cirerita
Founding member
Unpublished poem sent to Malanga in 1962. I found this poem during my recent research trip to the States, that is, after I had finished my dissertation. Not a bad poem, certainly better than some of the poems published in the newest Ecco collection.
From Who's Big in the Littles (2009 thesis):
From Who's Big in the Littles (2009 thesis):
Bukowski submitted a group of poems to Gerard Malanga in 1962 for their publication in Wagner Literary Magazine [...] In a February 1963 letter to Jon Webb, when he was assembling It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, Bukowski mentioned his submission to Malanga; apparently, the nine poems were to be published by Rizzoli in a volume titled An Anthology of Modern American Poems (McCormick: Outsider, 9 Feb. 1963), but the project was cancelled. Similarly to "Murder" / "The Blanket," these poems would endure a long publishing journey before being eventually collected in a book. The nine poems submitted to Malanga were titled thus: "The Bumblebee;" "The Damnation of Recognition;" "Alcatraz;" "The Death of a Bee in the Grass Along Mariposa Ave;" all of them unpublished to date with those titles; "That's Where They Came From," first published in Intransit (1968) and then in The Reater in the late 90s; "It Is Very Good to Know When You Are Done," published in Intransit, and collected in the night torn mad with footsteps (2001); "Poem for Brigitte Bardot," printed in Intransit, The Reater, and finally in the night torn mad with footsteps; "My Real Love in Athens," which appeared in Nadada in 1964 and has not been collected; and "Corrections of Self, Mostly After Whitman," which had already been accepted by Signet when Bukowski sent it to Malanga. Both Nadada and Intransit were co-edited by Malanga, the latter featuring Andy Warhol's artwork on the front cover. This long journey through the "littles" could be taken as a metaphor of Bukowski's own literary career: he would need decades of rejection and acceptance by alternative publications and small presses before being finally acknowledged as a major figure in American letters. Malanga himself would stress his contribution to Bukowski's recognition: "early on, when I was an undergraduate at Wagner College in Staten island, N.Y. ... I was in a position to be one of Buk's earliest supporter/promoters and through the 1960s my endeavors continued where I was able to finally publish his poetry" (Malanga). Malanga would publish Bukowski again in the Transatlantic Review #52 (1975), edited by Joseph F. McCrindle, in a special section of the magazine titled "An Anthology of New American Poetry," where Bukowski appeared alongside Allen Ginsberg, David Ignatow, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many other well-known authors.