Johannes
Founding member
As you all know, one of the characteristic marks of B's poetry is the use of "free verse", the breaking of sentences "just if he hit the carriage return drunk wherever" as I've read somewhere.
Also there can be found numerous statements in his poems, prose and letters where he's dismissing any kind of poetic "form" or "technique" as dull, senseless, making him puke ... etc.
On the other hand, also cirerita pointed out:
--> http://www.bukowski.net/forum/showthread.php?t=79
he did give the rhyme at least three (known) shots, if only for the satirical effect.
So I was very surprised to read this part of an interview:
"Q: It does seem that there?s no way concrete poetry can contain any real feeling.
A: There's not enough meat in it. I tried something more profound. Write a line of poetry that comes to mind; say the first word has five letters, the second three, the third seven, etc. Under that line, you have to follow with one that makes sense with the top line but yet has the same number of words, with each word containing the exact number of letters as its corresponding word in the previous line. Kind of a stylized vision. It'll be like a set of columns, finally. It's a good exercise to make it make sense."
-->www.bukowskifilm.com/bu_buk.html (via Wayback archive)
This seems like a very strict regulated way of creating a poem. Of course not something you would imagine with the drunken raving madman at his typer. (Another bit of dispelling) And it shows that B, if only as an experiment, did think about the form and even "exercised", in his own words, writing.
What are your thoughts about this one? And, does anybody know a poem which would be an example for this way of creating?
Also there can be found numerous statements in his poems, prose and letters where he's dismissing any kind of poetic "form" or "technique" as dull, senseless, making him puke ... etc.
On the other hand, also cirerita pointed out:
--> http://www.bukowski.net/forum/showthread.php?t=79
he did give the rhyme at least three (known) shots, if only for the satirical effect.
So I was very surprised to read this part of an interview:
"Q: It does seem that there?s no way concrete poetry can contain any real feeling.
A: There's not enough meat in it. I tried something more profound. Write a line of poetry that comes to mind; say the first word has five letters, the second three, the third seven, etc. Under that line, you have to follow with one that makes sense with the top line but yet has the same number of words, with each word containing the exact number of letters as its corresponding word in the previous line. Kind of a stylized vision. It'll be like a set of columns, finally. It's a good exercise to make it make sense."
-->
This seems like a very strict regulated way of creating a poem. Of course not something you would imagine with the drunken raving madman at his typer. (Another bit of dispelling) And it shows that B, if only as an experiment, did think about the form and even "exercised", in his own words, writing.
What are your thoughts about this one? And, does anybody know a poem which would be an example for this way of creating?