The Shit Shits (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
Not Chinaski; Klienholtz! (Who?)

A copy of the 1970 Runcible Spoon on display at the Huntington inspired me to dig out my copy and give it a read. Unfortunately for you, I can't just read it and shut up.

Three of the poems are uncollected, but I can't bring myself to put this 41 year old piece of mimeo art into the scanner. I'll try to get them up in the uncollected forum some other way. [Here they are.]

But what caught my eye (well, Carol's eye) was an autobiographical poem called the shit shits, where Bukowski calls his alter ego "Klienholtz."

Sadly, Martin also published the shit shits in The Pleasures of the Damned, and that pesky typist/editor pulled out his idiot community college creative writing course dick, stroked it a few times and was inspired to make the now expected changes.

And completely cut the triumphant closing lines.

See for yourself.
 
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Nice find, mjp!
What a mess! Klienholtz is changed into Chinaski, and the closing lines are gone. That sucks.
It's interesting Buk calling his alter ego for Klienholtz. I've never seen Buk using that name before.
 
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I liked that poem when I first read it in Pleasures, but now that I see the original...I don't know. I've never figured out lines like:
make swans out of the blackbirds
ants out of berry leaves.
So why did he change lions into ants? Or maybe he was doing what Bukowski was writing about.
 
Shouldn't it be Kleinholtz?
What do the Germans, Austrians, Krauts say?
 
kleinholz without a t seems logical to me.
But since I'm not a native German speaker I'll leave it up to Johannes and Roni.
 
"Klienholtz" doesn't really exist as far as I know. At least it seems very rare as a name, whereas "Kleinholz" is quite common, meaning firewood or cutted wood.

Maybe he read it somewhere or just made it up.
 

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