Bukowski at www.alterantivereel.com (1 Viewer)

[Johannes]

Found this site --> http://www.alternativereel.com/

They seem to enjoy Bukowski quite a bit. He is cited there a lot. They even have a list of "Top 10 Classic Charles Bukowski Poems" --> http://www.alternativereel.com/cult_fiction/display_article.php?id=0000000020

I like what they write about "The Tragedy of the Leaves"

The opening poem of It Catches My Heart in Its Hands (1963) evokes a vision of despair rarely, if ever, surpassed in 20th-century American poetry. In fact, “Leaves” may be the most popular and arguably best poem Bukowski ever wrote. Its opening lines are as powerful as T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” without the bullshit and footnotes:

“I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead,
The potted plants yellow as corn;
my woman was gone
and the empty bottles like bled corpses
surrounded me with their uselessness . . .”

As usual, the poet’s woman has left him and his grotesque landlady is demanding the rent money. When all is said and done, the most memorable aspect of the poem is the final passage:

“I walked into a dark hall
where the landlady stood
execrating and final,
sending me to hell,
waving her fat, sweaty arms
and screaming
screaming for the rent
because the world had failed us both.”

In The Bukowski Tapes, a drunken Bukowski reads “The Tragedy of the Leaves,” which appears as the opening poem in Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame.

[Editor’s Note: I once showed this poem to a friend, hoping that he would share some of my excitement for its brilliance. “What’s so tragic about a pile of dead leaves?” he asked.]