Linda King - Sweet & Dirty (1 Viewer)

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SWEET & DIRTY
by Linda King

© 1972, 1974, 2013 Linda King

Sweet & Dirty by Linda King is re-issued by Hcolom and Vagabond Press in collaboration with outlawpoetry.com and printed in France. Cover design by Cindy Krieble.

Linda King showed up in the Vagabond Press mailbox, unsolicited, back in 1972, in Redwood City, California. I'd never heard of her before, but the poems she sent had fire and were free of pretension. I wrote asking if she might have enough material for a chapbook, and she sent the manuscript for Sweet & Dirty. It was only then that I realized she was connected to Bukowski.

Vagabond published the book, to the delight of some and the disgust of others. Most of what we published tended to draw these extreme reactions. It was a short press run and was gone in a flash.

True to its name, Vagabond was always on the move --- Munich, D.C., New Orleans, San Francisco, etc., and in 1974, in Ellensburg, Washington, we brought out a second edition of Sweet & Dirty. It too was gone in a flash.

It's now 2013 with lots of water under the bridge. I hadn't thought about Sweet & Dirty in a long time, and then Herr Klaus of Outlaw Poetry, a powerhouse literary web site operating out of France, contacted me with the request to bring out a third edition.

I agreed, Linda agreed, and here it is. The poems in Sweet & Dirty still have their fire, and also, I realize now, their innocence.

What goes around comes around.

John Bennett - Ellensburg, WA, August 10, 2013

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LINDA KING
was raised in the small (population, 100) Mormon town of Boulder, Utah, on a cattle ranch. Her father ran cattle on rugged mountain and canyon terrain, using his five daughters as cowboys and hay hands. Her mother owned the only store in town, supplying everything anyone needed: groceries, hardware, cowboy hats and saddle blankets. Linda attended the University of Utah for one year before moving to Los Angeles where she married an Italian/American from Boston whom she'd met when she was sixteen. Two children, a divorce, and then she met Charles Bukowski. This was back in the Seventies.

Linda now lives in San Francisco. Her recent books are Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski, and Mad Ouija, a book about her breakdown in the Sixties, both from Kisskill Press, P.O. Box 320563, S.F., CA 84132. An excerpt from Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski is scheduled for publication in the anthology American Woman on the Edge.

Linda sculpts busts of poets, writers and artists, and her living space is overflowing with her sculptures of nudes. She hopes to be leaving San Francisco soon to find a less-costly place in the world to live. Where, she says, is anyone's guess.

The book is available here: http://outlawpoetry.com/2013/09/23/linda-king-sweet-dirty/
 
What's with the Linda King hate on this forum? Not read her poetry books, but Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski was a good read and well written, and her stuff in there seemed decent.
 
What was wrong with it?
You said it was "well written." It was not. Bad writing aside, I didn't even find it compelling storytelling. I don't have any bias against Linda King, I don't know her. And I was looking forward to reading her memoir. Unfortunately it was disappointing on every level.
 
Inscribed and signed by Linda King on the title page: "How many cupcakes can a man eat."

Imagine still saying ridiculous, competitive, keep-your-hands-off-my-man! shit like that 40 years after the fact. Imagine being the penny grubbing douche pickle who asks her to sign anything related to Bukowski, 40 years after the fact. But that's another subject.


Dear Linda King,

You lost. Linda Beighle bested you. She won. She got the prize that you clearly still think should have been yours. Please accept that fact. You are not "the real Linda Bukowski."

And stop defacing other author's books, fer chrissakes.

Sincerely, your pal,

mjp
 
the idea that a linda king signature enhances the value of any of these books makes no sense to me, perhaps with the exception of mockingbird (which is dedicated to her) or... and we're really stretching here... women, which contains a chapter about a character based on her. other than that, defacing is exactly what it is.
 
Dear Linda King,

You lost. Linda Beighle bested you. She won. She got the prize that you clearly still think should have been yours. Please accept that fact. You are not "the real Linda Bukowski."

And stop defacing other author's books, fer chrissakes.

Sincerely, your pal,

mjp

classic!

i dare you to sign her book with that and send it to her! :DD
 
I enjoyed Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski, but agree the book desperately needs editing, and the later part is unfocused and could use a rewrite. I think it's an interesting document by someone who knew Buk well. Her signing of other people's books doesn't mean anything to me one way or the other, but that's just me.
 
Signing other people's books...wow, personally never seen that one before. She's really playing up that one-time girlfriend card for all it's worth! That's some catty shit with the inscription as well.
 

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