Review of Bukowski in New Yorker (1 Viewer)

I've read this one before. I remembered, when I read the following lines

"Bukowski is best read as a very skillful genre writer. He bears the same relation to poetry as Zane Grey does to fiction, or Ayn Rand to philosophy"”a highly colored, morally uncomplicated cartoon of the real thing."

I thought it bullshit then and think it bullshit now. "Morally uncomplicated"? And where oh where is the "real thing" in poetry, where should we go when the "cartoon" wears thin? He never tells us. Yeats? Keats? Ezra Pound?

Bullshit.
 
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agreed...either the critic have superficial knowledge of his work, or have never lived day of a life of the common working man - most likely it's both.
 
Man... all I had to do was read the first paragraph to get a feel for the elitist douchebaggery that followed:

In the third edition of "The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry," in which poets appear in order of birth, the class of 1920 fields a strong team, including Howard Nemerov and Amy Clampitt. If you were to browse the poetry section of any large bookstore, you would probably find a book or two by each of those critically esteemed, prize-winning poets. Nowhere to be found in the canonizing Norton anthology, however, is the man who occupies the most shelf space of any American poet: Charles Bukowski. Bukowski's books make up a burly phalanx, with their stark covers and long, lurid titles: "Love Is a Dog from Hell"; "Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit." They give the impression of an aloof, possibly belligerent empire in the middle of the republic of letters.

Oh, boo-hoo ! Our precious Nemerovs and Clampitts have been pushed aside !

Suck my "burly phalanx". Puh-leeze...
 
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"Love is a dog from hell", is not a long title, I think. He could've found a better example, but what can you expect from an elitist douchebag. Not much, I'm afraid.
 
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