Midatlantic Vol. 3, No. 11 (1979) (1 Viewer)

[Pogue Mahone]

Here is It's Easy and Trouble In The Ghetto from Midatlantic Vol. 3, No. 11 (1979).

Both sound a little familiar to me, but the titles are not listed in the database.

The third poem is Funny Man, which was collected in “the night torn mad with footsteps,” but I’m including it here because it was so severely butchered. I’m pretty numb to the editing by now, but this one is just so bad on so many levels…

Perhaps the worst (of many):

Original:
when you looked into their irises you could see the back walls of their heads where suspicious flicks of downcast mould were imbedded…

Edited:
when you looked hard into their eyes you could see just a shadow of doubt in the back of their brains…

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Both sound a little familiar to me, but the titles are not listed in the database.

Sorry, they are in the database. I meant to say they are not associated with any books as collected in the database (with these titles)... Must get more sleep...

 

[mjp]

"it's easy" turned in to "my girlfriend says it's all so easy" in The Night Torn Mad With Footsteps.
"Trouble in the ghetto" is in the manuscript section and one of the Machinegun books.

If you think "funny man" has been murdered, you really don't want to compare "it's easy."

I could have been
like them

the good and the magic people
are everywhere.​

Becomes:

if I hadn’t been retarded
I could have been
like them:

the handy and successful magic people
everywhere!​

That's right, if I hadn't been retarded.

And of course every other line has been pissed on too.

 

[zobraks]

Jesus.

 

[Andreas]

I've somehow overlooked this letter to John Martin, in which Bukowski got a lot of things straight. This was before he knew what Martin did with Women, so I really wonder why Bukowski didn't split with him in early 1979. It was obvious that Martin lacked any respect and understanding, and that he simply overestimated himself.
I guess after Women Martin understood that he had to slow down his mission. Until Bukowski died.

 

[skiroomalum]

John Martin is an extremely lucky and incredibly passive-aggressive (read: bitter and frightened)
man who finally got to fuck Hank over the way he wanted to. Marvin Malone was a mensch and keeps
looking better and better all the time. Wormwood was/is as good a poetry mag as has ever been.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

I've somehow overlooked this letter to John Martin, in which Bukowski got a lot of things straight.

This one was in On Writing, along with some other gems on the same subject, one dating back to Post Office. It made me think Able must have come across at least a dozen more on the subject, but it didn't make sense to print all of them, given the book's subject. Has anyone asked him about that?

Trouble in the ghetto" is in the manuscript section and one of the Machinegun books.

Can some explain what the Machinegun books are? I checked the threads in the past after seeing the references in the database, but not sure I have the whole picture. I assume someone put an "underground" print book together based on manuscripts, but don't know who and when. (Maybe asking "the who" is not appropriate.)

 

[mjp]

Can some explain what the Machinegun books are?

There are links in the timeline to those books. They're definitely taken from the manuscripts here. As to who did them, I don't know. There was a long stretch between volume 1 and volume 2, so I didn't think they'd actually continue, but it looks like they will.

They come from a print-on-demand place, but the quality is actually pretty good. They're chunky books - the last one is 300+ pages - and the manuscript transcriptions seem to be spot on. There are good notes in the back of all of them too that list which books and magazines each poem appeared in (if any).

I can't recommend them, because they're, you know, bootlegs, but I recommend them.