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From: will.dockery@gmail.com (W.Dockery)
Newsgroups: alt.arts.poetry.comments,rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Charles Bukowski
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 2025 13:18:11 +0000
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Zod wrote:

> Will Dockery wrote:
>> "baloney" wrote
>>> Will Dockery wrote:
>>
>>> > It probably goes without saying that Buk's one of my favorites, though
>>> > his name hasn't come up much lately (the last time was probably when I
>>> > compared Chuck's "shock" style to Buk)... Dale Houstman gave me a very
>>> > memorable paperback book blurb quote when he wrote that I was "...a
>>> > better poet than Bukowski..." or something similar.
>>> >
>>> It doesn't surprise me that you'd like Buk and Houstman wouldn't.
>> Well, the common dislike of Bukowski here is pretty interesting, in
>> light of
>> the firestorm of reaction here recently to another "poet" who has much
>> more
>> in common with Buk than Vera or Pandora, the
>> chopped-up-confessional-prose-verse, the "fucken" plain speaking
>> language,
>> the /punch-line/ zinger at the end... Houstman, in a candid moment,
>> might
>> call Bukowski's poetry "shit", as he would others using the style... in
>> a
>> candid moment, or a confused one.
>>> I like Buk in small doses; he's not my favorite, but there is a certain
>> appeal.
>> Well, like Blue's poem about Bukowski, and the flood of Buk-wannabes,
>> sometimes the navel-gazings laced with "fuckens" and all that are
>> interesting and amusing, and liven up a poetry reading since there's
>> usually
>> always a punk or two to jump up with that and scare the manager of the
>> joint
>> (I remember a few years ago when a host was forced by the managment to
>> unplug the mic of Joseph Garcia when he went on and on with a poem about
>> "fucking the wide vagina of the universe" or something like that in
>> cosmic,
>> sloppy detail... miss old Joe...) but my real favorites are the ones
>> (like
>> Houstman, Rimbaud, Ginsberg and... yeah, again, Kerouac) who also
>> include
>> the brilliant flashing chains of images with the gritty facts of passing
>> out
>> and waking up in the gutter... as I wrote a couple of weeks ago in a
>> post
>> that seems to have been passed over (since it got no responses):
>>> >I can't agree with that since Kerouac is a quite brilliant poet, in my
>> Opinion.
>>> really? how so? how was Kerouac a "brilliant" poet?
>> In my opinion he was.
>> His poems, even more than the other writings, were intended to be
>> flowing
>> blasts of image and thought, conciously modeled after the feeling evoked
>> by
>> a free jazz saxophonist, and that he made it work, most notably in his
>> masterpiece "Mexico City Blues" was pretty brilliant.
>> Here's an example from MCB (and an aside to Baloney, if you're reading
>> this,
>> [Which I don't know if you did or not]
>> I think you might see why I relate Dale Housman's poetry to Beat poems
>> such
>> as this, as well as the example of William Burroughs I gave earlier),
>> that
>> shows the flow of image on image in Kerouac's brilliant poetry:
>> ----
>> 230th Chorus
>> Love's multitudinous boneyard
>> of decay,
>> The spilled milk of heroes,
>> Destruction of silk kerchiefs
>> by dust storm,
>> Caress of heroes blindfolded to posts,
>> Murder victims admitted to this life,
>> Skeletons bartering fingers and joints.
>> -Jack Kerouac
>> ----
>> That's it, my non-expert opinion on why Kerouac was a "brilliant" poet,
>> take
>> it or leave it.
>> In fact, how about you follow your own "rules" and explain for a few
>> paragraphs how Kerouac's poetry was /not/ "brilliant"?
>> Nope, you'll no doubt just jeer at "Will Dockery" and manage to avoid
>> anything else, am I right?
>> Here's Kerouac's "mission statement" on what his poetry was intended,
>> and
>> did, achieve:
>> "I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an
>> afternoon jam session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses; my ideas vary
>> and sometimes roll from chorus to chorus or from halfway through a
>> chorus to halfway into the next." -Jack Kerouac
>> And, sorry, pal, but here's an expert opinion cut-n-paste that supports
>> my
>> opinion that Kerouac's poetry is indeed "brilliant":
>> "Kerouac is being popularized as an icon of culture - my regret is that
>> sight of him as an artist will be lost.. We'll know his name and some
>> work
>> considered typical. But we'll miss one of the finest, brightest
>> sensoriums
>> that has graced verse with intelligence and intellect. [...] Kerouac is
>> best
>> known for his novel "On the Road", but his masterpiece is "Mexico City
>> Blues", a religious poem startling in its majesty and comedy and
>> gentleness
>> and vision. [...] Kerouac is known worldwide as a novelist. He is
>> sometimes
>> also known as the writer of haiku-type poems or intermediate-length
>> poems on
>> the subject of Rimbaud or Budhism. But Kerouac is little known as the
>> author
>> of several major poems which he considered to be blues works. These
>> books
>> include the unpublished Washington D.C. Blues, San Francisco Blues, and
>> Berkeley Blues. They range in style from Dos Passos-like descriptive
>> verse
>> to poetrylike journals. Outstanding in all modern poetry is the epic-
>> length
>> Mexico City Blues. [...] The rules of Mexico City Blues were that they
>> should be written on the pages of a pocket notebook such as Kerouac
>> nearly
>> always carried. Each page of the notebook would be a chorus. Eventually,
>> in
>> the developing structure of the poem, each line becomes a complete, and
>> whole,independent image. [...] A further rule of Mexico City Blues was
>> that
>> it must all be spontaneous - all a risk - a free, inspired, or
>> noninspired,
>> flowing statement, liberated from judgements about its value. It was
>> done
>> for itself - as an organism lives for itself." -Michael McClure
>> Urm, well, that's where I'm at, or hoping to /get to/.
>>> In case you haven't noticed, Earl Nelson's work is highly
>>> influenced by Buk.
>> This is the "Ghost of C Earl Nelson", who had a flurry of posts here a
>> week
>> or so ago? I read through some of that, and I guess you're right... as
>> far
>> as that sort of thing goes, I guess I prefer Chuck's "Perfect Angel"
>> or...
>> "Spectre".
>
> Again, well put....!

Thanks again Zod.

>
>> --
>> "God's Toybox" by Dockery-Beck:
>> http://www.myspace.com/shadowvilleallstars
>> "Hasty Pudding" by Dockery-Conley:
>> http://www.myspace.com/willdockery