Poem sent in by Luciole Press Contributor/friend Scott Wannberg: "People Just Aren’t ~ for Charles Bukowski"
Posted by kluciole at 3/31/2009 11:47 PM 
Categories: National, Luciole Press, History, Literature, Writing, International, Friends, Cultures, Art
Categories: National, Luciole Press, History, Literature, Writing, International, Friends, Cultures, Art
People Just Aren’t
~ for Charles Bukowski
The lengthy purple-prose eulogy in the L.A. Times called
Bukowski the poet laureate of lowlife L.A.
Well, I shouldn’t expect too much I suppose from something
like the L.A. Times.
Linda, my colleague at work, hit it on the proverbial right
head when she said why not simply call him the poet laureate
of L.A. Life.
Years ago I saw him do a wonderful reading in San
Francisco in one of those dignified downtown historical
type buildings. The same evening they were having a 100
dollar a plate dinner to kick off the new Opera Season.
Those of us there to see Buk were waiting on line and
those of them going to do up the Opera were in their own
rhythm and we sort of looked across a large room at one
another and superficially sized one another up.
Later that night in his reading, Bukowski hit us with
a piece saying People Just Aren’t Good To One Another.
It was a fine piece and I thought about the looks
we gave the Opera folks and vice versa as if there
was an abyss between us that no language could ever
hope to heal.
Language is a tricky river. You may feel you are saying what
it is you think you want to say. Sometimes however
you don’t say all that much.
It’s a trickster dance floor, language.
You should be able to back it up by having fun.
I feel Bukowski had fun in writing.
He wrote so much
He wrote in the tradition of Whitman and Woody
Guthrie.
He wrote about everything in his life and world view
A lot of it trivial, a lot of it profound
One can’t simply sit back and say I Will Choose Only
To Write The Big Poems The Important Poems The
Majestic Poems
Bukowski taught me a very important thing when I was
beginning
You can write what you see and you can see what you
write and you can write anything
There is no taboo subject matter
You can write about having to love a person’s farts
just as much as their perfume if you are really going
to back up your love.
I said a few lines back he was in the same vein as
Woody. Woody would take out his guitar when the whim hit
and write about any thing passing through him.
He once went to work on building the Grand Coulee dam
but was so taken with the scenery he had to quit and
took his guitar up above where it was being built and
sat down and wrote a song.
Bukowski saw a lot, backed it up in his feeling by
not shying away from anything that a lot of
respectable people might consider worthless or
minor.
William Carlos Williams said once after someone praised him
for being the poet of the antipoetic
there is no antipoetic. By writing the poem about it
whatever it is
it becomes poetic
by the choosing of it
whatever it is
to be the poem itself
Someone told me a story once about how when Bukowski was up
in San Francisco reading with a lot of big Northern California
poets, including Ginsberg
(although we know Ginsberg is really East Coast)
a bomb threat rumor invaded the gig and
Bukowski jokingly claimed All I Need To Do Is Stand Behind
Ginsberg, And I Will Not Be In Danger Because
Ginsberg’s Karma Will Protect Me.
I did attend a major poetic blowout in Santa Cruz back
in 1975 and Kenneth Rexroth got into a difference of
opinion with some women or a woman
I was sitting too far back to see which
Rexroth said Don’t Hiss At Me I Come From Two Generations
Of Feminists
Finally, he said, Don’t Hiss At Me
You Wouldn’t Want Bukowski To Come Down Here, Would You?
I think I was the only one in this vast room
this auditorium of listening
that got that one
and laughed in appreciation.
Cheap writers can try and pigeonhole Bukowski
well cheap writers will pigeon hole anything
classify everything
in specious classifications
I won’t.
Bukowski was a human who wrote
he left a lot of pages to go back to
if one feels the urge.
That’s all you can ask for
that a writer simply writes
A writer shouldn’t be out all the time being seen or
even seeing those who are being seen
A writer belongs where a writer is needed the most
in the moment and act of writing.
Bukowski once said it all begins here and
pointed to this typewriter.
It all begins and ends here
In the moment
Whatever Bukowski might be in the long run
to those who write articles and books and
purple prose obits
like the one in the Times
he is always and foremost
a writer who
lived in the moment of
the passionate sacred act of
writing.
He taught me to stay home and
pay attention to
the words
Even when I nod off
and try and be lazy.
In the end
if you don’t pay attention to
the words
you will trip and break your bones
and nobody will
invite you in
for coffee.
For Bukowski
who gave me many
days of pleasure
The coffee is on
it might even go down good
The process is where we live
the process is where we always dance
for Bukowski
a dancer
who graced Los Angeles and
the world
with his music.
Sleep well, friend.
Scott Wannberg
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