One for the Shoeshine Man (1 Viewer)

zobraks

Reaper Crew
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One for the Shoeshine Man is a well-known poem and H. Sounes used a line from it as (a part of) the title of his book Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life. Are those words that Sounes used Bukowski's words or someone else's?


From Love Is a Dog from Hell (1977):

Locked LIaDfH.jpg



From LA Free Press 568, June 6-12, 1975 (unchanged in On Love and Essential Bukowski: Poetry):

Locked LAFP.jpg
 
One for the Shoeshine Man is one of the rare cases where I prefer the Black Sparrow version of the poem. It feels tighter and more fluent. The two appearances above differ in a lot of passages, not only in the one Dr. Zobraks pointed out. Maybe Bukowski himself reworked the original.
 
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I haven't compared the whole poems yet, it just struck me that the famous & familiar line "locked in the arms of the crazy life" (which I like very much and kinda prefer to "locked into the afternoon of a crazy life") hadn't been present in the original/first published version, so I (kinda) had to act immediately.

These days I'm reading LA Free Press back issues from the Independent Voices archive, and I just bumped into this famous poem.

Maybe Bukowski himself reworked the original.
I most sincerely hope so.
 

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