What foreign countries did Bukowski visit? (1 Viewer)

I'm quite sure that Buk mentions going to the race track in mexico (at least Tijauna} in numerous poems, stories and letters... but, I'm too lazy to search this right now......
 
..and there is of course this shortStory, where he is with a hooker in an mexican hotelroom, after his car broke down with an empty battery.

After his batteries are recharged(both of them), he steps out into the light and a little boy, dressed all in white, pulls him by the sleeve:
"Hello mister,
wanna fuck my sister? Only 12 years old."
- "No thanks, no really, not today."


PS:Didnt realize he was in Canada, was that the rodondoBeachReading?
- Sorry my geography is terrible.
 
He went to Vancouver B.C. in October 1976 for a reading. Buk and Al Purdy never met face to face.
Ah, the Buk-Purdy letters. I have it too. It was my first letter book. Maybe not the best letter book, but interesting all the same...
 
He never made it to Glasgow but with his Tough-Guy persona he would have fit in quiet well, back in Bukowskis time, Glasgow was infamous for being a brutal tough-boy City, it still is....but not quite as much....
 
He went to Vancouver B.C. in October 1976 for a reading. Buk and Al Purdy never met face to face.
Ah, the Buk-Purdy letters. I have it too. It was my first letter book. Maybe not the best letter book, but interesting all the same...

yeah i find it really informative. i've never read any of Purdy's stuff but Buk gives it much praise. Anybody know if they ever had a falling out?
 
Not sure if Bukowski and Al Purdy had a "falling out" as such. There is a poem from a reading entitled "a northern aquaintance" that came from the don't try website zipfile of mp3s. I don't think this poem is collected in any books (sort of remember checking the database before it went offline). The poem is about a Canadian who got government grants, had a wife who worked and made his own wine. This is definitely Purdy. Bukowski seemed to think that the best thing the poet of "a northern aquaintance" did was make wine. Not sure when this was written or recorded.

I haven't managed to find the book yet but I believe Bukowski wrote an introduction to the 1977 Paget book by Al Purdy, At Marsport Drugstore.

So Purdy and Bukowski? The letters seem to indicate they tried to make a connection and did for a short while during the mid-1960s when both were finding their voices (It Catches My Heart In Its Hand reviewed by Purdy in Evidence and Purdy won the Governor General's literary award in 1965 for The Cariboo Horses).

I'm probably breaking all sort of copyright laws but here's a pretty decent poem by Al:

AT THE QUINTE HOTEL
I am drinking
I am drinking beer with yellow flowers
in underground sunlight
and you can see that I am a sensitive man
And I notice the bartender is a sensitive man too
so I tell him about his beer
I tell him the beer he draws
is half fart and half yellow horse piss
and all wonderful yellow flowers
but the bartender is not quite
so sensitive as I supposed he was
the way he looks at me now
and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy
Over in the corner two guys
are quietly making love
in the brief prelude to infinity
Opposite them a peculiar fight
enables drinkers to lay aside
their comic books and watch with interest
as I watch with interest
A wiry little man slugs another guy
then tracks him bleeding into the toilet
and slugs him to the floor again
with ugly red flowers on the tile
three minutes later he roosters over
to the table where his drunk friend sits
with another friend and slugs both
of em ass-over-electric-kettle
so I have to walk around
on my way for a piss
Now I am a sensitive man
so I say to him mildly as hell
"You shouldn'ta knocked over that good beer
with them beautiful flowers in it"
So he says to me "Come on"
So I Come On
like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess
like a yellow streak charging
on flower power I suppose
& knock the shit outa him & sit on him
(he is a little guy)
and say reprovingly
"Violence will get you nowhere this time chum
Now you take me
I am a sensitive man
and would you believe I write poems?"
But I could see the doubt in his upside down face
in fact in all the faces
"What kind of poems?"
"Flower poems"
"So tell us a poem"
I got off the little guy reluctantly
for he was comfortable
and told them this poem
They crowded around me with tears
in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly
for my pockets for
it was a heart-warming moment for Literature
and moved by the demonstrable effect
of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked
"-the poem oughta be worth some beer"
It was a mistake of terminology
for the silence came
and it was brought home to me in the tavern
that poems will not really buy beers or flowers
or a goddam thing
and I was sad
for I am a sensitive man
- Al Purdy
 
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Glasgow was infamous for being a brutal tough-boy City, it still is....but not quite as much....
Yeah, I've heard about that infamous "Glasgow smile" they have over there...

What got me wondering about this "foreign country" stuff was something written in the sleeve-notes to "Poems and Insults". Three of the (best) tracks there are from an LP named "Cold Turkey Press Special", which was put out for the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam-1972. I was just wondering if Buk read at that festival.

Also: did he ever reach England in connection with him being printed in the Penguin Modern Poets thing?

Good Purdy-poem by the way. The ironic repetition of the phrase "sensitive man" has a sort of Buk-ring to it... I enjoyed reading the Purdy-letters. Seems to me Buk lets down his tough-guy guard there a bit. I remember Purdy praising Buk's poem "The Shower" there.

PS: anybody ever see this before?:http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/9789075342185/12_Great_Americans#Full%20description

And what about this!!!???:
coldturkey2s.gif

I see two Buk-tracks here I've never heard of before! (Enlarge here:http://www.sea-urchin.net/cds/coldturkey/coldturkey2s.gif)
 
Bukowski.net beats me to the punch...

...every time. :o
 
Good Purdy-poem by the way. The ironic repetition of the phrase "sensitive man" has a sort of Buk-ring to it... I enjoyed reading the Purdy-letters. Seems to me Buk lets down his tough-guy guard there a bit. I remember Purdy praising Buk's poem "The Shower" there.

Repetition is effective in many Bukowski poems. Seems to help focus the mind of the (this) reader. Here's an excerpt of a Lorca poem using similar approach. Can't vouch for the accuracy of the translation, etc. And I first heard it declaimed in a recent movie on the death of Lorca.

At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone.
The wind carried away the cottonwool
at five in the afternon.
And the oxide scatttered crystal and nickel
at five in the afternoon.
Now the dove and the leopard wrestle
at five in the afternoon.
And a thigh with a desolate horn
at five in the afternoon.
The bass-string struck up
at five in the afternoon.
Arsenic bells and smoke
at five in the afternoon.
Groups of silence in the corner
at five in the afternoon.
And the bull alone exultant!
 
...every time. :o


Don't worry Erik, as you can see in the link; I asked the same thing. And I never punched an ant or a giraffe before.

Let's keep using the Roni's, the Mjp's and all the other Walking-Bukowski-encyclopedia's of this written world ;)
 
"a northern aquaintance" was published in Wormwood Review #43, but has not been reprinted since.

Apparently, there's a "one page note by Bukowski" in At Marsport Drugstore.
 

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