I don't think that the word was "super-charged, pejorative term used by bigots to denigrate blacks" in the 40's. I think that it was much more accepted than it is today and was used freely and openly by many people in everyday conversation.
Hi Bill,
Well, that's why I mentioned that bigots would be more inclined to use it; and there were exceptions to the rule with whites. One would have to study the history of the word to know, I feel, but from what I've seen it's been used for at least 100 years and it was commonly used in the South, and not as a term of endearment.
I'm sure that it was always very offensive to black folks, but they were invisible to whites, really. Remember, blacks were without any power, not having the right to vote, marry outside of their race, get many jobs, eat in restaurants, etc, etc..
I would have to defer to what blacks would have to say about its use down through the years... but I'd feel strongly that the nature of the super-charged word was know to just about everyone. Perhaps that's why when Whitman writes about negroes with admiration and respect, he never used the term (I did a word search in the 1881 edition of Leaves out of curiosity.)
Of course, someone like Buk would not have said to a black man's face, probably, they would have no problem saying it at work, the dinner table, or the church parking lot.
Well, I'd have to disagree with that view overall, but there are occasions when blacks will use that term among themselves, even today. But taking that from a white man? I'd have to be bearing arms to use it myself.
Buk may have been trying to write a poem in the style of Whitman, but my point was that he was trying to write like someone else. This is as bad as someone trying to write like Buk, so they write about booze, women and the track.
What you say has truth to it - that it's, in a sense, using Whitman's voice. But that's what 'modeling' is. You take the poem of another writer, use the form, some of the attitude, and still make it your own. Underneath the words in Hello! there's Bukowski. Then later in his development, he drops the Whitman model and voice and retains the bigness of feeling for his own. That's why I still see the Bukowski under the words here Bukowski modeled ee cummings the same way in 'man and woman in bed at 10 pm,' from
Mockingbird, from 'may I feel he said' (I Googled it to refresh my memory.)
I'm not discounting it because of the offensive word, but because I feel that it is a bad poem and not authentic to his style. It is him trying too hard to be a poet.
My view only! If this poem lacked skill in design, I would have agreed with you; but I think it shows some mastery of heartfelt sincerity, form, pacing and style, even if one the surface it sounds like he's not in his own voice. For me, I still see him there, and I think readers sometimes miss out on a lot when what they read to something and reduce it down to 'good' or 'bad' - unless the poem is so downright obviously bad that you can't get through it. Instead, I'd rather ask myself, "what is he doing here?, what is he risking?, what's the gain?, what's he getting at?, do I feel the images?" What some readers view as Bukowski being 'pretentious,' I view as Bukowski being 'self-conscious'. Big difference! And he was only 26 at the time and still reading everything he could get his hands on, it seems. I'm perhaps more forgiving of his earlier poems because I view his development from the end to his origins rather than from the other way around. I did this because I consider him one of the greatest poets of all time! So in his earlier poems, I look for the signs of that developing greatest, even when he sounds like someone else, and see what the gain was for him there. The bigness of his greatness was already there and I deliberately look for it and try to see beyond whatever might be influencing him at the time. But if I said, "Is this a good or bad poem?" It's slams the doors of perception and I feel that sometimes readers miss a lot and they are too unforgiving when his early efforts do not match the later period when he was in his total mastery.
If the word was changed to "african american" of even something like "black brother", I would still find it a bad poem...
But that is only my opinion.
Thanks for your opinion. I respect it. I would close by saying that the poem would never have worked for me without the super-charged "O, big nigger...", because there would be a lack of tension within the poem and nothing to play off of for dramatic effect... it would have been too politically correct to cause such much of a ripple, and the poem only works for me because of Bukowski's youthful development and the period in which it was written. Please forgive the typos. Best wishes.
Gerald K H Love,
Thanks for your comments. It's a strange thing. I feel a great sense of gratitude to this man for what he went through and the legacy he left behind. That's why he interests me so, I believe in giving back to life to "replenish the well."
B. qualified all his Matrix poems as "desultory."
That may be true... but he had to write them anyway, didn't he?, as part of his development and mastery. He wrote them anyway, desultory or not - and he already had command of the keyboard: vivid use of language, the risk-taking, a sense of drama and expanse, and his semi-colons were in the right place. He might have been struggling with form and focus, but not of
language. There's still much to appreciate, and that's why these poems are part of his hidden development period, where he was taking in more than giving out and he's seeking more experience under his belt... I think readers sometimes expect so much of him that they are too harsh in their judgments because his later works have such mastery. That's why I've felt for a long time that he's probably
glad some of those early stories and poems have been lost to oblivion; but he even had to write the so-called 'bad' poems to evolve into the great ones and that makes them of
lasting value, at least to me... I truly believe that it's only by sidestepping the good/bad assessment of his works that one can see what he perhaps missed or forgot about himself - because we all know how it turned out for him... I think it's clear that he was a serious f'n writer from the beginning - greatness was his destiny! and something drove him - but no one springs from the head of Zeus fully formed but the gods....Poptop.
