Thanks for your encouragement PhillyDave <3
LET'S LOOK AT "Cold Summer" --- which I will post below this micro-response for convenience --- this poem exhibits an uncanny evenness of tone. Poetic tone is incredibly hard to achieve. Like master musicians, master poets achieve the greatest and most subtle effects by what is NOT done in the space of the artwork, since, at the end of the day, there is only the work, there is only what is written upon the page. The mind of the audience and even the poet can go many places but the stark and objective reality of the material etched and impressed into manifest reality is what sings, is what comes into being (continually, each time the poem is visited). And in this respect I consider Bukowski a strong branch of the OBJECTIVIST tree. Exemplified with mastery by poet Robert Creeley, whose sparse and at times terse, utterly realistic and POTENTIALLY heart breaking works approximate Buk's profound concern with "what simply is." I say potentially because Creeley exhibits a reticence which Buk foregoes, in the , matter of choice for deciding what is savory or unsavory as material for poetic content. How then to avoid the reductival sense of the vulgar? Poets have focused upon beauty in the same way humans focus upon physical beauty to search for potential mates. The pleasure of the text is also the basking in the perfectly uncommon reaction of joy one discovers within upon having the mind activate a peculiarly fresh and powerful turn of phrase, reminding self to delve deeper, and with freedom.
So "Cold Summer" exhibits so much paradox allied to forward momentum. Even in the title! Of course summers are not meant to be cold, but the very word summer implies the autumn, and the setting for chronology's devastating importance in regards to modernity is squarely put forth by Bukowski. Aware that the 20th century and beyond heavily prizes its gadgets and achievements, Bukowski wisely placates the masses as it were by referencing time and the passage of time in seasonal aspect in the title.
Focus concern upon the busyness of the doctor in the poem and we can see the potential conflict of interest and ethical mandate Buk's great human awareness presents. Doctors are not supposed to be too busy to save lives, but here we have it. Anxiety and SORGE, existential dread, the thought that the world itself might be stacked against you (a fundamental tenet in Bukowski's so-called cynical work) is revealed. Yet Bukowski is NOT cynical. The Nobel Prize winning poet Eugenio Montale once said, "I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?" It is not that Charles Bukowski is a nihilist pessimist Debbie Downer, it is that he is actually worried about the choices humanity has made, large-scale, and may continue to make, unless it wakes up to the peril it has embodied, most blatantly revealed in the circumstance of its least fortunate members (and this resonates with Judao-Christian ideals in fixation upon the poor and disenfranchised). This poem paints a portrait with such technical mastery, ease of expression, sincerity of conviction, it certainly hearkens back to the Chinese Poet Masters its author so loved.
Bukowski's cultural genius is registered with astonishing clarity, "I am sorry for my wife, I am / sorry for everybody's / wife." The line breaks are magnificent: highlighting HIS wife being the EVERYWIFE but ultimately, too, being EVERYBODY. As the pre-received biases we all contend and live with in our day and age have always, already stacked the cards of power on behalf of one thing or another at the expense of its rival. Yet back in the very title we are reminded that life is struggle, even for the life of a season of our world. A summer can be cold, and every summer must yield to autumn. It is this quiet raging against AND WITH the cosmos and the human situation within it that so intruiges me in regard to this master poet!!!!
LET'S LOOK AT "Cold Summer" --- which I will post below this micro-response for convenience --- this poem exhibits an uncanny evenness of tone. Poetic tone is incredibly hard to achieve. Like master musicians, master poets achieve the greatest and most subtle effects by what is NOT done in the space of the artwork, since, at the end of the day, there is only the work, there is only what is written upon the page. The mind of the audience and even the poet can go many places but the stark and objective reality of the material etched and impressed into manifest reality is what sings, is what comes into being (continually, each time the poem is visited). And in this respect I consider Bukowski a strong branch of the OBJECTIVIST tree. Exemplified with mastery by poet Robert Creeley, whose sparse and at times terse, utterly realistic and POTENTIALLY heart breaking works approximate Buk's profound concern with "what simply is." I say potentially because Creeley exhibits a reticence which Buk foregoes, in the , matter of choice for deciding what is savory or unsavory as material for poetic content. How then to avoid the reductival sense of the vulgar? Poets have focused upon beauty in the same way humans focus upon physical beauty to search for potential mates. The pleasure of the text is also the basking in the perfectly uncommon reaction of joy one discovers within upon having the mind activate a peculiarly fresh and powerful turn of phrase, reminding self to delve deeper, and with freedom.
So "Cold Summer" exhibits so much paradox allied to forward momentum. Even in the title! Of course summers are not meant to be cold, but the very word summer implies the autumn, and the setting for chronology's devastating importance in regards to modernity is squarely put forth by Bukowski. Aware that the 20th century and beyond heavily prizes its gadgets and achievements, Bukowski wisely placates the masses as it were by referencing time and the passage of time in seasonal aspect in the title.
Focus concern upon the busyness of the doctor in the poem and we can see the potential conflict of interest and ethical mandate Buk's great human awareness presents. Doctors are not supposed to be too busy to save lives, but here we have it. Anxiety and SORGE, existential dread, the thought that the world itself might be stacked against you (a fundamental tenet in Bukowski's so-called cynical work) is revealed. Yet Bukowski is NOT cynical. The Nobel Prize winning poet Eugenio Montale once said, "I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?" It is not that Charles Bukowski is a nihilist pessimist Debbie Downer, it is that he is actually worried about the choices humanity has made, large-scale, and may continue to make, unless it wakes up to the peril it has embodied, most blatantly revealed in the circumstance of its least fortunate members (and this resonates with Judao-Christian ideals in fixation upon the poor and disenfranchised). This poem paints a portrait with such technical mastery, ease of expression, sincerity of conviction, it certainly hearkens back to the Chinese Poet Masters its author so loved.
Bukowski's cultural genius is registered with astonishing clarity, "I am sorry for my wife, I am / sorry for everybody's / wife." The line breaks are magnificent: highlighting HIS wife being the EVERYWIFE but ultimately, too, being EVERYBODY. As the pre-received biases we all contend and live with in our day and age have always, already stacked the cards of power on behalf of one thing or another at the expense of its rival. Yet back in the very title we are reminded that life is struggle, even for the life of a season of our world. A summer can be cold, and every summer must yield to autumn. It is this quiet raging against AND WITH the cosmos and the human situation within it that so intruiges me in regard to this master poet!!!!
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