hey everyone, just joined because I'd been a lurker to your community for a while and I really felt like I should join in. I'm a huge bukowski fan and have read most of his books from ecco and black sparrow. I am just recently getting into the bookworm style of searching for rare or unreleased materials. I am stuck here wondering what is it about bukowski that we all love? I can not pinpoint why I am fascinated with this guy but maybe that's why I'm here.
new member (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Thomas
- Start date
Thomas said:
(In lieu of doing any useful work, momentarily, I will answer your question): He was one of perhaps nine or ten people throughout recorded history that lived life completely on his own terms, given the world that he was presented with. He, if anyone, could have turned out to be (as he said?wrote?on a few occasions) a serial killer and a brute of the lowest order. Instead, though his body was wracked with painful sores (the story of Job comes to mind), face scarred, beaten by a cruel, vicious parent (I won?t denigrate the word ?father? by using it here), misunderstood by almost everyone around him; he turned his frustration and honesty, his unfettered vision of what real life is truly about, and formidable talent into words that are just now beginning to seep into the mainstream. And, as time goes on, I feel he will be known as the most important writer of his century?chronicling an America and a world that is, basically, a total absurdity.
As anti-social as he said he was, look at how he really belies his words by being kind to those idiots that would phone him and drop in to drink his beer (at least until he got so fed-up that he threw them out). He made it safe for ?real men? to feel something, to confront a relatively sensitive thought?and read (and write) poetry, of all things! For all his double-fistedness, there was a ?bluebird in his heart?, and many wrote to him about how, having read his work, they were enabled to continue on in their dead-end jobs, seeing a light, a spark of hope in the stupidity of it all. His was a heart of great humanity that needed the aloneness to take it all down.
Even in the book ?The Captain is Out...?, when his words seem bitter, there is an underlying joy and celebration of life that comes strongly through?and this was written as he was dying. I?d better stop here (I could go on; some work has to be done today), but his is a story and philosophy that transcend the modest wrappings in which they were couched. He did it for everyone, and I?m much glad he did. In my forthcoming book, ?my nuts in the vice of Life?, I examine these issues further, but I hope I have answered your question here, to a degree.
SD
thomas
bukowski made poetry of bums digging a shallow for their sleeping - hollowing out a groove in the hard dirt for a shoulder...laughing at the five o'clock exodus...being asleep before 'the bastards' reached home...
each time i begin to feel i understand the moderns i listen to him - he reminds me that english teachers make the worst poets!
peace
rrat
bukowski made poetry of bums digging a shallow for their sleeping - hollowing out a groove in the hard dirt for a shoulder...laughing at the five o'clock exodus...being asleep before 'the bastards' reached home...
each time i begin to feel i understand the moderns i listen to him - he reminds me that english teachers make the worst poets!
peace
rrat
