Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), contemporary American avant-garde poet, essayist and novelist.
From the age of 13, Charles Bukowski has been exposed to two major hobbies of his life: writing and drinking. As an extremely prolific writer, he wrote more than 5,000 poems in his lifetime, published six collections of novels, and hundreds of short stories, but he didn’t really become famous until he was about 50 years old. Albert Camus called him the greatest contemporary American writer, and Time Magazine hailed him as the “poet laureate at the bottom of the United States.”
Since Bukowski has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life, his works are greatly influenced by the social environment of Los Angeles. He is good at writing about the lives of poor people on the margins of American society. Vagrants, alcoholics, and prostitutes are the most common protagonists in his stories. Bukowski himself is also impoverished, only wine, women, horse racing and classical music are indispensable. In order to earn a living, he has worked in a variety of jobs, such as a dishwasher, a truck driver, a postman, a doorman, a gas station attendant, a warehouse manager, an elevator operator, etc. At the same time, he also took the humble and dirty life in his life. The absurdity and even the madness are all heartily written into the works.
In 1965, when John Martin, then an office supplies dealer, saw Bukowski’s work in an underground publication, he immediately realized that he had dug up the treasure. He first wrote to Bukowski to establish contact, and in the following year established the Black Sparrow Press for Bukowski to write full-time. As a fan, close friend and literary agent, John Martin published all his works in the last 20 years of Bukowski’s life, successfully pushing an underground writer into the spotlight of the literary circle.
However, Bukowski’s success was by no means due to temporary luck. Although he only started to write his first poem when he was 35 years old, and was rejected by magazines and publishers several times, he was more diligent, persistent, and willing to write this chore than most people. As he said in a letter to John Martin: “There is nothing more magical and beautiful than writing lines of sentences on paper. All the beauty is here. Everything is here. No reward is greater than writing itself, and everything that comes with it is secondary.”
Recently, the Chinese version of Bukowski’s collection of letters “About Writing” was published, which included nearly 150 letters written by Bukowski to publishers, editors, friends and fellow writers. As far as most of the content is concerned, these letters have obvious immediacy. Bukowski seldom talks in clichés and always talks in letters, discussing daily events with enthusiasm, and sharing his creative insights frankly. For him, writing is like an incurable and pleasant disease, and poetry is the most important part of it. From beginning to end, he insisted on creating a clear, life-based poetry, repeatedly criticizing those recognized great writers, thinking that their creations are clichés and empty. In these communications, we can see Bukowski’s most typical characteristics: vigorous, witty, touching, straightforward, and unrelenting.
“About Writing: Bukowski Letters”
[美]Translated by Charles Bukowski
Grinding Iron Books | China Friendship Publishing Company 2021-04
To Jon Weber（(End of January 1961)
…When you lie to yourself in the poem in order to “compose” a poem, you fail. This is why I never revise my poems repeatedly, but keep them as they were originally written, because if I lie from the beginning, no matter how much I revise, I won’t be able to save it. If I didn’t lie, hey, then There is nothing to worry about. Sometimes when I read some poems, I can always perceive how they are trimmed, polished, and fixed together. You can see many such poems in the current “Poetry” in Chicago. When you flip through that page, there is nothing, except for flowers and legs, almost all lifeless moths are flying around. When I flipped through this magazine, I was really shocked because there was nothing in it. I guess this is what their poetry looks like, as if poetry should be nothing. It’s just something delicately arranged in branches. It’s so delicate that I can hardly feel its existence. Poetry has been completely transformed into intellectual art. Go away! The only thing that can reflect the intelligence of a good artwork is that it can make you touched alive, otherwise it is all nonsense. Tell me, how can there be so much nonsense in Chicago’s Poetry?
I first started writing poetry in 1956, when I was 35 years old. After a long period of vomiting and diarrhea, I was very old. I did realize that I could not drink so much whiskey anymore, because a lady claimed that I was Last Friday night, drinking Port wine, waddling around with her-I sent some poems to “Experiment” in 1956, and they accepted it. Now five years later, they told me that they To publish one of the poems, their response was really slow, but somehow they finally got a reply. They told me that the poem would be published in July 1961, and I think when I read it, it will feel like reading my own epitaph. Then she suggested that I remit $10 to her so that she could join their “Experiment”. Naturally, I refused. Oh my! If I can bet another 10 dollars on “Unity” (the name of the racehorse) in today’s middle distance race, it will be enough for me to be refreshed for a while…
To Jon Weber(End of October 1962)
Bukowski was voted “Outsider of the Year” by the editor of “The Outsider,” and Felix Stephen Neal expressed his views on the matter in a letter. The following letter is Bukowski’s response to Felix Stephen Neal.
…About Stephen Neal: People like Felix should often not understand anything. As for what poetry should look like, they have many concepts and pre-concepts, and most of them are still in the 19th century. If a poem doesn’t look like Lord Byron’s tune, then you are just writing a pile of text like crackers on a bed. Politicians and newspapers are talking about freedom, but once you really try to get freedom-whether in life or in art form-you are put in a cell and faced with ridicule And misunderstanding. Sometimes when I put a blank piece of paper into the typewriter, I often think…you will die soon, and we will all die soon. It may not be too bad to say that death, but since you are still alive, you’d better live according to your inner nature. But if you are honest enough, you may have been in the drunk’s confinement room for 15 or 20 times, you may have lost a few jobs, a wife or two, you may hit someone on the street, every now and then Can only sleep on a bench in the park. If you start to write poetry, you don’t have to worry about writing like Keats, Swinburne, Shelley, and you don’t have to act like Frost. You don’t have to worry about whether the Younger, word count, and ending rhyme. You just want to write it down, violently, rudely or in other ways—any way you can really write about yourself. I don’t think that means I’m “having fun in the left field”… At my loudest voice, “Dancing with my hands and performing”, I didn’t like Mr. Stephen Neal mentioned, “Waving his The poem is like waving a flag.” From this, it can be inferred that some people want to get a well-known feeling at any cost; from this, it can be inferred that bad art is just for fame; from this, it can be inferred that some people are acting and bluffing. However, these charges have lasted for centuries in all fields of art, and they continue to wreak havoc in the fields of painting, music, sculpture, and fiction. The general public, the general public and the art public (to some extent they are just trainees) are always lagging behind, whether in material and economic life, or in the so-called spiritual life, they always want to live a little safer . If you wear a straw hat in December, you are stupid. If you write a poem that breaks away from the huge hypnotism of the old-fashioned soft rhyming poems of the 19th century, they will think you have written terribly, just because your poem sounds wrong. They only want to hear what they often hear, but they forget that in every century, there will be five or six extraordinary characters who will pull art and literature out of staleness and death, and then push them forward. I am not saying that I am among the five or six people, but I can be sure that I will not belong to other people besides them. Because of this, I was suspended.
Okay, Jon, I want to say that if you find a forum, just send out what Stephen Neal said, that’s also a point of view. I would rather be described as a bricklayer or boxer than a poet. So there is nothing wrong with all this.
To William Packard(October 13, 1972)
Regarding poetry writing, we should still have fun. I’m glad I can write some essays, drink alcohol, and fight women to end the pain. I have accepted some interviews about poetry skills, and I feel that those people are polished mahogany. I guess that’s because they study too much and live too little. Hemingway was struggling to live, but he was also locked in the skill, and soon the skill became his prison and killed him. I guess it’s about how we choose our own path. This is a portrayal of how we got lost on a pier when we were children. It’s easy to get lost, get lost. Of course, I don’t mean to say this from a commanding height. Let us have a drink for luck, while carrying the hope that women will still love our aging souls and dry thighs. Oh, how to write poetry, damn it!
Attach more of my poems. I am trying to build a poetry library, and I want to blow up the world with my poetry. Yes it is!
Self-portrait by Bukowski
To William Packard(May 19, 1984)
Okay, since you asked… Otherwise, discussing poetry or what would happen if poetry is missing is really a bit too “sour grapes”-the old expression about the unpalatable fruit. This is really a crappy prologue, but I only took a sip of wine. Old Nietzsche was very accurate. When they asked him (which happened in the past) about the poet, “The poet?” He said, “The poets tell too many lies.” This is just one of their mistakes. If we want to know what happened to the poets or what went wrong with modern poetry, we also need to look back at the past. You know, now the boys in school don’t like to read poetry. They even make fun of poetry and regard poetry as a kind of sissy movement. They are completely wrong. Of course, there is a long-term accumulation of semantic changes, which makes it difficult for readers to concentrate on reading poems, but this is not the main reason why boys give up poems. There is a problem with the poem itself, it is fake, and it can’t touch anyone. Take Shakespeare as an example: reading his stuff makes you crazy. He can only hit the key occasionally, he gives you a shiny shot, and then returns to a painless state until the next key point appears. The poets they feed to us are immortal, but they are neither dangerous nor fun. We will throw them aside and find something more serious to do: fights and blows after school until the nose bleeds. Everyone knows that if you can’t enter the consciousness of young people as soon as possible, you will have to go to hell in the end. Patriots and people who believe in God understand this very well. Poetry has never done this, and it seems that it will still be impossible in the future. Yes, yes, I know that Li Bai and some other ancient Chinese poets can express a great emotion and great truth in just a few simple sentences. Of course, there are exceptions, although human beings have not been crippled all the time although they have not been able to cross more steps. But a large number of printed papers and related things are very unreliable, empty, almost like a prank some guy did to us, or worse than this: many libraries are jokes.
The modern era draws on the past and continues the mistakes of the past. Some people claim that poems are written for a few people, not for the general public. This is also true of many government agencies, as well as those wealthy, wives of a certain class, and specially built toilets.
The best way to study poetry is to read them and forget them. If a poem cannot be read, then I don’t think it has any special merits. Many poets are writing about a protected life, and they have very limited things to write. Rather than chatting with poets, I often prefer to chat with cleaners, plumbers or dim sum chefs, because they know more about the daily problems and daily joys of life.
Poetry can be pleasant. Poetry can be written clearly and clearly. I don’t understand why it has to be changed into something else, but it does become that way. Poetry is like sitting in a sultry room with closed windows. There is little chance of any air or light coming in. It is possible that this field has been completely corrupted by practitioners. It is too easy for everyone to call themselves a “poet”. When you assume your own position, there is very little you can do. Most people do not read poems for a reason. The reason is that the existing poems are too bad and too weak. Are all energetic creators engaged in music, prose, painting, or sculpture? At least in these areas from time to time there are people who can overthrow the stale walls…
To AD Venance(June 27, 1984)
…I think the luckiest thing for me is to become a writer. I was unsuccessful until I was 50 and had to make a living everywhere. This allows me to stay away from other writers and their social games, and away from their slander and complaints. Now that I have some luck, I will still keep myself away from them.
They continue their attacks. I just want to continue my writing. I am not doing this to seek immortality or some reputation. I do it because I have to write and I want to write. Most of the time, I feel pretty good, especially whenever I sit in front of this machine, words keep pouring out, and it seems that the sense of language is getting better and better. No matter if this is true or not, no matter if it is right or wrong, I will keep writing it down.
To Henry Hughes(September 13, 1990)
In January 1990, Henry Hughes published Bukowski’s poem in the “Indus Review”.
I am glad that you have selected a few poems.
I am 70 years old now, as long as the red wine is still flowing and the typewriter is still ringing, it will be fine. When I wrote pornographic stories for men’s magazines for rent, life was a wonderful show for me, and it’s still wonderful now-I’m writing and fighting against the hazards of petty gains, and fighting against the “end” “This sign is near the footsteps. Sometimes I enjoy this kind of debate with life, in other words, I will have no regrets when I leave.
Sometimes I call writing a disease. If this is the case, I am very happy that this disease has come to me. Whenever I walk into this room and look at this typewriter, I can always feel that something comes from elsewhere, some strange gods, something completely indescribable, and it’s in an unbelievable, chattering, The wonderful fortune touches me, and the feeling of luck is continuing, continuing, and continuing. Oh yes!
At the end of the letter “To Henry Hughes,” Bukowski attached a small picture.
Selected excerpts from this articlefrom“About Writing: Bukowski Letters”This book, There are deletions from the original text, and it is published under the authorization of the publisher.Note writing/editing: Chen Jiajing, Without the authorization of “Interface Culture” (ID: BooksAndFun).Return to Sohu to see more
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