came alive on the page. A lot of his poetry was shit, but when he was good he was good, he could communicate an overwhelming emotion in a few lines and if you've ever been alone, lost and waiting to die, you'll probably get what he means, like with this one:

True

one of Lorca's best line is,
"agony, always
agony ..."
think of this when you
kill a
cockroach or
pick up a razor to
shave
or awaken in the morning
to
face the
sun.

I don't like him not because I hate his poetry (even though I don't like it either) but because I find him a detestable human being. He was a drunken asshole unworthy of respect.
I completely understand that his work can resonate with hopeless people, but that's where his merits end.

He believed that everything should be done with style, to try is to loose the style. To try is to attempt to please, to dance for the crowd and not for yourself. He didn't mean don't try as in Don't do, he meant it as in "Do for yourself, not for the crowd".

Not arguing that, he was a piece of shit. He's one of those writers that I'm almost sure I wouldn't like to meet. His ideas are what matters, him, as a person, was an unfortunate consequence of the life that made those poems. He was a drunk, a beggar, a lazy son of a bitch but he made no excuses for it, i respect the shit out of that, even if I don't respect him. You've gotta have a lot of balls or very little to loose to live like he did.

Well, in my opinion you have to be a complete coward to live like he did. He is the complete opposite of what I consider a respectable person, he is devoid of any of the qualities I admire.
Him not making excuses doesn't make up for that somehow, it actually makes it much worse. He accepted that he was a piece of filth and didn't seem to make any attempt to change it.

He was, he was afraid, he said so all the time in his stuff. The thing that you have to take on account when attempting to understand the man and not the work is that he was smart, he was really smart so he looked around the depression era LA, with empty pockets, no family, no friends, no training and the face of a leper, he had to know that life was going to be painful, ugly, , isolated but above all, meaningless. His life, from where he stood in his youth, was never going to get out of skid row. Everything else was him laughing at his hopelessness, laughing at himself for his efforts, and laughing at all the other people who couldn't even see just how fucked they were.

He was the hand he played with the cards he was dealt. Not an admirable man, not a paragon of anything but satire, he was who his internal monsters let him be while he struggled to pay rent.

He didn't need to change, he was alone, when you don't have friends, family or people that you talk to on a regular basis you become a lot more crude and anymalistic since you don't have to pretend t be a person for anybody and you will spend days, weeks, even months without communicating with another person beyond formal pleasantries. This is not the story of a role model for anyone, this is a man who was born, raised and educated to be a nobody. In a society that judges you based on what you own he decided he wasn't going to own anything and thus, he became nothing and in doing so he could be whatever he wanted.

He's not a role model, he's a survivor.

Hahaha

What an astute observation, user.

>(I got your back bro)
Thank you, I was unafraid none of these Veeky Forumsizens would.

Definitely agree about TLCW.

>He didn't need to change, he was alone, when you don't have friends, family or people that you talk to on a regular basis you become a lot more crude and anymalistic since you don't have to pretend t be a person for anybody and you will spend days, weeks, even months without communicating with another person beyond formal pleasantries

Ah, fuck it, I'm decently drunk and wonderfully unemployed, I'll post some poems of the man who taught me to laugh at my misery and spit on my idea of dignity, Maybe it's not for everyone but there's a reason he got popular, he had a way to bring a shine of gold out of a turd in the road.

Pull A String, A Puppet Moves

each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
the front tire,
the bed, the walls, the
room; all our necessities
including love,
rest on foundations of sand -
and any given cause,
no matter how unrelated:
the death of a boy in Hong Kong
or a blizzard in Omaha ...
can serve as your undoing.
all your chinaware crashing to the
kitchen floor, your girl will enter
and you'll be standing, drunk,
in the center of it and she'll ask:
my god, what's the matter?
and you'll answer: I don't know,
I don't know ...

The Aliens

you may not believe it
but there are people
who go through life with
very little
friction or
distress.
they dress well, eat
well, sleep well.
they are contented with
their family
life.
they have moments of
grief
but all in all
they are undisturbed
and often feel
very good.
and when they die
it is an easy
death, usually in their
sleep.
you may not believe
it
but such people do
exist.
but I am not one of
them.
oh no, I am not one
of them,
I am not even near
to being
one of
them
but they are
there
and I am
here.

Oh Yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late.

I never understood how someone who thought about HST for more than 2 seconds would idolize him or let alone want to imitate him. He was a good writer, but he wasn't "le wacky stoner who don't follow no rules B^)" He was a rage filled lunatic who couldn't relate to or find comfort in other human beings and ended up taking his own life because his drug fucked mind was broken and filled with anguish 24/7 eventually.

Your post has got me interested in Bukowski tho. What's a good starter?

Well put.

Post Office, you can tear through it in an afternoon. Also Ham On Rye is probably his best novel.

thx m8. Checkin it out now

the loner

16 and one-half inch
neck
68 years old
lifts weights
body like a young
boy (almost)

kept his head shave
and drank port wine
from half-galon jugs.

kept the chain on the
door
windows boarded.

you had to give
a special knock
to get in

he had brass knucks
knives
clubs
guns

he had a chest like a
wrestler
never lost his
glasses

never swore
never looked for
trouble

never married after the death
of his only
wife

hated
cats
roaches
mice
humans

worked crossword
puzzles
kept up with the
news

that is 16 and one-half inch
neck


for 68 he was
something

all those boards
across the windows

washed his own underwear
and socks

my friend Red took my up
to meet him
one night

we talked a while
together

then we left

Red asked, "what do you
think?"

I answered, "more afraid to die
than the rest of us."

I haven't seen either of them
since.

henry miller like half of life sludged through paris penniless, begging and posing for gay pics, yet his books are filled with optimism and vitality

People do what they can with what they have. Miller was a pretty dude, he posed for pictures, Bukowski looked like a leper, he worked the factories and hid in bars.

"so you wanna write" or whatever, is legitimately everything wrong with bad contemporary poetry

You don't know what love is Bukowski said
I'm 51 years old look at me
I'm in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she's hung up too
so it's all right man that's the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can't get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
but I cried easy in those days
Don't let me get onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it's like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I'll start throwing people out windows
I'll throw anybody out the window
I've done it
But you don't know what love is
You don't know because you've never
been in love it's that simple
I got this young broad see she's beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don't know what love is
I'm telling you what it is
but you aren't listening
There isn't one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ass
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I'm 51 years old and I've been around
I know they're a copout
but I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing is like it should be
That fellow what's his name Galway Kinnell
I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him
but he's a teacher
Christ can you imagine
But then you're teachers too
here I am insulting you already
No I haven't heard of him
or him either
They're all termites
Maybe it's ego I don't read much anymore
but these people w! ho build
reputations on five or six books
termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can't you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn't it
You wouldn't think a crude bastard like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann
Shit I couldn't write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that's the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you're a lucky man
Bukowski you've gone through it all
and you're a lucky man
and the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
and then I lay the cigar in the ashtray like this and take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
it's good to be poor it's good to have hemorrhoids
it's good to be in love

But you don't know what it's like
You don't know what it's like to be in love
If you could see her you'd know what I mean
She thought I'd come up here and get laid
She just knew it
She told me she knew it
Shit I'm 51 years old and she's 25
and we're in love and she's jealous
Jesus it's beautiful
she said she'd claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that's love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I've met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They're bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet's socks are dirty
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won't disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
there's only one poet in this room tonight
only one poet in this town tonight
maybe only one real poet in this country tonight
and that's me
What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They'd fire me then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what's it like I've been there
I'm 51 years old now and I'm in love
This little broad she says
Bukowski
and I say What and she says
I think you're full of shit
and I say baby you understand me
She's the only broad in the world
man or woman
I'd take that from
But you don't know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don't see any poets
I'm not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don't know what it is to be in love
that's your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That's right no ice good
That's good that's just fine
So let's get this show on the road
I know what I said but I'll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let's go let's get this over with
only afterwards don't anyone stand close
to an open window

The novels are mostly "I'm a mean hopeless drunk in a mean hopeless world" sort of thing. Good, solid but it misses out on a lot of the feels of poverty and isolation that his poetry and short stories have. Try "Notes of a dirty old man" for his prose and anecdotes and "Pleasures of the damned" or "Burning in water drowning in flame" for his poetry. Not all his poems are good but when they're good they're REALLY good.

Carver's short stories are tough and solid stuff. the kind of shit that stays with you for a while. His poetry, not so much.

Shit tier alcoholic poet but also my favorite

WELL WE SAT ON THE EDGE OF THE RIVER
THE CROWD SCREAMED SACRIFICE THE LIVER
IF GOD TAKES LIFE HE'S AN INDIAN GIVER

yeah, i don't think much of carver as a poet.
i do think that poem is a good roast though.

A thread actually discussing Bukowski, on Veeky Forums of all places and with the added bonus of some Modest Mouse thrown in. Good thread.

I'm proud of starting this

>Modest Mouse
t.numale

Touched.

Who?

how is he lazy when he held a job for 30 years at the post office?

shit

I fucking hate the people who like him that's for sure, it's always some hipster nerd who drinks too much and is sad, both of which he mistakes for indicating he is brilliant rather than a sad sack of shit.

wow, rude

>It's like a 2 buck chuck talking poorly of a Chateau Margaux.

True, but it was a 2 buck chuck with style

This.

"Style" is a great poem