No news of this in a search, so here goes:
A FOREWARD TO THESE POEMS
I was born in 1920 and brought to this city (Los Angeles) at the age of 2 and have lived most of my life here. I feel that I am qualified enough to speak of this city and, pehaps, upon poetry.
There have certainly been enough anthologies and there are too many poets and few enough readers---the fault, I believe, of the poets. Poetry has long been an in-game, a snob game, a game of puzzles and incantations. It still is, and most of its practitioners operate comfortably as professors in our safe and stale universities. We have a professor or 2 or 3 in this book---exceptions, believe us.
That poets can only live and produce in certain cities---New York, San Francisco, Paris, or that these cities have more ability to sustain, accent and enliven poetry is just another order of garbage to be fed to the hogs. It is time that we brought poetry down to the ground and that the best of it might be given credit for existing wherever it exists---for instance, here in Los Angeles.
You know, I can't think of another city that takes more mockery than Los Angeles. It is the unloved city, it is the target. We contain Hollywood---and, in a sense, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm. . .we are corn. We are mistakes. We are tourists. We are the lonely drunks of a Saturday night sitting for hours over a warming beer, watching nudie dancers we can never possess.
Los Angeles is also Main Street and E. 5th. and East L.A. and Watts. Los Angeles has its poor and its real, and Los Angeles has it poets, some of them pretty damn good. We'd like to think that we have gathered most of the pretty damned good ones here in this book. Of course, somebody is going to holler. That's one of the reasons we put this book together, to hear some hollering. Los Angeles is also Pasadena, Long Beach, Irvine---anyplace you can get to within an hour drive or two. Technically, no; spiritually, yes. We have included 2 or 3 'spiritual yeses'.
I think it's important to know that a writer can live and die anywhere. I think it's important to know that a writer can live in Los Angeles for a lifetime without ever having visited Grauman's Chinese or The Wax Museum or Barney's Beanery or Disneyland, or without ever having attended a Tournament of Roses Parade. I think it's important to know that a man or woman, writer or not, can find more isolation in Los Angeles than in Boise, Idaho. Or, all things being fair, he can with a telephone (if he has a telephone) have 19 people over drinking and talking with him within an hour and a half. I have bummed the cities and I know this---the great facility of Los Angeles is that one can be alone if he wishes or he can be in a crowd if he wishes. No other city seems to allow this double choice as well. This is a fairly wonderful miracle, especially if one is a writer.
Cities are no more than dwellings, places of business. streets, cars, people---people set down somewhere into all the agony and trouble and love and frustration and death and dullness and treachery and hope that they can get into. I must admit that I have gained a love for Los Angeles that forces me again and again to return to it once I have left. Someday there will even be songs about Los Angeles if the smog doesn't get us first.
The true Angelo also has a certain sophistication---he minds his own damned business. This is often mistaken for coldness but if you have ever lived in New York City or Chicago, you know what coldness is.
It's hard to find good poets anywhere. Our search here hasn't been easy. Very little good poetry is being written anywhere. Yet there are people, young and old, male and female who have been doing it quietly---if a bit desperately---here in L.A. We'd like to think that we have chosen the best. But mistakes are made; omissions are easy This isn't a bible, it's a tentative gathering. It's a city of poets and here are some of them. I think you'll find power here, and clarity and humour, and feeling enough.
Now let the hollerers holler.
See you at ZODY'S.
-Charles Bukowski
4/11/72
Los Angeles
A FOREWARD TO THESE POEMS
I was born in 1920 and brought to this city (Los Angeles) at the age of 2 and have lived most of my life here. I feel that I am qualified enough to speak of this city and, pehaps, upon poetry.
There have certainly been enough anthologies and there are too many poets and few enough readers---the fault, I believe, of the poets. Poetry has long been an in-game, a snob game, a game of puzzles and incantations. It still is, and most of its practitioners operate comfortably as professors in our safe and stale universities. We have a professor or 2 or 3 in this book---exceptions, believe us.
That poets can only live and produce in certain cities---New York, San Francisco, Paris, or that these cities have more ability to sustain, accent and enliven poetry is just another order of garbage to be fed to the hogs. It is time that we brought poetry down to the ground and that the best of it might be given credit for existing wherever it exists---for instance, here in Los Angeles.
You know, I can't think of another city that takes more mockery than Los Angeles. It is the unloved city, it is the target. We contain Hollywood---and, in a sense, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm. . .we are corn. We are mistakes. We are tourists. We are the lonely drunks of a Saturday night sitting for hours over a warming beer, watching nudie dancers we can never possess.
Los Angeles is also Main Street and E. 5th. and East L.A. and Watts. Los Angeles has its poor and its real, and Los Angeles has it poets, some of them pretty damn good. We'd like to think that we have gathered most of the pretty damned good ones here in this book. Of course, somebody is going to holler. That's one of the reasons we put this book together, to hear some hollering. Los Angeles is also Pasadena, Long Beach, Irvine---anyplace you can get to within an hour drive or two. Technically, no; spiritually, yes. We have included 2 or 3 'spiritual yeses'.
I think it's important to know that a writer can live and die anywhere. I think it's important to know that a writer can live in Los Angeles for a lifetime without ever having visited Grauman's Chinese or The Wax Museum or Barney's Beanery or Disneyland, or without ever having attended a Tournament of Roses Parade. I think it's important to know that a man or woman, writer or not, can find more isolation in Los Angeles than in Boise, Idaho. Or, all things being fair, he can with a telephone (if he has a telephone) have 19 people over drinking and talking with him within an hour and a half. I have bummed the cities and I know this---the great facility of Los Angeles is that one can be alone if he wishes or he can be in a crowd if he wishes. No other city seems to allow this double choice as well. This is a fairly wonderful miracle, especially if one is a writer.
Cities are no more than dwellings, places of business. streets, cars, people---people set down somewhere into all the agony and trouble and love and frustration and death and dullness and treachery and hope that they can get into. I must admit that I have gained a love for Los Angeles that forces me again and again to return to it once I have left. Someday there will even be songs about Los Angeles if the smog doesn't get us first.
The true Angelo also has a certain sophistication---he minds his own damned business. This is often mistaken for coldness but if you have ever lived in New York City or Chicago, you know what coldness is.
It's hard to find good poets anywhere. Our search here hasn't been easy. Very little good poetry is being written anywhere. Yet there are people, young and old, male and female who have been doing it quietly---if a bit desperately---here in L.A. We'd like to think that we have chosen the best. But mistakes are made; omissions are easy This isn't a bible, it's a tentative gathering. It's a city of poets and here are some of them. I think you'll find power here, and clarity and humour, and feeling enough.
Now let the hollerers holler.
See you at ZODY'S.
-Charles Bukowski
4/11/72
Los Angeles
