Cross pollination (1 Viewer)

S

SamDusky

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I found this on a Buk interest site and thought I was reading Buk. Amazing how the influences flow. I wonder who read who.

SD

"Billy Sunday and Other Poems"
God's Children

I hear Billy Sunday
And the Kaiser and Czar
Talking about God
Like God was some pal of theirs,
Like the rest of us was in the cold outside,
Like they had been drinking beer with God,
Like as though they know whether God
Calls for a short beer or a gin fizz
Or whether God sleeps in a Y.M.C.A. dormitory
And never goes near a booze bazaar.

When I listen to Billy Sunday
Holler out loud
How God "hates a quitter,"
How God "hates a mutt,"
I can't help it---I feel just like God was some cheap dirty thing
born from a fiddler's bitch and kicked from one back door
to another.

--Carl Sandburg

~I read this and I thought, "Bukowski must have read this at some point. It reads like one of his, but it's fucking Sandberg! Sweet old Carl of The Snows. Sheesh."
 
Thanks!, now I'm going to have to start re-reading Carl
To see exactly Why I didn't like him,
Cause that one is a keeper! Damn it!
 
Not to get too involved in the minutiae of a thorough analysis of the poetic form of a prose poem, but a few items come easily to the surface. The use of ?list iteration? is a device that Buk used often, that part being in the section:

Like God was some pal of theirs,
Like the rest of us was in the cold outside,
Like they had been drinking beer with God,
Like as though they know whether God

Buk?s taking on of authority figures of the day; a ?verbal dispossessing? of the high and mighty, the unconscionable buttheads and ?Schei?e kopfs? (please correct my German) that think they run things on the planet Earth and who feel that ?they? are the final abettors of truth (much like their present-day counterparts in the persons of our Pat Robertsons and Rumsfelds, etc.)

I hear Billy Sunday
And the Kaiser and Czar
Talking about God

Then Buk?s personification of the (or a ) deity into the particular; a bringing into the immediate with examples that move the lofty argument down to the ?dog shit? level, so to speak; so we see that God is, perhaps, a beer-drinker or a mixed drink enthusiast, and maybe sleeps around at the Y:

Calls for a short beer or a gin fizz
Or whether God sleeps in a Y.M.C.A. dormitory
And never goes near a booze bazaar.

And more of the taking on of authority, showing what egotistic clown-headed wankers they are in their overarching pronouncements:

When I listen to Billy Sunday
Holler out loud
How God "hates a quitter,"
How God "hates a mutt,"

And then, the denouement, with the patented Bukowskian humorous punchline; letting it all come together to make his final point with a twist; pointing out how the authoritative fools and dingbats are denigrating the truth that any schoolboy with half a brain should know:

I can't help it---I feel just like God was some cheap dirty thing
born from a fiddler's bitch and kicked from one back door
to another.

And overall, a straight-ahead communication in a ?no bullshit? manner, plain-talking, and telling it like it is without a lot of poetic nonsense, innuendo, and ?flowery? language.

Now, as to whether you think this poem is as ?effective? as a Buk poem, that is a whole other story, and one that could be argued from many perspectives. It does have the terseness and concise quality that many of Buk?s has; and a reasonable flow that he would probably approve of. The overall subject matter is in his realm and so on.

I hope this has been as good for you as it has been for me, linguistically speaking. Okay, it?s bullshit; but I think I conveyed the drift, alright?

SD
 
Sanburg the Firebrand

SamDusky said:
"Billy Sunday and Other Poems"
God's Children
Click to expand...

Thanks, SD,

Unbelievable poem. Didn't know Sandburg had it in him"”but then, I'm completely unfamiliar with his writings. To bring it up to date, one would only have to switch Billy Sunday's name with Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, or Jimmy Swaggart. This is one hell of a fine two-barrels of a shotgun, blast of a buckshot poem to Sunday's pants. Religious demagogues, all"”and Sandburg on fire. Go Carl.

Poptop
 
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zoom man said:
Thanks!, now I'm going to have to start re-reading Carl
To see exactly Why I didn't like him,
Cause that one is a keeper! Damn it!
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is not the same Carl i was reading and decided i didn't like. I had a girlfriend that insisted i read several of his books, and i did simply to appease her (more or less read them anyway) and decided he definately was not for me. But if she had put this in front of me, things would be different.
 
antelope1202 said:
Yeah, this is not the same Carl i was reading and decided i didn't like. I had a girlfriend that insisted i read several of his books, and i did simply to appease her (more or less read them anyway) and decided he definately was not for me. But if she had put this in front of me, things would be different.
Click to expand...

I had the same experience. I was reading the wrong stuff and dismissed him. I also did the same with Emily Dickinson, but that lady has a dark side that I quite like.
 
I still haven't found anything in Dickinson that made me think she was any more than crazy in a "locked in your own head" kind of way.
 

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