Non-Bukowski poetry recommendations? (1 Viewer)

Hmm, so far I've yet to find any poets whose work comes anywhere close to Buk's. I do like the Russian guys Yeveny Yevtushenko & Vladimir Mayakovsky & W.Whitman is great, but most of the poetry I've tried (inc. the classics) seems overly self-indulgent/romantic/lyrical...or about nature (I love nature - but it can speak for itself)

So...any great poets a Bukowski fan might like? (I tried a couple of the guys Buk name-checks but at this point Jeffers is the only one I liked)
 
My favorite poet after Buk is Nazim Hikmet. It's non-rhyming stuff that's translated from the Turkish. Some of the themes are bit more mainstream than Buk's, but he was a political prisoner for a good number of years, so if he mentions a flower, it's typically in the context of what he remembers it to look like in contrast to his current fate. I sense a bit of Dostoevsky when I read some of these.

Also, there's Jospeh Brodsky - don't discount him just because he won a Nobel Prize for literature. ;)

The problem here is that of translation; just how faithful are the poems?

Lastly, consider looking at some issues of Wormwood Review if you want something that's more "outside the mainstream" and contemporary to Buk. Our own David Barker and Gerald Locklin are but two of the regular contributors.
 
Donald Hall
Stephen Dobyns
Frank O'Hara
Alan Dugan

um...I'll be back.
_____________________________________________________________

I'm back. and dammit, I was trying to find the name of this poet I read recently. can't find it. but there was this one poem she wrote that blew me away, as in 'hell, I may never type again.'

and I can't remember her name. which pisses me off for a couple reasons: 1. I can't recommend her, 2. I can't buy her stuff.

ah well.

anyway...

Adrienne Rich
Philip Schultz
 
Thanks guys. I have been looking through the recommendations. Ones that particularly jump out at me have been by Frank O'Hara (I like the sound of the pocketbook Lunch Poems) and Nazim Hikmet, though I imagine his work is harder to find.

Regarding Raymond Carver, how does the poetry compare with the prose? I have a couple of his short-story collections (What We Talk About When We Talk ABout Love & Short Cuts)
I totally forgot he wrote poetry aswell. Any particular books by him? or is it more or less all good?
 
Issa, and Li Po.

Carver's poems "Shiftless" and "My Boat" are pretty damn good. But I'd take the short stories over the poems if I had to pick.

Other Buk contemporaries (besides Barker & Locklin) that are still getting it done today: Winans, Doug Draime, Richard Krech, Anne Menebroker, Kell Robertson, and the late Albert Huffstickler.
 
Beyond Bukowski, I hardly ever re-read books of poetry, by any other author. So as far poetry goes, my book collection doesn't contain many poets. However even though I'd never consider him a favorite, I've really enjoyed some Jim Carroll books. Even read some more than once.
 
on any given day of the week:

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anyone read this?

found it in the library years ago and remember it being good.


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A Sane Revolution
If you make a revolution, make it for fun,​
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,​
don't do it in deadly earnest,​
do it for fun.​
Don't do it because you hate people,​
do it just to spit in their eye.​
Don't do it for the money,​
do it and be damned to the money.​
Don't do it for equality,​
do it because we've got too much equality​
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart​
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.​
Don't do it for the working classes.​
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own​
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.​
Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.​
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.​
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!​
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.​
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!​
D H Lawrence​
 
Elizabeth Smart is worth checking out, she didn't write loads, but she's brilliant. Also another dead English female poet, Stevie Smith. Don't know if these poets' stuff is at all known in the States..
 
Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.
That's it ! My new band's name is Jolly Escaped Asses. Thank you D.H..
 
Elizabeth Smart! By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept Elizabeth Smart? Cool.

A Bonus

That day i finished
A small piece
For an obscure magazine
I popped it in the box

And such a starry elation
Came over me
That I got whistled at in the street
For the first time in a long time.

I was dirty and roughly dressed
And had circles under my eyes
And far far from flirtation
But so full of completion
Of a deed duly done
An act of consummation
That the freedom and force it engendered
Shone and spun
Out of my old raincoat.

It must have looked like love
Or a fabulous free holiday
To the young men sauntering
Down Berwick Street.
I still think this is most mysterious
For while I was writing it
It was gritty it felt like self-abuse
Constipation, desperately unsocial.
But done done done
Everything in the world
Flowed back
Like a huge bonus.


Elizabeth Smart
 
That Elizabeth Smart poem is dead on. The D H Lawrence one just made me think "...yeah, and then a lot of people get killed." Advocating a fun revolution is like wishing for a happy war. Or am I reading it too seriously? If it was Gregory Corso, maybe I'd see the humor in it. Speaking of revolutions, I hope the army stays on the side of the people in Egypt and don't go Tiananmen Square on them.
 
Top of my head
Douglas Goodwin (worth hunting down)
Dan Fante's kissed by a fat waitress
Fred Voss
Tony O'Neill's Songs From the Shooting Gallery
 

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