So, what other poets get you like Bukowski does? (1 Viewer)

I lose track of poets, find them in used book stores (on the shelf, where else?) and on the web with no visible means of support (the web being just "out there").

Fred Voss made me laugh. Found this on a Leonard Cohen web forum of all places:

Rough Job - Fred Voss

The machinist who tried to kill himself
because he couldn't stop crying like a girl
when he was on PCP;
the machinist holding up the pussy magazine
in front of his face
to be sure everyone knows he's staring at it;
the machinist in a constant rage
because his wife won't give him a blowjob;
the machinist telling everyone how much he hates
the queers on the 2nd tier of the L.A. County Jail;
the machinist who walks around with a tape measure
pulled out to 12 to 15 inches
and held in front of his fly;
the machinist who wears a hat saying 'U.S. Male'
and smokes big cigars
and weightlifts steel bars and arbors
while his machine runs:

being a man in a machine shop
is not easy.
 
I don't know what others like, but I like Al Purdy.

The Dead Poet

I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming:
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still


The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
- how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from?


Now on my wanderings:
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
- and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
- at Samarkand in pale blue light
the words came slowly from him
- I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths


Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen
that great whoop announcing resurrection
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from
 

I went to this guys website and read one poem. Ain't never going back.

He has a blinking/flashing animation figure on the right side of his page. Those things are annoying as hell.

I can't believe this guy, a poet no less, put that on his website. It's a major distraction that alot of people find annoying. Commercial advertisers like Mastercard and Hertz Rent-a-Car love using it in order to distract the reader from the main text with the intention of luring them over to their product. And this guys a chemist? Utterly ridiculous. Ain't never going back to his websiter ever again unless he ditches it.
 
maybe there is a problem with your computer but the animation is not blinking or flashing on my computer. Never has. It does change a bit, but it does not distract me. Also, it is not like a cheap gif that he stole off of the internet.

Still, I don't think that he'll change his website in the hopes that one reader will come back and read his poems.

Bill
 
I went to this guys website and read one poem. Ain't never going back.
He has a blinking/flashing animation figure on the right side of his page. Those things are annoying as hell.

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I went to this guys website and read one poem. Ain't never going back.
He has a blinking/flashing animation figure on the right side of his page. Those things are annoying as hell.

this is why magpies shouldn't read poetry. easily distracted by shiny things.
 
poetry is something that you hopefully find in somebody else's dustbin. it is all a worthless waste of time and paper and there has probably not been a poem ever written that wouldn't have been better off shoved straight into the poet's mouth with a teaspoon of tabasco sauce.
 
poetry is something that you hopefully find in somebody else's dustbin. it is all a worthless waste of time and paper and there has probably not been a poem ever written that wouldn't have been better off shoved straight into the poet's mouth with a teaspoon of tabasco sauce.

Wot a jar of poo.
 
i'm curious as to why you think all poetry is worthless. i used to think poetry was crap until i realised i just hadn't been reading any good stuff.
 
oh, I just like to make these sweeping generalistions every now and then. I would exchange every poem ever written for a regular supply of running water. it's all about marginal utility, as the economists say, and because we take so much for granted we think that poetry has some worth beyond the paper and ink used up to make it.

pulp the lot of it & recycle it into something useful, especially those signed first editions !
 
oh, I just like to make these sweeping generalistions every now and then. I would exchange every poem ever written for a regular supply of running water. it's all about marginal utility, as the economists say, and because we take so much for granted we think that poetry has some worth beyond the paper and ink used up to make it.

pulp the lot of it & recycle it into something useful, especially those signed first editions !

You don't seem to like poetry, so why do you like Bukowski? Or do you like Bukowski?

Bill
 
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.


Mjp, I don't know what a troll is but I suspect it's meant as a derogatory term. I don't go in for personal attacks and I'll leave it to your imagination as to what I think of those that do.
 
Mjp, I don't know what a troll is but I suspect it's meant as a derogatory term. I don't go in for personal attacks and I'll leave it to your imagination as to what I think of those that do.


A troll is someone that posts derrogatory and inflammatory subjects and responses on forums with the purpose of causing trouble.

Imagine someone going on a forum that discusses the Holocaust and pretending to be a neo-nazi and posting things just to upset the group. A troll would just make up whatever suited the cause, which is causing trouble and laughing at the havoc that they caused.

Troll seem odd to me, as they seem to like to just enjoy causing other people discomfort and don't seem to have interests other that chaos.

I'm not accusing you of being a troll, only explaining what one is since you asked.

Bill
 
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so on a Bukowski forum it's "out of bounds" to call poetry worthless ? or to say that the idea of "inspiration" or "influence" has created the situation in American writing that I mentioned in the other thread & which you ignored completely ? even if I think it's true ?

I am quite amazed.
 
Amiri Baraka gets lost in his own ass sometimes, and a lot of his performance-style poems don't work on paper when he's trying to write how jazz music sounds, but when he gets down and dirty he's got a death-grip on your guts like Buk at his angry best:

An Agony, As Now

I am inside someone
who hates me. I look
out from his eyes. Smell
what fouled tunes come in
to his breath. Love his
wretched women.

Slits in the metal, for sun. Where
my eyes sit turning, at the cool air
the glance of light, or hard flesh
rubbed against me, a woman, a man
without shadow, or voice, or meaning.

This is the enclosure (flesh,
where innocence is a weapon. An
abstraction. Touch. (Not mine.
Or yours, if you are the soul I had
and abandoned when I was blind and had
my enemies carry me as a dead man
(if he is beautiful or pitied.

It can be pain. (As now, as all his
flesh hurts me.) It can be that. Or
pain. As when she ran from me into
that forest
Or pain, the mind
silver spiraled whirled against the
sun, higher than even old men thought
God would be. Or pain. And the other. The
yes. (Inside his books, his fingers. They
are withered yellow flowers and were never
beautiful.) The yes. You will, lost soul, say
'beauty.' Beauty, practiced, as the tree. The
slow river. A white sun in its wet sentences.

Or, the cold men in their gale. Ecstasy. Flesh
or soul. The yes. (Their robes blown. Their bowls
empty. They chant at my heels, not at yours.) Flesh
or soul, as corrupt. Where the answer moves too quickly.
Where the God is a self, after all.)

Cold air blown through narrow blind eyes. Flesh,
white hot metal. Glows as the day with its sun.
It is a human love. I live inside. A bony skeleton
you recognize as words or simple feeling.

But it has no feeling. As the metal is hot, it is not, given to love.

It burns the thing
inside it. And that thing
screams.

Of course, I'm a great lover of the Triumvirate of American Lyricists, that of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits.

Take Cohen's Democracy, for example:

It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.

It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.


--or Waits' 9th and Hennepin:

Well it's 9th and Hennepin
And all the donuts have
Names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon's teeth marks are
On the sky like a tarp thrown over all this
And the broken umbrellas like
Dead birds and the steam
Comes out of the grill like
The whole goddamned town is ready to blow.
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs.
And the horses are coming down Violin Road
And Dutch is dead on his feet
And the rooms all smell like diesel
And you take on the
Dreams of the ones who have slept here.
And I'm lost in the window
I hide on the stairway
I hang in the curtain
I sleep in your hat
And no one brings anything
Small into a bar around here.
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear,
One for every year he's away she said, such
A crumbling beauty, but there's
Nothing wrong with her that
$100 won't fix, she has that razor sadness
That only gets worse
With the clang and thunder of the
Southern Pacific going by
As the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
Till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out
Over the side to anyone who'll listen
And I've seen it
All through the yellow windows
Of the evening train.

I'm not gonna pull a Bob Dylan song 'cause it'd be a little cliche, but you know what I'm talkin' about.

Another favorite is the deceased Seattle poet Steven Jesse Bernstein. His stuff generally works best spoken, but here's a wee sample:

The Difference

There are poets stuck
to the underside of the chair
by their fingers. If you
give them string they will
put it in their mouth and
it will come out sticky.
That is as close to being
spiders as they can get.
And, there are bugs
under my fingers, bouncing
them across the keys
like Mexican jumping beans.
That's as close to being
a poet as I can get.
The difference between me
and most insects is that I approach
the truly sexless, while
they approach the truly heartless.
The difference between
me and most poets
is I am really a spider.
 
I just read his poems, "The Void" and "One Life". I liked them. There was a bit of a Buk feel to them...
 
if that Denander barcode is mine, then it is a good chance that it will not read. I have had quite a time with barcodes and isbns...

Bill
 

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