Recent content by Chrisw

I never read a biography of Buk... Not sure I want to. I mean, you can know too much, can't ya? Why shatter this nice image I have of him in my mind even if I know it's a fiction? It's not like I'm a scholar trying to get at the "real" Bukowski or something. I'm just a guy who likes how he puts...

Saw Uncut Gems finally... It was much better than I thought it would be. It is intense -- in the sense that the scenes never seem to let up, it's an anxiety-filled ride, with a good ending. Not really violent or bloody or anything like that... the cast is great -- even the bit players like the...

I'm going to guess and say I am in the minority in that I came to "discover" Bukowski fairly late.... I was in my early 30s. I'm almost 50 now. And I still love his stuff.

You got it buddy.... There is an old term for betting against what the public thinks is the best bet -- "copper the public" -- see Roger Bacon's classic book Secrets of Professional Turf Betting. (Yes, I used to play the ponies now and then... but just for kicks. The only gambling I do now is...

No, the take is what the track "takes" off the bets -- their cut, i.e., if you bet $2, the track gets 30 cents (15%) for itself and the rest ($1.70) goes back in the pool with everyone else's bets. So, that's why he says if you bet 9 times that's $2.70 you have to win just break-even, or 135% of...

Shoot even his early books are not entirely untouched... for example in Mockingbird there is a poem titled "get the nose." The manuscript differs from the published version in 2 places: The addition of "I said" on line 12... and the removal of the last 2 lines of the poem: "kill him, he makes...

Coming in July... Bukowski, A Life: The Centennial Edition by Neeli Cherkovski via @amazon

Reading this makes me pine for the rest of the Back to the Machine Gun series (stuck at vol 3 of a planned 8) but there are plenty of manuscripts on this site to hunt down poems, plus the many books published when he was alive...

I don't remember, oddly enough, given how much I like him... His work grew on me - it was a slow burn, like charcoal. I started with Burning in Water one summer at Ocean City on vacation... c. 2005. I loved it... but I didn't go out right away and buy more stuff. It took some time... and then...

Haha -- great response!

A little rough on Bukowski, but thought it worth sharing... Thirst Trap A sober look at Charles Bukowski's alcoholism. BY JASON DIAMOND https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150621/thirst-trap

Great little essay... thanks for posting!

What? The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way: On Writers and Writing Paperback – May 15, 2018 by Charles Bukowski (Author)

This one....

Tastes can change. I remember I used to love Henry Miller and Kurt Vonnegut, but it's been a long time since I've given either any thought. But then there are some writers that, for whatever reason, I never lose interest in or whose books inspire me on some level... For me Buk is in that...