mjp
Founding member
Here's one to mull over:
- insomnia
- over a beer
Written just over six months apart, insomnia and over a beer share some very specific lines/images...
she once strapped
7 tomcats to her ironing board
cut out their tongues
boiled them in vinegar and
mayonnaise
ate them
then took a train to Trenton
and married a banker with a
face like a frog
Bukowski certainly wrote thousands of poems, there's no denying that. But here he is rewriting a poem and submitting it twice. insomnia is less polished - more paragraph than poem - but he did submit it to a magazine somewhere in July of '74, then six months later submitted the reworked over a beer to another magazine.
Of the thousand or so manuscripts I've seen, I've only come across this and one other example of two very similar poems in different versions, but it struck me as odd, and contrary to what he said his writing habits were.
Supposedly he typed pretty freely while drinking, then the next day revised or discarded, and sent them out. Never keeping carbons until his "$100 a month for life" deal with Martin. These two manuscripts suggest that he also kept his own copies, and obviously referred back to them later.
Kind of flies in the face of the drunken madman stuffing every page pulled from his typer into envelopes to send around the country. But no one wants to hear stories of the well organized, meticulous poet. Where's the sport in that? ;)
- insomnia
- over a beer
Written just over six months apart, insomnia and over a beer share some very specific lines/images...
she once strapped
7 tomcats to her ironing board
cut out their tongues
boiled them in vinegar and
mayonnaise
ate them
then took a train to Trenton
and married a banker with a
face like a frog
Bukowski certainly wrote thousands of poems, there's no denying that. But here he is rewriting a poem and submitting it twice. insomnia is less polished - more paragraph than poem - but he did submit it to a magazine somewhere in July of '74, then six months later submitted the reworked over a beer to another magazine.
Of the thousand or so manuscripts I've seen, I've only come across this and one other example of two very similar poems in different versions, but it struck me as odd, and contrary to what he said his writing habits were.
Supposedly he typed pretty freely while drinking, then the next day revised or discarded, and sent them out. Never keeping carbons until his "$100 a month for life" deal with Martin. These two manuscripts suggest that he also kept his own copies, and obviously referred back to them later.
Kind of flies in the face of the drunken madman stuffing every page pulled from his typer into envelopes to send around the country. But no one wants to hear stories of the well organized, meticulous poet. Where's the sport in that? ;)
