Barbara Fry wrote poetry too (2 Viewers)

Thanks, HV. I've been smoking for over 20 years. It's the second time I have quit. In my personal life I don't even tell people I am quitting. I feel I am setting myself up for failure. So far so good, nerve racking as all hell tho'.

Anyway, as I get older I have learned to look more inside a person. I mean, I think it's a natural reflex when you see an attractive person to have a head jerk moment, but when you get to know them (even in a matter of minutes) they may turn out to be very superficial, ugly human beings. I have met too many women like that, and I am sure you ladies have met men (or women) who fit the category as well. Perhaps it comes with age. Personally, I find myself attracted to women older than myself, because they usually know what they want and are usually past those superficiality hang-ups. But maybe I am getting off point here.

I like when Bukowski realized the next morning after he drunkenly proposed to Barbara; how nervous he was, but when he went to pick her up at the bus station he noticed she didn't look as bad as she had claimed to be. Which of course is probably normal for anyone who has self esteem issues. He was always making himself out to be uglier than he really was. And there are countless stories of people saying once they started looking deeper he wasn't ugly at all. But there we go again, who's to say what is ugly and what's beautiful? It's in the beholder. Apparently they had a fairly good relationship until she realized he was not going to conform to her ideas of what kind of man she wanted. He writes about her off & on in the first two letter books if you're interested.

I agree with Rekrab's post too about chasing after beauty.

Ahh, more coffee, please!

PS - the post is obviously not objective. I cannot speak for others. Only my own opinion on the culture & beauty verses ugliness, et al.
 
Did Barbara Frye's grand daughter ever report back? Wasn't she going to do a dig at the site of the family's burned down ranch? Looking for beer bottles Bukowski threw in the well or old poems among the ashes?
 
I think this person graduated in summer and that's the end of the story.
 
So that lead dried up? No correction via publication or posting? Shame! And no one knows how she died? Didn't anyone, erm, look at the death certificate or coroner's report? (No, I'm not volunteering, in case you are wondering....)
 
If she died in India, it is possible that there is no death certificate. It is also possible that there is one, but that it is tough to find as there is little info on her, including where, in that massive country, she could have died. She could have died in Berlin for all I know. The family claims that the facts, as presented by sounes, are all wrong, but do not seem at all interested in clearing things up. They seem to just want to hint about it...

Then there is the fact that her life post-Bukowski is not really of much interest to anyone outside of her family.

Bill
 
I know she played her part in Buk's past and therefore warrants some interest but those photos of her in Sounes' book give me the fucking creeps. She probably couldn't turn her head fast enough to witness Kali's fatal blow.
 
Then there is the fact that her life post-Bukowski is not really of much interest to anyone outside of her family.
Bill, true enough about her life post-Buk not being of much interest to us. I don't suppose it interested Buk much either. It just seems a loose end that really shouldn't exist. All I want is a sentence giving date, place and cause of death. (It's all that work at the Prague Insurance Bureau that makes me so anally retentive....)
Dying in Berlin, huh? Well, if ya gotta go ya gotta go....
 
yeah, and her "rich" family claim that they can set the record straight and prove to the world how she made the sun shine brighter everywhere and how dead birds came back to life in her magnificent presence. Of course, the "family" wants us to know that all the stories of her that we have heard are lies, but they do not seem to care enough to tell their story. Until they do, the sounes story is how Barbara Frye will be remembered. I could care less. It is surprising that her own family does not seem to care either...
 
I agree. If the family doesn't want to go on the record then we will just have to rely on CB's few comments and biographers, however one-sided they are.
 
I found a letter from Barbara Fry (her spelling) to my father - dated June 4, 1955 from Wheeler, texas. She asks my dad if he's interested in being Drama Editor of her Harlequin magazine. A long and quite entertaining letter... she talks about her background and her "rather risque years", various poets and playwrights and their mutual friend "Bob" who works with her on Harlequin. and she talks about cocktails :)
 
I'll try scanning it. I noticed on the back of the envelope she noted Re: Bob Lasater (who was co-editor on Harlequin as W/ R. Lasater) So that's the "Bob" she kept referring to.
 

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