The Half Moon, No. 1, Summer 1959 (1 Viewer)

Jason

Founding member
Here are scans of THE HALF MOON, No. 1, edited by Richard Kelly (Long Island, Summer 1959) which includes Bukowski's uncollected poem “An Odd Day Destroying Beauty–” (Dorbin C36)

mags_halfmoon01.jpg


mags_halfmoon02.jpg
 
Thanks for posting these scans Jason. The Buk poem scan came up a little hard to read on my end, but I know "Destroying Beauty" well so it's all gravy.

my bad, open in a new window and it's clear as day...doh!?! First day with the internets it seems.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The collected version has a better (tighter) start and title.

Thanks for the chance to compare!
 
The collected version has a better (tighter) start and title.

Thanks for the chance to compare!

Was this collected? What was the title?
...
Oh got it, nevermind
"Destroying Beauty"

Books
The Roominghouse Madrigals - pg. 256 - 1988
The Pleasures of the Damned - pg. 356 - 2007
 
Do we suspect that poems collected in volumes were generally changed or edited from their first appearance in magazines? Manuscripts have been compared but what about magazine appearances?
 
My take on this is that Buk did edit some of the mag appearances. Often they were re-worked with new titles (thereby creating a popsicle headache for those of us who like to seek out unpublished poems in the magazines only to learn that it was published under another title, slightly re-worked otherwise - but the database has been constantly catching up on these title variants) and minor edits. Then again, there are a boatload of Wormwood and NYQ poems that are collected pretty much as they appeared in the mags. It is generally regarded that minimal one-hour Martinizing (remember the Saturday Night Live skit?) took place on those poems released pre-1994; thus, changes to titles and re-workings may well have been Buk's intentions. Then again, one can never be sure.
 
Do we suspect that poems collected in volumes were generally changed or edited from their first appearance in magazines? Manuscripts have been compared but what about magazine appearances?
A lot of magazine appearances have been compared, but there isn't a field in the magazine tables to indicate that. So the database can't tell you if there's a variation there. And I'm not really interested in adding such a comparison, because there is no way to know if a magazine appearance is true to a manuscript when we don't have a manuscript.

Bukowski reworked and recycled poems throughout his career, but evidence points to less of that kind of thing in his later career when he was writing a lot more poems and being published in a lot more places.

The kind of changes made to the poem here could be chalked up to a lot of things, Bukowski's own hand being one. The changes in the posthumously published work is an entirely different animal. I think when you're broaching this subject you have to look at it as two separate eras, when he was alive and after he died. The "rules" for one era don't apply to the other.
 
Bukowski reworked and recycled poems throughout his career...
But maybe not until the 70s.

I have a letter he wrote to the Webbs where he says he doesn't even remember something for the touts, the nuns, the grocery clerks and you, which went on to be published in at least six places, and there's this letter from December of 1960:

Dec-1960a.jpg
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top