BOLD MONKEY

C

2012-02-03T23:47:00.001+11:00

Charlotte is a reductionist

much like Descartes.

I show her a picture of a duck

& ask her, ‘what’s that?’

She says, DUCK.

At the beach she sees a sea-gull

& points and says, DUCK.

On the deck we hear a kookaburra

& I ask, ‘what’s that?’

She says DUCK.

She views the dark clouds rising in the south.

I ask her, what’s that?

She says, DUCK.

The first names on her birth certificate read: Charlotte Hope

Her parents call her Charley.

I call her C.

BOOK REVIEW: John Yamrus can’t stop now! EPIC RITES PRESS, Sherwood Park, Alberta, 2011 (133 pages).

2012-01-17T22:58:00.001+11:00

This is the second John Yamrus book of poetry published byEPIC RITES PRESS and consists of sixty-five lower case, minimalistic poems. Ratherthan tackle the larger issues and make grand statements about ‘Love, Death, orLife,’ Yamrus prefers to ‘keep it real’ by writing about the seemingly insignificantthings- ‘the deathly horrors’- that confront us ‘every single day.’ The writingis incredibly simple but embedded with a homespun wisdom which the poet has craftedover the forty years of his publishing life.

The title can’t stop now!is an obvious reference to Yamrus’s life-long compulsion to write. This is hiseighteenth book of poetry and there’s no way he is going to stopwriting now. As the poem ‘it’s too late’ infers, poetry should have been beltedout of him when he was ‘young and soft,’ but he’s ‘old and tough now.’ Althoughnot noticeable at first, the intricate sketches by Pablo Vision on the book’s frontand back covers also reinforce this idea. The sketches are of a 17^thcentury ‘perpetual motion machine.’

In can’t stop now!Yamrus returns to his well-trodden themes of growing old, writing poetry,relationships, Bukowski and death. His portraits of incompetent wannabe writers(‘he had this thing’, ‘his writing’, ‘he says to me’, ‘he wanted everyone’, ‘hesaid he was a writer’, ‘he looked at me and’ ‘on reading some of’) and offailed men (‘Henry always’, ‘Tony wasn’t very’, ‘Murray knew he’, are particularlyfascinating to read. In contrast, Yamrus represents himself as a self-assured, self-effaciveindividual who is not caught up in the messy problems of the world.

Yamrus creates an intimate relationship with his readers bydirectly speaking to them in a friendly, light-hearted way. He reveals to us his innermost thoughts and feelings on the most personal of matters, including hisrelationship to his wife and the secrets to his success as a writer. His toneis often cheeky and he relies on simple puns, black humor and dramatic irony towin his readers over.

In a recent excellent interview on the BCTV program New Arts Alive http://www.bctv.org/special_reports/arts/new-arts-alive/vmix_f6540ffa-21ba-11e1-a895-001871e3ce6c.html?success=1Yamrus, referring to his pared down style, states that, ‘the hardest thing fora writer is to learn what not to say.’ Rather than hitting his readers over thehead by including every specific detail, he allows the readers to fill in theirown gaps, to put their own spin on his words.

Can’t stop now! isa book which can easily be devoured in an hour. Many of the poems appear lightweight,or have an aura of self-contentment and work towards a feel-good ending. Someof the better poems juxtapose humour with hints of the grimmer reality whichlurks under everything we do. In ‘Tony wasn’t very’ Tony is depicted as anaverage Joe ‘who likes baseball/ a good glass of wine.’ The tragedy lies in thespeaker’s inability to see his suicide coming. In ‘object lesson’ the speaker stateswhen looking into the mirror, it is best to overlook one’s advancing age andwatch out for what really matters: ‘that look of/ fear,// and resignation.//even/ terror’ at the threshold moment when we fathom our own mortality. In ‘he died’he contrasts stock images of the dead ‘with a tube/ in his nose’ with thequirky but menacing observation of a foot ‘stuck out/ from under the covers’‘his nails/ needed a trim.’ ‘He kept her picture’ is about a guy who keeps inhis drawer for forty years a picture of a former lover. The poem is anexcellent study in false hope and self delusion. ‘That’s not a dick’ is anothermemorable poem about physical decline and sexual impotence.

Despite the slashed down, almost inarticulate feel to thecollection, Yamrus miraculously pulls it off. He seamlessly surfs the boundarybetween humour and despair. Yamrus is a highly engaging writerwho really gives a shit about his readers. In the simplicity of his language he opens up hugespaces for the reader to interpret his work. These are clever meta-fictionalpoems which ironically work from the noble principle that they are real.

BOLD MONKEY previously reviewed John Yamrus's previous book doing cartwheels on doomsday afternoon here: http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2011/01/book-review-john-yamrus-doing.html

The original New Press Release for the book from Epic RitesPress can be found here:

http://www.epicrites.org/uploads/4/7/9/8/4798714/press_release_-_cant_stop_now_-_mla_version.pdf

Purchase the book here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Cant-Stop-Now-John-Yamrus/dp/1926860063

Book Recommendation: Charles Simic Selected Poems 1963-2003. London, Faber & Faber, 2004 ( 160 pages)

2012-01-05T14:50:00.001+11:00

These are clever, highly accessible poems by the UNHprofessor. Although the poems were written over a period of forty years theyare remarkably similar in structure, tone and subject matter. These poemsdeserve close and repeated readings. Simic writes with simplicity but with great humour and profundity. I particularly enjoy how he layers the ideas in his poetry.

An excellent selection from his book The Voice at 3 A.M. : SelectedLate and New Poems can be found at Google Books: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=y0vL053y6q8C&pg=PA154&lpg=PA154&dq=charles+simic.the+lives+of+the+alchemists&source=bl&ots=-bn3406Am0&sig=PAjInGcnhjRxJB-sLFOBcbVf9DU&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nhoFT-bpOcKWiQfgh4SdAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

The following Poetry Foundation article provides a clearoverview of his life and work:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/charles-simic

Brian Henry’s review of Simic’s Jackstraws (1999) for Boston Review also provides interestinginsights into his poetics: http://bostonreview.net/BR24.3/henry.html

Radio Archives: In Bed With Phillip. ABC Radio. Radio National One. (2011)

2011-12-20T21:40:00.000+11:00

Clearly, one of the best and most consistent radiojournalists in Australia is Phillip Adams of ABC Radio National, who for over twentyyears has presented Late Night Life (LNL) Monday to Thursday between 10-11 pm. Recently,ABC has collected for the first time, a hundred or so of his most memorablebroadcasts on Radio National under the heading ‘In Bed With Phillip.’ Heinterviews Arthur Miller, Hunter S. Thompson's biographer E. Jean Carroll, Christopher Hitchens and hundredsof other influential writers and thinkers. Find this valuable site here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/features/inbedwithphillip/

Adams interviewed Kurt Vonnegut in 2005 a couple of yearsbefore his death. Vonnegut is darkly humorous in his views on his survival inDresden in 1945, the stupidity of the Bush Government and on his own botchedsuicide. He says he was lucky in his writing career and was the only person to benefit from the fire-bombing of Dresden- having received for his novel Slaughterhouse 5 about two dollars for each person killed. Find the audio interview here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/features/inbedwithphillip/episodes/127-kurt-vonnegut/

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski New Poems: THE PEOPLE LOOK LIKE FLOWERS AT LAST. Edited by John Martin, Ecco, New York, 2007 ( 299 pages).

2011-12-19T19:17:00.000+11:00

This is the 42^nd of 44 books Ecco has published ofBukowski books, and without hesitation, I would rate ThePeople Look Like Flowers At Last at the bottom of the barrel of theirposthumous poetry collections I have encountered thus far.

The Ecco books are printed on poor quality paper and whilereading, the feel of the flimsy plastic like cover can sometimes send an uncomfortable shiverup your spine. If you are a Bukophile- sure you are going to enjoy this book.And granted, there are about twenty fine poems in this collection. The best are characteristicallythe longer anecdotal poems from the creative bank of Buk’s great repertoire ofexperience, both real and imagined. My personal favourites include ‘beef tongue’,‘the dwarf with a punch’, ‘don’t worry, baby, I’ll get it’, ‘kissing me away’, ‘twokinds of hell’, ‘contributors’ notes’ and ‘sun coming down.’

The poem ‘the great debate’ perhaps sums up this volumebest. Bukowski's alter-ego Chinaski receives the latest book from a friend he used to admire for his‘crude, simple,/ troubled’ writing. But since his friend has become auniversity lecturer he considers his work ‘very pale’ and ‘spread across thepage/ like a mist/ filling it/ but saying/ very little.’ Although his friend isnow ‘a successful writer’ Chinaski believes he ‘no longer enflamed his readers’,‘never made/ anybody/ angry/ disgusted/ sad’, ‘never made/ anybody/ feel therush of wonder/ while reading/ it.’ It’s probably my critical eye and myfamiliarity with Bukowski’s work- but it is easy to draw ironic parallels with thespeaker’s views and with this sad, inferior book of poetry. Many of the poems beginpromisingly but often remain sketchy or fall flat on their face. But thenagain, who am I to question the merit of Buk’s posthumous work? I am a mere adherentpresently suffering the effects of the over consumption of his dead vibes- having closely studied fifteen of his books this year.

The best previously unpublished Ecco collection of Bukowski poetry iseasily Come On In! (2006) followed byThe Flash of Lightning Behind theMountain (2004) and much further lagging in merit is what matters most is how well you walk through the fire (1999) and then the stolid BONE PALACE BALLET: New Poems (1997).

Compare this with the bukowski.net reader survey found here where you can cast your own vote:

http://bukowski.net/bookranking/

Forthe full ECCO list of books search here: http://www.harpercollins.com/searcheng/2PageSearchx.aspx?mode=search&search=bukowski&type=allbooks

New Release: Howie Good Dreaming in Red. Right Hand Pointing. Lulu. 2011 (68 pages).

2011-12-06T20:04:00.001+11:00

This is Howie Good’s fourth full-length collectionof poetry and consists of fifty-two characteristically short experimental poemsin which he adopts a variety of non-traditional forms, including- prose poetry,free verse, found poetry, collage and non-rhyming couplets. The language issimple but has a cut-up feel about it which can alienate occasional readers of poetry.

The overall tone of the collection is extremely varied and includes some fond personal and family reminisces but as you enter further into the territory of the collection, the more you become aware of Good's sinister representation of a world which is twisted and full of injustice and brutality. There are numerous references to Nazis,barbed-wire and beheadings. Inthe interview which follows, Good explicitly comments on the overall intent of his book, ‘I’m just trying to convey some small but defining aspect of our timeand place as I find it- cruel, hyper-violent, and bleak.’

There is no doubting that Good is an accomplishedand adventurous poet and that much of our marvel of his poetry derives from ouremotional reaction to what is difficult to rationalize in his work. As reader you must first navigate through his jig-saw, sometimes obscure experiments in language before you are offered a glimpse of what he is attempting to achieve. If you are patient and take your time with Good's work perhaps all will not be revealed- but he will open up new spaces in your head which may help shake you free from your set ways of reading and interpreting poetry.

INTERVIEWWITH HOWIE GOOD 22 NOVEMBER 2011.

Briefbio: Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY NewPaltz, is the author of the full-length poetry collections Lovesick (Press Americana, 2009), Heart With a Dirty Windshield (BeWrite Books, 2010), Everything Reminds Me of Me (Desperanto,2011), and Dreaming in Red (RightHand Pointing, 2011), as well as numerous print and digital poetry chapbooks,including most recently Love in a Time ofParanoia from Diamond Point Press.

BOLD MONKEY Q1: The imagery in Dreaming in Red is bleak and has an underlying sinister,apocalyptic tone. You make references to Nazis, terrorists, barbed wire fences,soldiers, beheadings, injustice, weeping, suffering- you explore in this bookthe metaphoric hell on earth. What is your overarching concept for the book andwhat are you attempting to express about humanity and our times?

My poetry is sometimes referred to as surrealistic.I don’t necessarily agree with that characterization. It’s reality, not mypoetry, that’s surreal. I’m just trying to convey some small but definingaspect of our time and place as I find it – cruel, hyper-violent, and bleak. Ina paradox typical of art, the stranger or more unrealistic one of my poemsseems, the closer it may approach what’s really going on in the world.

Q2:There are numerous references to dreams and to the color red in yourcollection. Can you clarify some of the intended meanings/ associations youwish your reader to draw from your title and central motif Dreaming in Red?

Readers should draw whatever conclusions they wantfrom the references and images in the book. The poet’s task, as I understandit, is to write poetry, not to explain it once it’s written. The poem itself isall the explanation there is to offer.

Q3:Many poems in the collection appear to be cut & paste in either free verseor prose poem form. You commented in your Fogged Clarity interview (linkedbelow) that you like to ‘keep the reader off-balance.’ Can you elaborate indetail on your fascination with the cut & paste style?

When a word or phraseor sentence strikes me while I’m reading or even during conversation, I writeit down in my notebook. There they join material that’s more self-generated.All of it becomes the mud and straw for the bricks I use to build poems.Sometimes I’ll write a piece that’s kin to a found poem. In the book, SOMEONEWAS ALWAYS DYING SOMEWHERE and OVER YOUR CITIES GRASS WILL GROW are examples.They’re sort of verbal collages created from phrases I clipped from newssources and novels and arranged in what I hope is a provocative way. If youaccept the premise that life in the twenty-first century is increasinglyfragmented and discontinuous, then this may be the ideal form of writing toaccommodate and capture the texture of modern experience.

Q4:Since 2004 you have published at least four full-length collections of poetryas well as 31 print and digital poetry chapbooks. You also work as a journalismprofessor. I understand you write between 9 to 12 most mornings- but how dofind the time and why the obsession with writing poetry at this stage of yourlife?

I take seriously Flaubert’s admonition to writers:Be bourgeois in your habits, and revolutionary in your work. This is theantithesis of the stereotype of the poet as a wild man leading an irregularBohemian existence punctuated by drunken binges, drug abuse, and sexualabandon. As attractive or exciting as that kind of life may seem, it’s notexactly conducive to sustained creativity. Flaubert recommended saving thewildness for your work, and not your living arrangements. Essentially, Ipractice the values of the old Protestant work ethic – industry, sobriety, anddiscipline – to get my writing done.

Q5: Your poems are characteristically shortand use simple, clear language. Considering your prolific output do you usuallydo much editing and re-writing of your work?

I edit and rewrite extensively. I’ll even go backand revise published poems if something about them –an image, a word choice –bothers me in retrospect. It’s extremelyrare that I “knock out” a poem. Most of the time I don’t know what a poem istrying to say or do until it’s gone through numerous rewrites. For me, writinga poem isn’t like taking down dictation. It’s more like digging for gold inhard ground with broken fingernails.

Q6:You read extensively to aid your choice of subject matter. Can you outline someof your readings which contributed to the development of Dreaming in Red?

I do read a lot, and not just poetry. I particularlyfind biographies of visual artists useful. It’s not so much content or subjectmatter I draw from them, but titles and what might be called “prompts” –phrases and ideas I can push off from. I feel a fellowship to visual artists.Maybe it’s because the creative process for poets is closer to that of paintersthan it is to that of novelists or essayists. When I read about a painter likeJoan Mitchell agonizing for hours over one brush stroke, I recognize my ownexperience wrestling with words.

Q7:A good sampling of your writing touches on the political but never explicitly.You characteristically present your views in a series of puzzles and languageexercises. To what extent is this an accurate assessment of your work?

Quite accurate if “political” is defined broadly, asthe struggle to find a way to live together with the greatest amount of freedomand joy and the least amount of suffering and injustice. But I don’t oftenconsciously write poems of political protest. Rather, given the times, any poemthat questions the status quo is ipso facto political.

Q8:On a lighter note, what is your advice to young promising poets just startingout?

Organize your life around your writing, and not yourwriting around your life. And don’t be discouraged by rejection. SamuelBeckett’s first novel was rejected by 42 publishers; he eventually won theNobel Prize for Literature.

Thanks Howie and all the best with the book. Allproceeds from its sale are for a great cause.

Thanks for all your kindnesses,

Howie

Buy Howie Good’s new book Dreaming in Red here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/dreaming-in-red/18726602

Allproceeds from the sale of this book benefit the Crisis Center www.crisiscenterbham.com .The CrisisCenter is a non-profit agency in Birmingham, Alabama offering suicideprevention, services to victims of sexual assault, day treatment for theindigent mentally ill, and other services.

Howie Good’s blog Apocalypse Mambo keeps his readersinformed of the links to the latest poetry he has published in magazines andbooks: http://apocalypsemambo.blogspot.com/

ResearchNotes:

Twenty of Howie Good’s poems inDreaming in Red were previously published in his e-book collection Love Dagger on Right Hand Pointing andcan be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/howiegood2011chap

Howie Good was interviewed by Ben Evans of FoggedClarity: An Art Review for his first full-length collection LOVESICK. This isan excellent and highly informative audio interview in which Good discussions awide range of topics related to his writing process and the aesthetics of hispoetry: http://foggedclarity.com/2010/08/howie-good/

DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN- Issue 6: Writing On Walls (2011)

2011-12-03T09:59:00.001+11:00

Issue #6 of DO NOT LOOK AT THE SUN 'Writing On Walls’ is now out in print and online. It features ‘found’ like poems from thewalls of Paris (where the magazine is published) and beyond. As you scroll down,place the curser on the images and you will be able to read the small print. DeanKisling makes some shrewd observations in his photograph ‘NO.’ Contributors inthis issue include Sage Francis, Scroobius Pip and Kele Okereke.

This is an innovationstreet inspired visual + text magazine which reinvents itself with every issue.

Free Cheese by Scroobius Pip

Issue 7 of Do NotLook at the Sun can be found here: http://www.donotlookatthesun.com/Do-Not-Look-at-the-Sun_7RRL.html

Also check out theirarchives for some interesting projects: http://www.donotlookatthesun.com/Archive.php

The magazine is stillconsidering the theme for Issue 7 ‘though it looks like it may have somethingto do with paper airplanes.’

Make your submissionsto the editor Anthony Cuthbertson: http://www.donotlookatthesun.com/Contact-Anthony-Cuthbertson.html

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed A Bit (1979) 125 pages.

2011-11-29T21:38:00.001+11:00

This collection is slim in volume by Bukowski standards but contains ahigh proportion of gems. Many of the poems in this short collection wereoriginally published between 1970 and 1979 in small press magazines such asBlitz, The Goodly Company, Hearse, Midwest, Ontario Review, The Other, Targetand Wormwood Review. These are terse, tough poems by a poet at the height ofhis powers before he became soft through fame and especially by being discreditedthrough the excessive publication ofinferior posthumous collections by Ecco.

Working Class Roots

Bukowski explores his working class roots in many of these poemsincluding, ‘the souls of dead animals’. The poem is about how after working inthe slaughterhouse all day he never showered with the boys. Instead he wouldsit in a bar and savor how the ‘blood-smell begins to fulminate/ and gainpower.’ In ‘Yankee Doodle’ he reflects on a fellow factory worker Sully whoretires after 40 years on the job. In contrast to him, the speaker, presumablyBukowski, continues to arrive drunk at work and is soon shown the door. In the morecomplex poem ‘claws of paradise’ he sums up how he was mastered ‘the hangover/the tears’ and now ‘there is nothing to do/ but drink/ play the horse/ bet onthe poem’.

Everyday Events

Some of the better poems are centered around simple everyday events like observing the circular flight of pesky insects in ‘2 flies’, eatinga piece of fruit in ‘apple’, going for a walk for lunch in ‘the sandwich’,getting his teeth cleaned at the dentist in ‘8 rooms’ or observing peopleshopping in ’59 cents a pound.’ What’s interesting about these narrative poemsis you are unable to predict what is going to happen. The poems start with abasic premise but with Bukowski’s incredible imagination at work and drawingfrom his huge repertoire of experience you never know where you will end up.

Political Poems

Apart from the usual material describing his relationshipswith unusual women and men, his love/ hate of the race track and his occasionalserious sicknesses, he also includes some rare political poems. In the poems‘face of a political candidate on a street billboard’ and ‘the drunk tankjudge’ Bukowski questions the ability of elitist politicians and judges tounderstand the plight of common people when they need to pass judgment on them. In thepowerful poem ‘the proud thin dying’ he sympathises with pensioners who aretrapped by inflation and starving, clutching onto outdated stoical notions ‘that silence was bravery,’ who haveto steal grapes in order to survive. In one of the best poems in the collection‘dow average down’ he is more scathing of the system and its promises and liesand shonky practices to suck you in to make you ‘like everybody else.’

On Writing

Few writers wrote more explicitly about writing thanBukowski, and inevitably, you will find some in this collection. Notable is theclever meta-fictional poem ‘through the streets of anywhere’ which morphs on avariety of levels and makes the aching observation about humankind: ‘but we areall finally tricked and/ slapped to death/ like lovers vows, bargained/ out ofany gain.’ In ‘interviews’ he complains that people often approach him toconduct interviews about his work yet he rarely sees the final product. Aptly, asked whetherhe has ‘any advice about writing/ poetry, it’s—don’t.’ In ‘nothing is aseffective as defeat’ Bukowski satirises the typical advice given to youngwriters- ‘always carry a notebook with you’, ‘don’t drink too much’, ‘attendreadings’. He concludes dismissively:

for a guy who couldn’t write at all

he was about like the rest

of them: he could sure

talk about

it.

After reading many huge, sprawling post-death Bukowskipoetry collections it is comforting to read his work from the 1970s when he wasmore vigorously alive, inventive, and still willing to take great risks and nottruly giving a shit what the general community and publishers thought about his ground-breaking work. You will also find refreshing other early and now largelyignored publications such as MockingbirdWish Me Luck (1972), and The Days RunAway Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969).

Tree Killer Ink ‘Fluorescent Stilts For Your Uncle.’ Epic Rites Press, Edited by Rob Plath, Issues #1 and #2 (2011)/ Interview with Wolfgang Carstens.

2011-11-28T18:34:00.001+11:00

Wolfgang Carstens of Epic Rites Press recently anointed RobPlath as editor of the small press publication Tree Killer Ink, as he says in the interview below, ‘to keep the material [in the magazine]fresh.’ In its second year the 12 page black and white magazine has beenrebirthed by Plath as ‘Fluorescent Stilts For Your Uncle.’ In the tradition of Tree Killer Ink, issues #1 and #2 features poetry by some ofthe leading exponents of underground poetry today, including MistiRainwater-Lites, Dan Fante, Ben Smith, John Yamrus, William Taylor Jr., MathiasNelson, as well as other lesser known voices such as John Sibley Williams andJohn Macker, whom I haven’t stumbled across before.

The writing is varied but characteristically inornate andexplores core themes in underground literature: sex, drugs, disappointment,appreciation of the small things in life, death. Issue #1 of ‘Florescent StiltsFor Your Uncle’ is more substantial and draws you in with a provocative but enigmatic photo entitled‘FUCK OFF UNIVERSE’ by Yvette Sohl- who also features in many other photos andconcrete poems in Issue #2. Rob Plath also features predominately in each issuewith two pages devoted to his work, including his sketch ‘BORN TO DIE’ in issue#1.

The magazine is only available through a yearly subscriptionthrough Epic Rites Press and at $75 per year most underground readers will certainly buck at the cost. The qualityof the writing is good but the expense of publication and postage is perhaps prohibitive,especially to the younger generation of readers who usually snarl at print. This magazine is an important creative arm of ERP and a means to attract established and up & coming talent in the small underground press. This said, although WolfCarstens, the owner of Epic Rites Press, has thrown in many freebies (if yousubscribe shortly), you may be better off purchasing three or four of ERP’sgrowing inventory of excellent underground books. I recommend you start withRob Plath’s brilliant a bellyful ofanarchy (2009) and then move on to Carsten’s extremely capable ‘crudely mistaken for life’ (2010) or John Yamrus's minimalistic collections of poetry.

INTERVIEW WITHWOLFGANG CARSTENS 28 November 2011

BOLD MONKEY: I waswondering about the creation of Tree Killer Ink. What is the story behind it?When did you first develop the idea for the project and what were your initialgoals?

Wolf: TreeKiller Ink was born out of the Epic Rites Press netzines The Abyss GazesAlso, The Thin Edge Of Staring and Lines Written With A Razor. Each netzine had its own mandate and each was widely successful in promotinggreat underground writing. With more and more netzines popping up everyday, muddying the waters on what great underground literature means, I killedall three and started working on the The Epic Rites Journal. Thefirst full-length print edition was subtitled "Building A BetterBomb" and was released shortly after the death of Tood Moore. Inaddition to a balls deep interview with Todd Moore, the book featured poetryand prose by writers like John Yamrus, Rob Plath, William Taylor Jr., Gerald Locklin,John Dorsey, Tony Moffeit, Zack Wilson, and Mathias Nelson. I had so muchfun putting the ERP Journal together that, with the recentdestruction of the three netzines, the only way for me to continue with thesekind of projects was to continue with a print magazine. The first issueof Tree Killer Ink was built from the bones of The Epic Rites Journal.

Myinitial goals for the project were to publish the best underground writing andimages, to print as many copies of the magazine as possible, and to distributethe magazine to as many places around the world as possible. In order tomaximize exposure of the magazine, I concentrated on places where the magazinewould reach the widest possible audience. The magazine initially found homesin "waiting rooms" inside hospitals, hospices, service stations,tattoo shops, and other lonely places where people go to die. To date,thousands of copies of Tree Killer Ink have been distributed around theworld. There are numerous people who help distribute copies ofTree Killer Ink around the world.

Q2: The magazine seems to be a breeding ground for futurefull length collections by your contributors. Who have been some of yourspecial ‘finds’?

Wolf: Someof my "special finds" have been William Taylor Jr. whose short story"An Age of Monsters" (first published in The Epic Rites Journal:Building A Better Bomb) became the cornerstone in a new collection ofstories published by Epic Rites Press under the same name. William'spoetry was exclusively featured in issue #6 of Tree Killer Ink - and thosepoems became the basis of William's forthcoming collection, The Blood of aTourist, to be published by Sunnyoutside Press. Another "specialfind" was Zack Wilson, whose contributions to the magazine have sproutedinto a forthcoming novel by Epic Rites Press called Stumbles and Half Slips. Most recently, the work of Misti Rainwater-Lites has led to the forthcomingproject Bullshit Rodeo - which is a novel to be published in 2012. The work of the great Henry Denander has sprouted into numerous projects whichinclude book illustrations, broadsides and other "secret stuff" thatcan't be mentioned yet. The work of Erik "The Lizardman"Sprague has sprouted into numerous projects that can't be be mentionedhere. Although not so much a "special find," both Rob Plath andJohn Yamrus have been featured in exclusive issues of Tree Killer Ink - andboth of their contributions have become the foundation of full-lengthcollections. The Rob Plath issue became the foundation of Plath'sforthcoming collection Staring Down Your Wounds and the John Yamrusissue became the foundation of his newest collection, Can't Stop Now!.

Q3: For the second year of Tree Killer Ink you recently appointedRob Plath to edit the magazine. Why the change?

Wolf: Thepassing of the chainsaw to Rob Plath happened to keep the material in TreeKiller Ink fresh. Rob used to edit a netzine called The ExuberantAshtray - and it was (in my opinion) one of the best netzines around. I knew that Plath was more than capable of delivering the goods. Anyonewho has read the first two issues of Fluorescent Stilts For Your Uncleknows full well what Plath is capable of achieving. The first issue ofthe new year is (in my opinion) one of the strongest issues of Tree Killer Inkever released. The second issue is a continuation of that strength. Plath has, among other things, added new depth and variety to the magazine byincluding strong images.

Thethird issue of Fluorescent Stilts For Your Uncle will be a Dan Fanteexclusive - presenting thirty pages of his unpublished novel, Malibu Blood.

Q4: What’s with the title ‘Florescent Stilts For YourUncle’?

Wolf: Ican't answer this question. Plath has always had a knack for creatingunique titles - just look at his poem/book titles! When I asked Plathwhat he wanted to call the new magazine, he said "Fluorescent Stilts ForYour Uncle" and we ran with it - no questions asked.

Q5: You are a hugely ambitious guy who wants to sell notjust thousands but hundreds of thousands of your Epic Rites Press books. Youhave been very active in promoting Tree Killer Ink but how do you sell a smallpress magazine to a generation who usually expect everything for free on-line?

Wolf: Theonly way to receive Tree Killer Ink is by subscription. For $75 a year,you receive twelve scheduled issues of the magazine, and (while quantitieslast) limited edition broadsides, glossy prints, and five autographed books byMike Meraz, Mike Taylor, Milner Place, R L Raymond and LawrenceGladeview. These subscriptions with all the freebies are only availableto the first twenty-five subscribers. There are, at present, only ahandful of these subscriptions left. These subscriptions are the only"selling" that happens with Tree Killer Ink. The magazine, atpresent, contains no advertisements.

Now,when you add up the printing and shipping cost of a yearly subscription and allthe free stuff that comes with it, you immediately realize that the main driveof Tree Killer Ink is not to make money. If you consider the Joe andMaisie Fay book by Milner Place, for example, you realize the amount ofmoney involved just to distribute twenty-five autographed copies. Thereis the initial purchase of twenty-five copies, and then the internationalshipping costs. These twenty-five copies must first be shipped fromCanada to the United Kingdom to be signed, then shipped from the United Kingdomto Canada to me, and then shipped from Canada to subscribers around theworld. This book has been shipped three times by the time it makes itinto the hands of subscribers!

Themain drive of Tree Killer Ink is as a guerilla marketing campaign. Mygoal is to distribute great literature around the world. This is whatmakes Tree Killer Ink special. The reason most underground magazines failis because the publisher has his/her eye on the bottom dollar. As such,publication in these magazines amounts to your work being read by maybe onehundred readers. With Tree Killer Ink, the work of contributors is readby thousands of readers worldwide! As I boast on the Tree Killer Inkwebpage, soon enough we're gonna crawl out of the underground with cockroachesin our teeth and middle fingers stabbing the air!

-Wolfgang Carstens

--

EpicRites Press

240- 222 Baseline Road

Suite#206

SherwoodPark, Alberta

T8H1S8

Find Tree Killer Ink info and promos here: http://www.epicrites.org/tree-killer-ink.html

Sample Issue:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48258822/Tree-Killer-Ink-SAMPLE-ISSUE

Tree Killer Ink poems on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLAYr4ywkU8

New Release/ Free Download: Jhon Baker gypsy bars, back alleys and one-way streets. Free Penny Press, 2011 (34 pages).

2011-11-20T12:43:00.001+11:00

‘I’m awake now as if I wasn’t this would not have beenwritten.’ (‘I’m awake now’)

The poems in this collection are clearly written and introspective, but at times, self indulgent.Baker appears to be a poet in search of an idea which he is able to find in rare moments of clarity- when hisseething anger has subsided or when the pharmaceuticals have kicked in. In ‘I’mawake now’ he says matter-of-factly, ‘The new dosages make my sleep sound andsolid, they offer/ clarity for a time now and I can breath slowly withoutmalice’.

Baker’s many endearing poems of love to his wife, family, brother anddead friends are perhaps overshadowed by a menacing tone that violence lurks just below the surface and will surge out shrieking once the brief, calm veneer is shed. There arenumerous references to submerged violence and Baker's constant references to weapons- usinga loaded .357 as a paper weight (‘I’ve been known to take long walks’), shootingholes through his unsuccessful poems in target practice ('I'm awake now') and even implying adesire to overthrow the communists in Cuba (‘it seems (prisoners ofconsciousness’). He asks in ‘a bitch for fun’: ‘are those I shoot supposed toappreciate the extra money I spent/ getting the best available?’ In one ofBaker’s best poems ‘7.62x54R’ ‘the madman levels his rifle/ in calm calculus’and a poet standing in the street with his notebook is murdered, ‘Last poempenned/ in darkest red.’

In an earlier edition of this review, I suggested this collection ironically represented as good an argument as you could get in favour of imposing stricter gun controls on American citizens. One reader thought it was a good thing that I lived in Australia and Baker in America. But I've since been reassured that Baker is only interested in tinkering with guns and would never use them on himself, his family or others. Keep on eye out for this man (and his poetry):

A free download of the collection can be found here:

http://takeittothestreetpoetry.com/2011/10/30/tittsp-is-proud-to-present-gypsy-bars-back-alleys-and-one-way-streets-by-jhon-baker/

Jhon Baker’s blog can be found here: http://willfulresemblance.wordpress.com

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: PHILIP LARKIN: COLLECTED POEMS. The Marvell Press, London, 1988 (330 pages).

2011-11-18T18:06:00.001+11:00

What I like about recommending books is that it saves me from writing a fully considered analysis. There is a lot to learn from Larkin's mature poetry especially his collections The Whitsun Weddings (1964) and High Windows (1974). He writes with great economy and with an aching, layered profundity which constantly explores what this mess we call life is about. Personal favourites which I have studied closely elsewhere, include 'Ambulances', 'Here', 'Dockery and Son', 'Aubade' and 'The Life with a Hole in it'.

For a sprawling, highly authoritative biography of Larkin's personal life and his career as a writer you can't go wrong with Andrew Motion's: PHILIP LARKIN- A Writer's Life (faber and faber, London, 1993 (570 pages). The photo of Larkin above is outside University of Hull Library where he worked as Head Librarian for decades.

Buy it here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philip-Larkin-Sir-Andrew-Motion/dp/057117065X

Larkin was a very private person and refused almost all requests to read or discuss his poetry. He admired Thomas Hardy and the French symbolic writers of the 1890s like Mallarme. He dabbled in symbolism as a way to create mood and convey intense emotions. In his poems he often moves from his closely observed surroundings by evoking a series of illogical and obscure connections to escape the flow of time.

The Slap (ABC TV, 2011)

2011-11-11T18:36:00.001+11:00

If you live outside Australia you should seriously consider downloadingfor free the current ABC series The Slap basedon Melbourne’s Christos Tsiolkas’s 2008 novel of the same name. It is easily thebest drama series ABC has produced for at least five years and is even pulling in a millionviewers per episode.

The ABC homepage of the show can fill youin with the detail and where you can watch previous episodes of the program. A different character presents their story each week:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/theslap/?WT.srch=1&WT.mc_id=Corp_TheSlapAug2011_GoogleAds&gclid=CLrlws2FrqwCFckF4godBA4nFw

HBO look out!

Better still, buy Tsiolkas’s outrageously brilliant novel The Slap here for a measly 40 cents:

http://www.amazon.com/Slap-Christos-Tsiolkas/dp/1741753597

Charles Bukowski. New Book: PORTIONS FROM A WINE-STAINED NOTEBOOK: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990. City Lights, San Francisco, 2008. (255 pages)

2011-11-09T18:51:00.001+11:00

After struggling through many posthumous ECCO publications,I found this recent City Lights book refreshing and highly rewarding. Itfeatures a wealth of previously uncollected Bukowski material, including hisfirst published short stories, book reviews, essays on literature, U.S. politics,his writing craft, biographical accounts, entries from his famous NOTES of aDIRTY OLD MAN newspaper column, tips on how to win at the racetrack and even areview of a Rolling Stones concert. David Stephen Calonne provides a lucid andhighly learned introduction to the book.

I found most interesting his essays which are written in aninnovative and typically no bullshit Bukowski style. ‘In Defense of a CertainType of Poetry, A Certain Type of Life, A Certain Type of Blood-Filled CreatureWho Will Someday Die’ (1966) clearly provides a manifesto for his poetics. Alsomemorable are ‘The L.A. Scene’ (1972) in which he provides a satirical take on theL.A. poetry scene and ‘Should We Burn Uncle Sam’s Ass’ (1970) in which hejustifies his pacifist/ apolitical stance during the Vietnam War.

Also highly engaging are some of Bukowski’s uncollectedshort stories- the best being ‘The Night Nobody Believed I Was Allen Ginsberg’ asprawling, mad narrative, ‘Workout’ (Hustler, 1977), a shrewdly observed storyof an ugly old man entering the lives of beautiful young women and 'Distractions in the Literary Life' (High Times, 1984), a hilarious meta-fictional story which morphs from one moment of insanity to the next.

Bukowski’s voice comes across loud and clear. It helps thereader fill in some more of the gaps on where he is coming from. No Bukophile should miss out on this book. Buy it here: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100856720

Absence of the Hero:Uncollected Stories and Essays, Volume Two: 1946-1992 is also available thruCity Lights: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100446250

The Viking II: Gracias El Gato

2011-11-08T21:42:00.001+11:00

Koots of 'Viking I' fame previously mentioned on this blog has produced a new surfing film set in the Canary Islands and elsewhere. Check out his Sergio Leone parody promo on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/31475789

It has already received about 10,000 hits this week.

The World Premier of the film was recently held at Anita'sTheatre in Thirroul:

http://www.fluidzone.com/news/1832-gracias-el-gato-premiere

An extremely busy time of the year to release a new film.The new owners were tough in extracting every buck they could in the hiring ofthe theatre.

Book Recommendation: Irving Layton: A WILD PECULIAR JOY- The Selected Poems (originally published 1982)

2011-11-07T19:40:00.001+11:00

Apart from Al Purdy my favourite Canadian poet is Irving Layton (1912-2006). This is honed, no bullshit lyrical writing. 'Rain at La Minerve', 'North of Eden' and 'Grand Finale' are fine representative examples of his work. Leonard Cohen said of Layton, 'I taught Layton how to dress and he taught me how to live forever.' Sam Solecki provides an insightful introduction about the man and his art in my 2004 edition of Layton's collection.

Buy it here:

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/98781/a-wild-peculiar-joy-by-irving-layton

BOOK REVIEW/ INTERVIEW: William Taylor Jr. AN AGE OF MONSTERS: Fictions, Partial Truths and a Half Remembered Dream. Epic Rites Press, Sherwood Park, Alberta, 2011 (184 pages)

2011-10-30T14:30:00.003+11:00

This is Tenderloin resident William Taylor Jr.’s first book of short stories. The collection consists of fifteen stories written from a wide variety of perspectives and subject matter. Taylor writes with extraordinary clarity and quickly draws the reader into his quirky world. The stories are carefully crafted but have a spontaneous, unpredictable feel to them.

The title An Age of Monsters: Fictions, Partial Truths and a Half Remembered Dream is an obvious acknowledgement that this is a work of fiction despite being inspired by Taylor's personal and artistic life. The ‘half remembered dream’ is derived from the story 'My Hemingway Dream’ in which the narrator, presumably Taylor, explains a dream in which he shares a drink with the great writer after a big punch up.

Some of the more interesting stories are the longer narratives which reveal how people react in times of crisis. Taylor is particularly effective at describing conflict, when emotions fray and relationships fuck up. In ‘Tuesday Morning at the Sad Motel’ Taylor contrasts the easy going and existential Ben with the messed up and self indulgent Greta to explore the sadness inherent in their love. In ‘The Legend of Eddie and Lola’ he traces with a wonderful sense of dramatic irony the desperation of a couple’s deluded desire to become famous. ‘The Last Time I saw Greta’ the narrator Ben travels to Hollywood to visit a childhood friend who is living with a lesbian. In all these stories, fuses blow and hell breaks out. Taylor describes this descent from reason in an exhilarating and highly entertaining way. His use of dialogue is sparse but always highly credible in helping to reveal the often hidden, volatile side of people.

Also fascinating are Taylor’s satirical portraits of the small press poetry community as he scathingly relates in ‘Lives of the Poets’ Parts I and II. Poets and publishers alike are depicted as a bunch of pretentious, self interested assholes. The narrator Jeffery Robbins Jr. reels as the integrity of his work is mutilated through ‘selective editing.’

Taylor’s comfortably moves from first to third person. His male lead characters are usually laid back, passive men who stoically accept the hand dealt them. They are characteristically unemployed in their late 20s, who enjoy sitting around drinking and observing people and who are sketching the lives of the people they meet in their poetry and short stories. The females, on the other hand, are usually represented as irrational, self destructive and largely driven by impulse. They are strong and think they are in control- but typically have ‘crazed animal eyes’ and who have a tendency of screwing up their daily lives.

Each story is preceded by a black and white photo by San Francisco photographer Julie Michelle. The photos range from the gritty realism of America’s past to photo-shopped conceptual art. I can’t recall seeing the extensive use of photos in a book of short stories previously so it gives a unique feel to the book.

William Taylor Jr. is a clever, natural born story teller who loves to describe people and relationships, especially when things don’t go according to plan. He writes with great humour and humanity and is unafraid to experiment with form or content. These stories about ordinary people are narrated in a simple, conversational style and express an honest truth which we would most certainly heed if we were predominately rational creatures.

INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM TAYLOR JR: 12 October 2011

Q1: You have been publishing poetry for over fifteen years but you appear to have only published a handful of stories prior to your first collection of short stories An Age of Monsters. The earliest short story I found of yours is ‘The Wallet’ published in Laura Hird’s SHOWCASE in 2005. http://www.laurahird.com/showcase/williamtaylorjr2.html How long have you been writing short stories and when did it click that you could assemble a collection?

A1: I’ve actually been writing stories just as long as I’ve been writing poems, if not longer. I started submitting my poetry first, and had some success with it, so I tended to spend more time on the poems. I continued to write stories and publish them from time to time, but they come much slower than the poems, and it’s taken me some time to find a consistent voice in my prose.

Q2: You seamlessly appear to move from poetry to prose in your writing. What difficulties have you experienced in the transition between the two mediums? What are some of the fundamental goals you strive for in your prose writing?

A: I think perhaps because I write so much poetry, I tend to write my stories like I write my poems, line by line, wanting every line to be as perfect as I know how to make it, so the stories can be kind of slow going for me. I’m not a fast writer. I try to have a certain rhythm in the language of my stories, as in my poems, so they usually go through a lot of editing.

When I write a story my goal is to do my best to convey whatever “truth” of feeling that came to me when I decided to write it. It’s important for me for the characters and dialogue be as honest as possible, trying to avoid sacrificing truth for a plot point.

Q3: In researching for this interview some of your favourite prose writers include Brautigan, Bukowski, Salinger and Carver. Can you nominate some others, both past & present, you look up to and why?

A: Definitely all of those you’ve mentioned. The others I would have to list would be William Saroyan, Nelson Algren, Luis Ferdinand Celine, Hemingway, and more recently Cormac McCarthy and Roberto Bolano.

This is obviously a varied group, but maybe what links them in my mind is that they’re all great stylists, and plot is often less important than getting across some kind of feeling or truth. They’re all writers that can blow you away with a perfect sentence or passage, just with the poetry of the language. I don’t care what a story is about; I can read a novel about a guy sitting in a chair staring at a wall if it’s written in a way that gives me some insight into the human condition. I guess you could say there a lot of poetry in the prose of these writers, and a lot of dark humor.

Q4: The reference to the title of your book comes from the tragic-comic short story ‘An Age of Monsters.’ The full title of your collection is a long one: An Age of Monsters: Fictions. Partial Truths and a Half Remembered Dream. Can you elaborate on why you chose this title?

A: In the context of the stories, the Age of Monsters is the age of man; man being a monster of sorts, out of tune with the natural world. The subtitle just describes the variety of pieces in the collection; some are completely fictional, while others are fairly autobiographical. And there’s an actual dream I had about Ernest Hemingway.

Q5: The Tenderloin area of SF is similar to other Western dives such as East Vancouver and the King’s Cross area of Sydney which I am more familiar with. Why the continued fascination with the low-life?

A: My writing, both poetry and prose, is strongly influenced by my surroundings. I currently live on the edge of the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco and so a lot of the stories in the collection are born of the people and places I encounter there. I don’t really see it as the “low-life”, exactly, more just people existing on the fringes of the society, without a lot of luck or money, getting by as best they can. It’s just day to day life.

Q6: Can you outline your involvement with Epic Rites Press. How did you first become familiar with the publisher and how were they to deal with in the processes leading up to the publication of An Age of Monsters?

A: Epic Rites had been publishing my poetry in their magazine, Tree Killer Ink, and featuring my work in various projects. At some point they published the short story An Age of Monsters. Wolf at Epic Rites really liked the piece, and at some point we decided I had enough stories that worked well together for a collection. We’ve been working together as far as editing the pieces, and San Francisco photographer Julie Michelle has provided images for the title pages of each story, which really has given the book a unique feel.

Q7: What’s next for you?

A: I’ve got another book of poems in the early stages of being born, and hopefully I’ll be working on a few other projects with Julie Michelle. I might even consider one day writing something that will make me some money.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions.

Thank you!

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. His poems and stories have been widely published in the independent press in publications including Poesy, The Chiron Review and The New York Quarterly. He is the author of the poetry collections Words for Songs Never Written (Centennial Press 2007) and The Hunger Season (Sunnyoutside, 2009). An Age of Monsters is his first collection of prose. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Buy Taylor’s An Age of Monsters here:

http://www.epicrites.org/an-age-of-monsters.html

Check out William Taylor Jr.’s homepage for information about his books:

http://williamtaylorjr.net/

An interesting interview of Taylor about his poetry can be found here:

http://www.centennialpress.com/interview.html

Charles Bukowski The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. New York, Ecco, 2002 (144 pages)

2011-10-28T19:49:00.000+11:00

Tried to post the following short review of Bukowski's book on Amazon.com today but because of its negative commentary it was rejected so I throw it here:

These diary entries document Bukowski's life between 28August 1991 and 27 February 1993. They make amply clear Bukowski's take as a71-72 year-old on such aspects as horse racing, writing, writer's block, hisdomestic life, fellow writers, fans, how people are assholes and his impendingdeath. His tone is subdued and reflective as he is deeply aware he will soondie and perhaps at any minute. Robert Crumb provides wonderful illustrations tohighlight some key quotes in the diary.

The most interesting part of the book that I wasunaware of was that Bukowski was approached by a commercial tv station in 1992to produce a sit-com of his life as an aging writer. He rejected it as it appeared crass and undermined everything he stood for as a writer. Joe Singer's ideas for episode ideas of the show which follow, reveal Bukowski's satirical and perhaps hyperbolic vent on the commercial world, who just don't get his work:

1. Hank's craving for a lobster dinner is thwarted by animal rights activists.
2. Secretary ruins Hank's chances with a poetry groupie.
3. To honor Hemingway, Hank bangs a broad named Millie whose husband, a jockey, wants to pay Hank to keep banging her. There must be a catch.
4. Hank allows a young male artist to paint his portrait and is painted into a corner into revealing his own homosexual experience.
5. A friend of Hank's wants him to invest in his latest scheme. An industrial use for recycled vomit.

Here are some further suggestions:

6. Hank falls asleep on the lounge and as he wakes, to his horror and surprise, a middle-aged university professor with a big one rams him up the ass in a mad wild gallop.
7. To commemorate Buk's 10th millionth printed word a literary symposium is held in Los Angeles in his honour and is attended by all of his heroes including- Celine, Dostoyevsky, Fante, Hemingway and Mahler, to name a few. They all get sloshed and in a late night celebration accidentally set fire to his remaining manuscripts intended for posthumous publication.
8. Hank takes an unusual break from the track and attends a baseball game. When the cleanup batter is injured Hank is called up to bat. On a 3-2 pitch he hits a game winning home-run much to the jubilation of the crowd- but when he heads for home, he suddenly lurches forward and vomits six half-eaten jumbo hotdogs onto the plate.

I can see it now: Bukowski on HBO.

Rather than buy this book it is probably best to save your hard-earned bucks- unless you have anacademic or self flaggelatory interest in Bukowski's writing. You are far better to stick to hisfictional writing from this period, especially his poetry: The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992) is brilliant. Hisposthumous collections COME ON IN! (2006)and The Flash of Lightning Behind theMountain (2004) aren't too far behind. Forget Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997) it is embarrassingly thin and highly self indulgent- even by Bukowski standards.

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski POST OFFICE. Originally published in 1971

2011-10-27T19:33:00.005+11:00

The descriptions of working as a post carrier and clerk in Post Office are intriguing but can sometimesbe as repetitive and boring as mail sorting. You enter the world of the mail carrier through Bukowski's alter-ego, Henry Chinaski and discover the idiosyncrasies of his various routes, his fellow workers and the people he delivers to. After three years, he lands a job as a regular postie but resigns shortly afterwards because he is sick of the rules and regulations. He marries Joyce, and following a short interlude in Texas, he returns to L.A. and scores a job as a mail clerk. The work involves sorting mail and it is deadening and exhausting: 'We were working in zoned mail. If a letter read zone 28 you stuck it to hole no. 28. It was simple.' According to the production schedule, Chinaski must 'stick' each two-foot tray of mail containing hundreds of letters in 23 minutes. He is closely watched by supervisors that 'looked at you as if you were a hunk of human shit.' He works 12 hours a night for two weeks straight and then gets four days off- unless he is asked to work overtime.

The novel acts as a sort of preludeto Women (1978) in that away from the post office, Chinaski describes how he frequents the race track and hops into bed with a variety of women. Hisdescriptions of sex are not as explicit but his view of women as 'flank'or 'a piece of ass' typical. He says of Vi: 'She looked all right. Stocky. But good ass, thighs and breasts. A hard tough ride.' He sees women as nurturers who 'like a bit of screaming, a bit of dramatics.' After Fay gives birth to his child, he says matter-of-factly, 'Women were meant to suffer; no wonder they asked for constant declarations of love.' One day he is at the track and sees Mary Lou for the first time and remarks: 'God or somebody keeps creating women and tossing them out on the streets, and this one's ass is too big and that one's tits are too small, and this one is mad and that one is crazy and that one is a religionist and that one reads tea leaves and this one can't control her farts, and that one has this big nose, and that one has boney legs... But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossum, a woman just bursting out of her dress... a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.'

After 11 years at the post office, Chinaski suffers from dizzy spells and 'each letter was getting heavier and heavier.' He looks at the depleted men around him and realises the job is killing him: 'They either melted or they got fat, huge, especially around the ass and the belly. It was the stoll and the same motion and the same talk. And there I was, dizzy spells and pains in the arms, neck, chest, everywhere. I slept all day resting up for the job. On weekends I had to drink in order to forget it. I had come in weighing 185 pounds. Now I weighed 223 pounds. All you moved was your right arm.'

After numerous conflicts with management, Chinaski is charged with being absent without leave on 16 occasions, and after taking 28 minutes to throw a 23 minute tray in a time-test, he is counseled by the post office. Shortly afterwards, he finds the only way he can keep from dizzy-spells is 'to get up and take a walk now and then.' He explains to his supervisor Fazzio: 'If I stay on that stool much longer I am going to leap up on top of those tin cases and start running around whispering Dixie from my asshole and Mammy's Little Children Love Shortnin' Bread through the frontal orfice.'

Near the conclusion of the novel, Chinaski understands that he has continued to work because he is trapped by the system: 'I don't know how it happens to people. I had child support, need for something to drink, rent, shoes, socks, all that stuff. Like everyone else I needed an old car, something to eat, all the little intangibles. Like women. Or a day at the track. With everything on the line and no way out, you don't even think about it.' He is fed up with the post office and resigns.After a two week bender, he wakes up and concludes, 'Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.' No mention is made earlier in the novel that Chinaski is a writer and no mention is made of Bukowski's generous benefactor, John Martin, whose financial backing enabled him to leave his post office job in January1970 after eleven and a half years to allow him to write full-time.

According to Barry Miles biography Charles Bukowski (2005) after Bukowski quit his job he was sick with worry and was suicidal for ten days. After being cheered up by some friends who brought along their guitars, he started writing. Each night he would sit at his desk at 6:18 pm- his former post office starting time- with a pint of scotch, two six-packs of beer and some cheap cigars. It took only 20 evenings & nights to complete the first 120,000 word draft of Post Office. It was eventually pared down to 90,000 words.

Overall, this is funny, highly entertaining novel. Post Office is agreat model for those thinking of writing about their job from a workingclass perspective. You have to admire the guts and brains of John Martin in 1970 to offer Bukowski $100 a week for life to write what ever he wanted. It eventually made both men very rich. But as the recent City Lights publications of Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook (2008) and Absence of the Hero (2010) attest, it was a 'no brainer' for Martin- Bukowski was an extremely hard working and fearless advocate of free speech and underground writing in the 1960s and had a huge backstory dating back to 1944 with the publication of his first short story 'Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip.' He was a sure bet.

Book Review: Glenn W. Cooper SOME NATURAL THINGS. Kamini Press, Stockholm Sweden, 2007 (32 pages)

2011-10-23T18:30:00.003+11:00

I was curious to have a look at a Kamini Press publicationso got a hold of Glenn W. Cooper’s poetry book Some Natural Things. The book I received was first edition andsigned by the author. I was also thrown in a signed copy of Gerald Locklin’spoem ‘Two Torch Singers’. The book is approximately 80 x 55 mm in size, handmade, self assembled and printed on quality Lessebo Linne 100 g paper. The coverfeatures a water colour by Henry Denander, the publisher of Kamini Press.

Cooper’s collection consists of twenty-five short poemswhich examine rain/ storms as a motif to stir human emotions, thoughts, memories.These are gentle, evocative free verse poems which explore the well troddenthemes of failure, the loss of love, discovery, small pleasures, growing old-without the sentiment or bullshit.

This book can be read carefully a couple of times in halfan hour. I found that although I enjoyed reading Cooper’s work these poems only juststart to wet my appetite. I have followed his work over many years and theArmidale, New South Wales resident is one of a few Australians to consistently publish quality poetry inthe international small press. He has written many chapbooks but I would liketo read a larger collection of his poetry which does justice to the full bodyof his work.

Blurbs of Glenn W. Cooper’s book and further info on how youcan buy his book can be found at Kamini Press here: http://kaminipress.com/2009/09/20/glenn-w-cooper-some-natural-things/

More on Cooper’s many chapbooks can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/author/cooperglennw

Right Hand Pointing- Web Chapbook Series

2011-10-21T16:53:00.000+11:00

I'm reminded that Right Hand Pointing Magazine has a growinge-chapbook series of free downloads:

https://sites.google.com/site/righthandpointingsite/archives-1

The best I've read so far is Corey Mesler's The Heart is Open (2011).Find it here:
https://sites.google.com/site/coreymesler/

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: William Taylor Jr. WORDS FOR SONGS NEVER WRITTEN. Centennial Press, Milwaukee, 2007 (190 pages)

2011-10-18T21:17:00.001+11:00

A brief hint of light
squeezed in somehow
between a grand and endless
darkness.

There is beauty enough
in this.

from 'The Bones of Things'

I came across this New and Selected Poems collection byTaylor a couple of weeks ago while researching for an upcoming review/interview on BOLD MONKEY for his soon to be released collection of shortstories An Age of Monsters: http://www.epicrites.org/an-age-of-monsters.html

The poems cover a period of ten or so years (1997-2007) and areremarkably consistent in tone, subject matter and narrative voice. The poemsare clear, observational, and highly personal and characteristically explore the fine edge betweensadness and joy, beauty and horror, hope and despair.

Taylor is keenly aware of living ‘in the shadow of death’and is repulsed by the ugliness he sees in the world. He attempts tocling to the simple beauty he finds around him in his daily experiences- the sound of laughter, thewarmth of a body, a smile of a loved one, sunlight falling on girls walking downthe street, old men in bars on weekday afternoons.

But he knows that this reprieve can only be temporal before the‘sad sort of peace’ he seeks will soon crumble and the lost and damaged aroundhim will be swept up in failure, disappointment, loneliness, and for some, in the despair of suicide. Underlying everything we do for Taylor, like Larkin, is the ‘unmentionable’ fear and horror and the inadequacy of words to explain the raw state of disintegration we will all one day face.

It is a sad, ugly world but as Taylor states defiantly inhis opening poem ‘In Spite of Them’: ‘The sane and the powerful/ have had theirway in the world/…We are beautiful, still, in spite of them.’

Find out more information about this excellent book below.The Centennial press link includes a sample of poems and a 2007 interview with William Taylor Jr : http://www.centennialpress.com/words.html

Postscript 25 Nov 2011: I accidentally ordered two copies but only received one. I sent off a request to either refund me or send me an additional copy but after two weeks I haven't heard a whisper. This is the first time I ever have had a problem in dealing with the small press in ten years! I'll let you know of further developments.

BOOK REVIEW/INTERVIEW: Mather Schneider HE TOOK A CAB NYQ Books, New York, 2011 (108 pages).

2011-10-17T22:20:00.002+11:00

This is the second full-length book of poetry published by Tucson taxidriver Mather Schneider. Most of the poems in the collection were inspired bySchneider’s long-term experience as a cab driver. The poems are largelyanecdotal narratives written in a simple and understated way. The clarity andimmediacy of the language makes you feel like you are sitting in the back seatof Schneider’s cab as he drives his quirky and sometimes demanding and difficult fares to their destinations- be it a detox center, Whataburger, a nudist camp,or hospital.

As is explained in the preface, the title ‘he took a cab’ is derivedfrom an old jazz saying that means someone has died. The title poem ‘He Took aCab’ is based on a true story about a cabby who was tragically shot and killedby a passenger who tried to evade paying a fourteen dollar fare.

The daily grind of a cab driver is represented through a variety ofvoices and credible real life experiences. Schneider chronicles the long hours,the fickleness, the randomness, the messiness, the in-fighting of an essentialjob which is sometimes fraught with danger. The reader easily slips intoSchneider’s world as he drives around Tucson and into the surrounding desert- theshitty drivers, the quirky, unending variety of people he crosses paths withand the thrill and unpredictable flux of the journey- all come alive.

It is Schneider’s descriptions of people and how he often allows them totell their own stories in their own words which makes this book special andhighly entertaining and amusing to read. He cleverly draws portraits of hispassengers and fellow cabbies to comment on human nature- both good and bad. Heis sometimes scathing in his attack on the viciousness, hypocrisy and racism ofsome of his fares. In ‘Trust Me’ he drops off a foul and sleazy prison guardwho has been cheating on his wife. In ‘Devotee’ he mocks a rude and ungratefuladherent of the Dalai Lama who is in town for a talk. In ‘The Virtues of Self-Locomotion’he uses black humour to express his hatred of school bus drivers who believethey are superior and ‘immune from street law.’

Schneider can also show great tenderness and empathy for his passengers-especially if they tip well. In ‘6234 N. KOLB’ he drives a man to the airporton his first vacation in 22 years. On the way the passenger gets a phone calltelling him his father has had a heart attack. As they head for the hospitalthere is another call- the father has died. In ‘TREASURE’ his fare Margieintroduces him to her pet snail Chuy on their way to the Valley Pet clinic.

Schneider also provides the reader with insights into the crazycharacters who drive cabs for a living. Their world is highly competitive andlargely thankless. Amongst them there is Filthy Phil, an Vietnam-vet whoselatest scheme is to marry a young Russian bride, Darren the Shark, Hobgoblin,and Vic, an eighty-four year old whose idea of fun is to activate his smallbattery-powered fart machine.

Some of the more memorable poems include extended metaphors and makesome interesting philosophical observations about the job. ‘A Bone A Day’adopts a stoical position: ‘If/ at the end of a twelve-hour day/ you’ve got abone in your pocket/ you’re doing alright.’ ‘Destiny of a Cab Driver’ Schneidersees himself as being chained to his cab: ‘I have no destination of my own./ Ispend my life driving in circles/ and never get any closer/ to the center.’ Thewonderful poem ‘Zen Cabby’ is about an impossibly perfect day, when everythingmiraculously falls into place for the driver. He remarks at the end: ‘The trickis to trust nothing/ but the deepest laws,/ and the only way to trust/ is tolet go.’

The poems in He Took a Cab arestreet-smart and have an emotional depth which is never forced or false. Thisis finely crafted poetry which is easy to read and picture in yourhead. Most humorous and intriguing are the real people Schneider has met andhas shaped through his poetry.

INTERVIEW WITH MATHER SCHNEIDER- 16OCTOBER 2011

Q1: Most of the poems in your new collection He Took a Cab are about taxi driving from a variety ofperspectives. How long have you been driving a cab and can you briefly describea typical night shift and the emotions you go through?

A1: I’ve been driving a cab, off and on and for various companies, for 6years in Tucson and I also drove a cab in a small town in Washington State,Bellingham, years ago. I don’t do night shifts anymore and in fact now drivefor a company that only transports non-emergency medical patients to and fromthe doctor, paid for by the state insurance. So a lot of the poems in the bookare about my past experiences. The emotions you go through during a typical 12hour cab shift run the gamut from elation at a 50 dollar tip, to anger attraffic, to fear from thugs or drunks, to heartbreaking pity for a 12 year oldboy with bone cancer and a mask over his face because the very air makes himsick. It’s amazing how tired you are after a cab driving shift, even thoughyou’re just sitting on your ass the whole time.

Q2: I can imagine in driving taxis at all hours that over the years yousee some of the worst and best in humanity. What have you learnt about peopleand about life in general since you’ve been driving hacks? Do any incidentsstand out?

A2: I’ve learned that scumbags and saints come in all sizes and from alleconomic brackets. Many incidents stand out, and I write about those. Justtoday I went to one of our hospitals to pick up a patient. She was sitting in awheelchair at the doors of the hospital looking out at the road. Her caregiver,on seeing me coming, turned around for a second to grab the old lady’s bag. Atthat moment, the old lady in the wheelchair started rolling forward, could notcontrol it, and rolled out the door, across the sidewalk and over the curb intothe street. She did a full face plant on the pavement, blood was everywhere andshe was screaming like a lunatic. I felt bad for her, and I also felt bad forthe caregiver, who would surely lose her job.

Q3: On the inscription page there is note that ‘any references tohistorical or real locales are used fictionally.’ Most of your poems appear tohave been inspired by real people and events. I am curious, was it essentiallya legal requirement to fictionalise your experiences?

A3: You know, I never noticed that. Yeah, I guess that’s just a legalthing, I have no idea. I have always been honest about the fact that mymaterial comes from real life, although I do change names and embellish andcombine stories in ways that do not conform exactly to reality.

Q4: The epigraph notes that the title of your collection He took a cab is old jazz slang forsomeone who has died. The title poem ‘He took a cab’ is about a cabby who isshot and killed by a passenger who tried to evade paying a fourteen dollarfare. Why did you choose this title? Have you been in many dangerous situationsyourself?

A4: I’ve always liked the title poem and I’ve always liked the title,thought it would make a nice catchy title for the book. Then I discovered thatphrase’s usage by the old jazz guys. Like someone might say, “Hey, whateverhappened to Leroy?” “Oh, he took a cab, man, he took a cab.” Meaning he died.Yes, I’ve been in some dangerous situations. I’ve had a gun pulled on me, andI’ve been threatened and punched in the face by passengers. But, all in all,I’ve been lucky. I mean, it’s Tucson, after all, not Chicago or Detroit or LA.When that cabby got shot, every cabby I knew was shaking their head, becauseyou just don’t follow someone into an alley, you have to refine your instincts,and really you hope to sniff out the dangerous characters BEFORE they get intoyour cab. Sometimes you just can’t tell, though.

Q5: Many of the poems in your new collection were previously publishedin important small press magazines such as Nerve Cowboy, American Dissident,Commonline and others. How long how you been collecting these poems forpublication?

A5: The poems in this book cover about the last 4 or 5 years.

Q6: Can you provide some insights into your writing process? Does yourinspiration come quick? Do you need to do much editing, redrafting? What do youhope to achieve in your writing?

A6: I make notes to myself, usually on the backs of our taxi businesscards, and then later I write them out if I can find the time or energy. Thesedays I’m lucky to write new stuff once a week, though I’m constantly tinkeringwith old stuff. I do rewrite quite a bit, which is just a matter of reading apiece over and over, letting it sit, reading it again, mainly trying to tightenand get rid of cliché, try to make the language as clean and fresh as possible.I do not think there is anything particularly saintly or noble about writing,and as far as what I want to achieve with it, well, I would like people to behaunted by my words, to laugh, to be entertained, and maybe to feel somethingdeep inside they didn’t expect.

Q7: It is a great achievement to have a poetry book published by NewYork Quarterly Foundation. Can you briefly explain the events leading to yourcollection being published by them?

A7: Thank you. I submitted poems to New York Quarterly, once or twice ayear, for 12 years, and was rejected every time with form rejections. Then, oneday about 2 years ago, I got an acceptance. Then I submitted more and they took3 more! Then, Raymond Hammond, the editor, wrote me and said he wanted topublish a book of mine. Working with him on the book was fun and painless, forthe most part. He gave me free reign and it is my drawing on the cover. We onlygot in one fight during the process, which is pretty good for me!

Q8: Have you discovered any new writers over the last couple of yearswhich impress you? If any, what do you enjoy about their writing/ message?

A8: I like Jim Valvis and M.P. Powers. Valvis’s honesty and humility andhumor are wonderful, and Powers has a lyrical quality and sense of humor that Ilike. But, in general I am not impressed with most of the writing I read thesedays.

Q9: I’ve read many of your short stories about some of your taxi drivingadventures. Do you intend collecting these in a volume one day?

A9: Yes, I do have a manuscript which is held together by the connectivethread of cab driving. Some of the stories only mention cab driving in onesentence, others are basically journals of a cab driver. I have had many ofthem published on the internet but I can’t break into any respectable printjournal to save my life. I hope to get the book published one day, and I’mworking on it now, revising it. The title of the book is NEXT TIME TAKESUNRISE, the title story of which was published in Zygote in My Coffee. Here’sthe link to that: http://www.zygoteinmycoffee.com/100s/issue134nexttimetake.html

Q10: What’s next for you?

A10: Well, we just bought a house, a foreclosure for 36,000 cash, and mywife and I will be moving soon, so that is exciting, to get out from under theyoke of rent. And I hope to get that book of prose published, like I said.Other than that, just more writing and working and living.

Thanks again Mather for sharing your views with me and my readers.

Thanks George!

Buy Mather Schneider’s new collection He Took a Cab here at NYQ Books: http://www.nyqbooks.org/title/hetookacab

Find my 2010 review of Schneider’s firstcollection Drought Resistant Strainon Bold Monkey: http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2010/04/drought-resistant-strain-book-review.html

FREE CHAPBOOK DOWN LOAD: Mike Meraz Writhing & Alive. Free Penny Press, Tampa Florida, 2012 (32 pages).

2011-10-12T17:55:00.000+11:00

Mike Meraz of Black-Listed Magazine fame has just published a small chapbookof poetry through ‘Take-It-To-The-Street-Poetry.’ The concept of this fledglingproject is ‘about offering words and art to those that have limited access tothese gifts. Getting the words to those who are in confined environments,living on the edge, the homeless and lonely, etc.’ Their idealistic mission is to ‘drop’ their books ‘inrandom places around the world, in the hope that those who receive them willsmile and enjoy the moments of reading and perhaps start a spark or rekindletheir admiration for the arts.’

These are short, reflective, highly personal poems. They explore love, thefear of loneliness, how time slips away, the life of the imagination and needto capture special moments for one’s sanity and for posterity. My personal favourites include the aphorism ‘Weall Die in Circles’, ‘Let’s Leave a Mark’ about the need to take risks and ‘Crap,the Neighbor Kids Are Over’ which contemplates the bitter-sweet essence oflove.

Mike Meraz’s page on theTake-It-To-The-Street-Poetry site is here: http://takeittothestreetpoetry.com/2011/10/01/tittsp-october-volume-is-featuring-writhing-alive-by-mike-meraz/

FREE DOWNLOAD of Mike’s new chapbookWrithing & Alive is linked here: http://takeitothestreetpoetry.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/m-meraz.pdf

Have a closer look at the Take-It –To-The-Street-Poetry Project throughtheir homepage and consider submittingsome of your own material: http://takeittothestreetpoetry.com/

MikeMeraz’s magazine Black-Listed Magazine link: http://black-listedmagazine.blogspot.com/

BOOK REVIEW: CHARLES BUKOWSKI DANGLING IN THE TOURNEFORTIA (Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa, 1981, 281 pages)

2011-10-08T19:01:00.002+11:00

This poetry book is more for the fanatic than theconnoisseur of Bukowski’s work. It is sandwiched amongst his fire in the belly writingof Burning in Water, Drowning in Frame(1974), Love Is a Dog from Hell(1977) and his intense and diverse philosophical ruminations found in War All the Time (1984) and TheLast Night of the Earth Poems (1992). Dangling in the Tournefortia was published when Bukowski wasfifty-nine years old and his reputation was clearly established and growingexponentially.

The collection characteristically explores many of Bukowski’sfavourite themes: women, gambling at the racetrack, the writing process, publicreadings and observations of quirky people. Sometimes you get the impressionthat he is writing for the hell of it. He meticulously records every event,impression, memory, wild thought- no matter how trivial, inexplicable orrandom. Too many poems focus on domestic, ordinary experiences such asshopping, going to restaurants, cleaning his room or negotiating with his then partnerLinda.

The language in this collection seems comparatively pareddown with few literary allusions or concentrated lyrical passages. The tone is typicallyself-effacive with a hint of cynicism. The poems are often structured todeliver a street-wise sermon at the end. The best poems are the longernarrative poems like ‘Independence Day’, ‘yeah, man?’ and ‘a poetry reading’which evolve and surprisingly morph into unpredictable territories.

Only a few poems explore Bukowski’s working class roots, suchas, ‘blue collar solitude’, ‘sick’ and perhaps one of the best poems in thecollection ‘guava tree’. Chinaski, (interestingly only mentioned once in thebook) Buk’s alter-ego, knows he has it good. He overlooks the ocean at SanPedro, drives a new model BMW for tax purposes and sleeps with women decadesyounger than himself.

I suppose that Bukowski was writing so much material at this time andstruggling to cope with his rising fame that there is a complacency and lack ofurgency in this collection as a whole. A few poems like ‘we evolve’ and the Cold War ‘takingcare of the whammy’ attempt to rise above the temporal but most of the poemsfall flat and don’t offer much apart from a perverse curiosity. Delay purchasingthis book unless you have an academic interest or are a fanatic like me.

New Release: Scott-Patrick Mitchell The Tricking Post. Black Rider Press 2011 (32 pages)

2011-09-25T17:19:00.002+10:00

Scott-Patrick Mitchell’s new chap book the tricking post was recently released through the innovativepublisher Black Rider Press. The work first appeared as The Trickster’s Bible, a street art installation, developed for theNational Young Writers’ Festival Newcastle, and later Perth, in 2008.

One night accompanied by his partner in crime, Tomas Ford, Mitchell pasted AO sized copies of his poems on walls all across the 'violent cesspit of post-BHP-closure working class anger that was Newcastle.' The collection consists of twenty 'tricky' letter poems written from different narrative perspectives, many of which are difficult to unravel. It is impossible to imagine a casual passerby engaging, for example, in the meta-fictional letter poem, ironically titled 'letter that falls on death ears'. Rather than expose in a public space one's inner secrets through the intimacy of the letter form as Mitchell intended, this street art alienates the general reader by obfuscating meaning through the complexity of its language. These poems certainly deserve closer scrutiny in another venue- perhaps as part of a post-graduate dissertation on the Art of Vandalism.

In the preface, I was impressed by Ford's encouragement to buyers of this book to embrace the spirit of the original presentation: 'Tear out the pages. Douce them in clag and water and stick these pages all over your suburbs...I'm serious. Tear this fucking thing apart.'

Have a careful read of Mitchell's explanations of his craft to Brisbane poet GrahamNunn on his blog ‘another lost shark’interviews. I'd be interested to know what you think of Mitchell's commentary:

http://anotherlostshark.com/2011/09/06/the-tricksters-mask-an-interview-with-scott-patrick-mitchell-part-i/

http://anotherlostshark.com/2011/09/10/the-tricksters-mask-an-interview-with-scott-patrick-mitchell-part-ii/

I have previouslyreviewed and interviewed Mitchell about his work on BOLD MONKEY:

http://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-review-scott-patrick-mitchell.html

Mitchell is a highly innovative and assertive artist.Discover his latest literary adventures here on his new blog: http://scott-patrickmitchell.com/

Further reviews and a hardcopy/ download of the book can bepurchased here:

http://www.blackriderpress.com/the%20tricking%20post.html

BOOK REVIEW: Richard Brautigan In Watermelon Sugar. London, Picador Books, 1970 (142 pages). Originally published 1968.

2011-09-24T14:59:00.001+10:00

My recentinterest in Cold War literature has drawn me back to Brautigan’s highlyinventive novella In Watermelon Sugar,first written in 1964. It is his third prose book and further establishedBrautigan’s reputation amongst young readers who were challenging traditionalways of thinking at the height of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War.When he started writing the book, Brautigan was living in the small coastalCalifornian village of Bolinas. He used the communal, back-to-nature values ofBolinas as the basis of his post-apocalyptic town of iDEATH.

Thisis an experimental, early stab at post-modernism. The nameless narratordirectly addresses his audience and meta-fictionally lets them know he is writing this book.

Atthe beginning of the novella the community has fragmented into two distinctcamps. There are about 375 people who live in the town of iDEATH.The folks are gentle and live a simple subsistent existence with watermelonbeing their staple crop. Watermelon sugar is used in the production ofpractically everything- including clothes, houses and bridges. The people livein shacks and share meals together. They speak in naïve, matter-of-factsentences. They live a kind of idyllic but empty existence. Fed up with life atiDEATH the rebeliNBOIL and about twenty followersleave the village and set up camp in the ForgottenWorks, a gigantic dump which holds the debris of the past world. They distil whiskeyand get drunk and do evil things. When sober they sometimes dig up relics andbooks from the dump and sell them to the villagers.

Nothingis known about the outside world. Presumably society as we know it has been destroyedthrough nuclear war and pockets of people have leant how to survive. The bookthat the narrator is working on is only the twenty-fourth in 171 years and thefirst in thirty-five years. Similarly, not much is known about the past, apartfrom the idea that talking tigers used to roam the area and ate no name's parents before being wiped outby humans.

AlthoughIn Watermelon Sugar was written in1964 and touches on some Cold War ideas and values, there are no explicitphilosophical, religious, or political references to make it a significant ColdWar text. It clearly establishes, for example, iDEATHas alternative hippy-like community which has close connections to the land butlittle else. The novella is more the product of Brautigan’s far-out imagination. The village’s twenty or so giant vegetablestatues, the underwater tombs, and the different coloured watermelons make for trippyreading but don’t say much about the times. At the dining table one night therebel iNBOILaptly points out to his brother Charley: ‘This place stinks. This isn’t iDEATHat all. This is just a figment of your imagination.’

I’mnot sure what the conflict between the villagers and iNBOILand his gang is meant to represent, if anything. iNBOIL is just a pisshead with no communist attributes or sympathies. The ending is very bizarre with iNBOILand his mob cutting off their thumbs, ears and noses and bleeding to death.Perhaps it foreshadows Brautigan’s own descent into alcoholism and his eventual suicide at 49. Hemingway-like,he placed a .44 magnum shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. His suicidenote simply read, ‘Messy isn’t it?’

This novella is far from messy. It is carefully crafted and represents an important transitional text between the beats and the hippies.

Thebest site on Richard Brautigan is easily Brautigan.net where you will findextensive critical material on his writing. Find it here: www.brautigan.net/watermelon.html

BOOK REVIEW/ INTERVIEW: Jack Henry CRUNKED. Epic Rites Press, Sherwood Park Alberta, 2011 (113 pages).

2011-09-16T23:54:00.001+10:00

Crunked is thesecond full length poetry collection by Jack Henry. Written in confessional free verse, it documents with astoundinghonesty the life of a methamphetamine addict flung deep into his own privatehell. These are stark,unembellished underground poems which are sometimes highly confrontational insubject matter which Jack Henry explores with uncensored abandon; including- druguse, prostitution and mental breakdown. Most of the poems are written in firstperson, but Henry adopts a variety of voices and styles in this collection toflesh out his harrowing perspective on life. The persona in most of the poems wavers between the voice of a defiant, never give-in-to-the-system ‘Superman’ while high, and the crushed voice ofregret and self recrimination, while down and hanging out for the next line ofspeed or crack bong.

In his Amazon hype for CrunkedHenry claims he wrote the book over three days following a sixty-six hour high.Initially, he did not want to publish it because it ‘was so raw and so personal’.As revealed in a recent interview in Horror Sleaze Trash, he put the manuscriptin a box and sent it to Wolfgang Carstens of Epic Rites Press with theintention ‘to get feedback from him and nothing more’ http://www.horrorsleazetrash.com/interviews/13-questions-with-jack-henry/. Carstens wanted to publish the work but Henry felt it was ‘a little toohonest’ in documenting this unstable period of his life. In the recentinterview with Jack Henry which follows this review, he explains why he finallyagreed to allow publication of Crunkedafter three years:

‘I think Wolfgang wore me down. Initially I sent it to himfor his opinion as I have always respected his take on writing. He's never beenafraid to tell me I am full of shit or if it is something worthwhile. When hegave me a positive assessment I admit I was surprised…The final decision came when I just decided to do it.Literally threw up my hands and said let's do it. It was minimal process moregut.’

Inthe Amazon blurb for Crunked Henry alsoasserts that he is not intent in glamorizing or creating a moral tale- ratherhe is merely presenting a slice of life: ‘CRUNKEDis a nothing more than a narrative. It's neither cautionary nor celebratory, itjust exists as a document of experience’. In this review, I will explore what Iconsider the two main concerns of the collection- Henry’s perspectives ongetting ‘crunked’ and on writing.

On Getting Crunked

TheUrban Dictionary offers many definitions of what ‘crunked’ means. Thegeneral consensus is that it is about ‘getting really crazy and fucked up atthe same time’ usually by mixing drugs and alcohol. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=crunk

The main hit of this book is certainly focused on Jack Henry’sfrenetic and unrelenting quest for methamphetamine in its various forms. Over dozens of intricately woven poems, Henry credibly represents the manicspeed-driven quest for drugs and sex and the inevitable tragic descent of a tweakerwho becomes mired in self delusion, depression and sickness.

The poem ‘Checking out’ effectively captures the poet’s‘need to escape’ and his sense of urgency in his self destructive ‘search of a whoreand enough dope/ to last until my breath finally fades.’ In ‘forgive me fathermy sins’ he feels ‘the twitch’ and is dealt ‘a little something/ to cut theedge down/ to a manageable burn.’ In ‘sober eyes’ he watches the people on thestreet from his house and he is bored shitless. He expresses a ‘crack pipe epiphany’:‘lines before me/ a rolled bill in hand/ i prefer the blindness/ ofamphetamine/ to that which sober eyes see.’ In the rare surreal poem ‘ongetting a job’ he validates his lifestyle and is determined not to become awhore to the mainstream: ‘in that chair, in that office, / with those picturesand plaques, / and i know this will kill me quicker than speed, / or nicotine,/ or fucking a crack whore.’

In ‘no promises left to keep’ after scoring ‘a purchase icannot afford’ it is as if a drill bit has split his skull and ‘demons danceatop/ my flesh.’ In ‘underneath skies of diminishing returns’ ‘the voices’within him are silenced and for a brief moment of illumination everything‘makes sense’, everything ‘seems/ so clear.’ In ‘containment’ he rolls up abill and states matter-of-factly: ‘that bitter taste is what makes me whole.’

The poem ‘finding’ probably best describes the potent elixirof empowerment and freedom that the poet seeks: ‘I found freedom/ at thecenter/ of a rolled-up/ twenty-dollar bill… when i am high i’m a hero, / no onecan touch me… when i am high/ i put away worry, i put away Sunday/ live the divine.’In his first hit as a teenager in his bedroom he proclaims: ‘i became Supermanand i thought: / it doesn’t get better than this.’

The hit of the illicit mind-fucking drug also evokes randomthoughts, disturbing childhood memories and frightening hallucinations in thepoet’s head. In the outstanding title poem ‘crunked’ Henry makes clear hisambiguous take on meth: ‘speed makes my mind nimble/ makes me breathe as ifcontent/ before i fuck away tomorrow.’ He risks ‘it all’ for the taste, but inthe cold light of day he realizes that speed is ‘my pathos dance’ and ‘doesn’tpay bills/ or mop floors/ or bring me flowers when/ I vomit on the couch.’

When Henry steps back and views the direction his life hastaken he is greatly startled. Although he has made a conscious decision topursue his lifestyle, its chaotic, reckless pace amazes him in retrospect. Heasks himself a number of rhetorical questions which to the sober reader seemself evident: ‘how did i end up here?’ (‘how did i end up here?’), ‘how did i fallso fuckin’ low? (‘I’ll just call herbitch’), and ‘when did i fall/ when did i fail? (‘dance then on the grave of adearly departed’).

In such moments of vulnerability and self reflection, thepoet agonizingly expresses his considerable doubts and regrets. In the thirdperson poem ‘equanimity amongst the living’ the ‘old poet’ pain-stakingly realizesthat he has ‘tossed away/ everything/ for a taste/ a simple lick.’ In ‘addict’he views himself like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner ‘as a leper/ a pilgrim/ acorpse lost in a rotting sea.’ In the poem ‘tails hasn’t come up yet’, hegraphically sums up the depths to which his life has been reduced to since completinghis worthless university degree and getting stuck into the meth:

when I weigh my scale

this is what I’ve got:

internet masturbation

white line inhalation

one round in the chamber

and the distance to watch

In ‘forgive me father my sins’ he makes the starkrealization: ‘i never thought i’d be an addict/ i never thought i’d failcompletely/ i never thought i’d sit mute and wait/ in front of a television.’In many respects time has stopped for ‘sad-sack Jack’. Many of the poems inthis collection are about waiting. Waiting for the next score, waiting forinspiration, waiting for anything to happen. In ‘discovery and departure’ hewaits at a Greyhound bus terminal for a yet unknown destination. He isrootless, in a kind of secular limbo without a center. In the remarkable poem‘fifteen points without a center’ Henry describes how this waiting is akin to‘awaiting the church door to open- / my penance is in the waiting.’

The quest for personal freedom and expression obviously havetheir downsides. To Henry meth brings euphoria, self confidence and anincreased libido- but also chaos, disintegration and alienation from family andfriends. Many of the poems directly address his ex-wife often in a tone ofregret and merging on self pity. In one of the books most powerful poems ‘aslow inching forward’ he admits in the opening line, ‘chaos sits harbored atthe center of my soul’ and it feels like ‘a rope cinches tighter/ around myneck’. There is sense of tragedy, of a wasted life, when later in the poem heutters, ‘you have left me/ atop buildings awash in fire/ you have left me/alone.’

In ‘freakshow.com’ Henry explains to the reader the sourceof much of his public anger, how he ‘threw in the towel’ after unsuccessfullysending out 237 resumes to find a mainstream job. In ‘novice’ he uses theinventive metaphor to describe his disillusionment, ‘i am/ in denial// dreamsass-fucked and bleeding/ two years gone and 20k more in debt’. As the interview which follows explains,Henry wrote Crunked in the context of returning to college in hislate 40s to complete an MFA degree with the intention of teaching but he wasunable to score a job despite sending off hundreds of resumes. In ‘dance thenon the grave of a dearly departed’ as his aspirations ‘fall apart,’ he statesbitterly, identifying himself with Icarus: ‘I should never have been a poet/never went back to school/…never reached so high’.

In ‘future’ Henry realizes ‘there’s no future for me/ nothere, not in words/ or pages/ my lies have caught up with me. He closes hiseyes and takes the ‘sledgehammer kick’ he vows defiantly: ‘I will never stoprunning’ towards the next rush. In ‘containment’ he furthers this point, ‘i amnot quitting, / when faced with that alternative/ I find contentment// living//right here’. Instead of sitting around a table studying literature, he says in‘tails hasn’t come up yet’ that ‘I live by the balls’ and ‘it’s my revocation/my rapture’.

on writing

There are close to a dozen poems in Crunked in which Henry provides explicit insights into his writingprocess, choice of subject matter and underlying intent. Henry is a frenetic,highly spontaneous writer who gets it down fast and rarely edits his work onceit is completed. In ‘paths know no direction’ he describes the origins of oneparticular poem and how it takes shape in his mind:’ ‘it starts with a title/not by design/ simple words/ a progression/ a development of sense/ anexplosion of light/ burning fire/ seeing through nucleoli/ red blood cellsdance beneath/ chemically burned eyes’. In ‘and in the beginning’ he statesthat ‘poetry’s my main addiction’ but the ‘other one’ ‘finally gets it done’.In ‘last Thursday night’ he furthers the notion that he uses drugs to quell hisanxiety and to evoke his creativity. While waiting to be seen by a doctor in apublic hospital he takes a hit in the restroom to settle his nerves. In aclever extended metaphor he explains how his ‘poem begins with a thought/ and howthese ideas are intuitively reworked in his brain like a snort of meth:

in my head, i see words form line after line-

when they come out i place them on a flat surface

cut the rocks down to powder with the hard edge of a

credit card forming lines on a flat surface

(how many lines make a stanza?)

i roll my last five-dollar bill into a tube and snort

each line back into my skull

rework the poem

in my brain

In ‘wastewater in concrete sewers’ Henry uses a graphic metaphorto describe his pessimistic take on his own writing and the difficulty heexperiences in composing his poetry: ‘some days it/ flows/ -shit filled/wastewater in/ concrete sewers’ // other days/ it’s like trying/ to find aviable vein.’

In ‘and in the beginning’ the poet clearly explains theemotional impact a poem that works will have on him: ‘sometimes a poem kicks mysoul/ with steel-capped boots/ a diamond bit tearing my skull/ as breath drawsbaker’s dust/ to the marrow of my spine’). In the interview which follows Henrymakes the observation, ‘The poetry I enjoy is that which surprises or shocks orimproves on a form of the past.’

In ‘itch’ Henry sums up his urge to fly, to find ‘my center’through his risk taking. He comments on how his ‘life evolves like a poem.’ Hestates that his poetry is not academic or has a well thought out intent, butinstead it is built from the ‘bottle/ or spike’ of real experience and reflectshis genuine pain:

not a marshmallow academic one,

nor those written

by rebels and

rabble rousers

more like a poem

built from bottle

or spike, or meticulous sorrow

one that wanders without purpose

or function

Jack Henry seeks recognition for his poetry to ‘a level ofsome renown’ (‘fifteen points without a center’) but he can appear to be selfdefensive or thin-skinned in his reaction to critics of his work. In one of thebest poems in the collection- the complex, multi-layered ‘dance then on thegrave of a dearly departed,’ he finds comfort in finding ‘restitution’ in being‘six feet deep’. There is a dismissive, angry tone in his voice: ‘there arethose that do not like/ the way i write…too much sorrow or pity or something/they cannot comprehend’. He continues as if he has totally given up, thrown hisarms into the air in despair: ‘i never said/ i write for you/ never said/anything, really/ at all.’ This defeatism is furthered in ‘i’ll just call herbitch’ when he cynically states in a moment of self-reflexivity, ‘maybe youhaven’t realized/ that this ain’t art.’ Blunter still, is the disdain he showshis readers when he ponders his fallen state and says matter-of-factly: ‘fuckyou/ fuck it all/ i’m tired/ out of dope/ out of patience/ out of secondchances.’

SummingUp

There is always an inherent difficulty in attempting toexplain poetry ‘ripped from the heart’ like Jack’s book. I can easily drawassociations here and there and create a synthesis of the poet’s ideas, but thesignificance of a work usually relies on the emotional impact it has on itsaudience. Much of what Henry writes is, as he says, like ‘a shotgun blast froma fading smile’ (‘no promises left to keep’) and the totality of his poeticachievement is extraordinarily difficult to reduce to mere words. I have beenwriting book reviews for a couple of years, but Crunked has certainly been one of my most exacting.

Overall, as an ordinary bloke who settles for the occasionalweekend beer, I found Jack Henry’s Crunkedto be a fascinating, but disturbing read. His redemptive quest for pleasure is selfindulgent and essentially rooted in the abandonment of his loved ones andfriends. His desire to ‘taste another bump’ and to hunt out anonymous whores‘in back alleys’ is a repugnant, hedonistic attempt to achieve penance from thedeadness he sees around him. (Yeah, I'm jealous). You can understand why the author was reticent inpublishing this amazing collection in the first place. Despite the brillianceof his poetry, what local American school board would have the balls to hiresuch an innovative, subversive thinker?

Buy CRUNKED here on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Crunked-Jack-Henry/dp/1926860012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309480090&sr=8-1

You can find Jack Henry’s defunct magazine Heroin Love Songshere: http://heroinlovesongs1.wordpress.com/

Jack Henry’s blog of poetry and publications:

http://jackhenry.wordpress.com/

AN INTERVIEW WITH JACKHENRY- 12 September 2011

George, thanks for the opportunity with the interview. Ialways find these a challenge and for some reason found this one even morechallenging than usual. Maybe I over think it, I don't know. My responses beloware my fifth or sixth attempt. The first ones felt too thought out,over-analyzed or something.

Your book descriptionon Amazon says that you wrote Crunkedin three days and then put it in a box, perhaps never to see the light of daybecause of its raw, personal nature. Can you describe the process of finallydeciding you wanted to publish the work?

I think Wolfgang Carstens (publisher of Epic Rites Press)wore me down. Initially I sent it to him for his opinion as I have alwaysrespected his take on writing. He's never been afraid to tell me I am full ofshit or if it is something worthwhile. When he gave me a positive assessment Iadmit I was surprised. Personally, I never thought much of it and I stillstruggle with its value. The voice of Crunkedis somewhat unique to me, in retrospect. It is very much of the moment.

The final decision came when I just decided to do it.Literally threw up my hands and said let's do it. It was minimal process moregut. Sometimes it's hard to let go of something personal, other times not...

You returned touniversity in your mid 40s to complete a Masters of Fine Arts degree with thehope of becoming a teacher but were unable to score a job. Can you elaboratefurther on your personal context leading up to the writing of Crunked?

This is the question I had the most problem with, initially.To be honest I don't remember the personal context leading up to the writing.It was two or three years ago. I do know, at the time, my life was a mess.Dabbling in the illegals, not having a significant job, getting shut out ofemployment opportunities in education.

Ultimately I made the decision to get my MFA to teach. Noother reason. Teach. And I thought I had done all the right things to get tothat point. I mean if you read the requirements to get employed I had them,plus a ton of other extracurricular activities. The press, the journal, thereviews, the publishing, and on and on. But the one critical, the one I thoughtI fulfilled through my every day job, failed me. I didn't have the experienceas a teacher. Even with glowing recommendations from some significantacademics, it just didn't carry. And when the economy first got tossed a greatmany teachers with more experience than me were in the wind and picked up allthe available jobs. A perfect storm of recession to fuck over my goal. So inthe end I spent the money, did the work and had a degree I could not doanything with.

I guess my personal context was pissed off. In retrospect,pissed off at myself.

In a recent HSTinterview you expressed a need to ‘be as honest in your writing as you can

be’. http://www.horrorsleazetrash.com/interviews/13-questions-with-jack-henry/You conclude that Crunked ‘feels alittle too honest. But fuck it.’ What sort of responses to your book have you hadand how do you feel about the publication four months out?

The responses I have received have been pretty good. Most ofthe compliments come from people I know or know my work, so I have a hard timeaccepting those as a true critique. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate them andanyone that forks out the money to buy the book. It is amazing. To the chagrinof my publishers I have always said that if I sell one book to someone I don'tknow or doesn't know me that is a measure of success. Marketing my own work hasalways been difficult and I get criticized a great deal for not doing more, butself-promotion is a tough thing.

I am eager to hear more, good and bad.

Crunked is a very confronting book which explicitly discusses drugaddiction, prostitution and how you ‘fuck away tomorrow’. If it is as you say‘a document of experience’ what do you hope your readers will take from it?

This question bothered me as well. My answer changes. Thebest and most honest answer I have is this: I hope they take something awayfrom it. What that thing is, I cannot say. I never have a specific hope about awritten document. I imagine it will play to each reader uniquely. Each readerbrings their own perception, their own past to what they read. I cannot controlthat nor would I, if I could.

Some of your poemssuch as ‘equanimity amongst the living’, ‘perception to reality’ and others usethird person narration. Why do you use this distancing device in an otherwisefirst person collection?

Voice is part of the moment. Some poems come out firstperson, some third. I never edit to change voice. Hell, I barely edit at all.The poem as it comes out is how it should remain.

Your book adopts theform of the confessional and includes many references to Christianity. Why thefascination with religious imagery from someone who appears to be an atheist?

Well, one I am not atheist and, two, my fascination is morewith others that are conscripted into

believing that a specific religion is the voice andmotivation to their existence. I challenge the right of an organization orindividual to decide for me how to interpret a given event or experience. Inthat respect I am very individualistic. Religion was created to solve theissues of the day of a relatively uneducated and ignorant populace. It is atool to keep people down and oppressed. Religion is an anathema of whatspirituality should be and is meant to be. I do not feel to pray or worship adeity when I am the one responsible to resolve my own issues. Putting thisresponsibility off on belief is in fact irresponsible and, frankly, stupid.Each person has the ability to resolve the issues they exist within, whether itis an event on a grand scale or minor.

I was raised in a Christian household and, at a very youngage, rebelled against it. The Christian faith is a part of my background.Organized religion is my enemy.

Most poetry bores theshit out of you. What do you like to read in a book of poetry?

The poetry I enjoy is that which surprises or shocks orimproves on a form of the past.

Too many poets are "me-too" and show nooriginality. I am as guilty of that as any, but there are poets that neverprogress, never push, never change, never evolve and that is what I seepublished all too often.

Your magazine ‘HeroinLove Songs’ reappeared for a short time earlier this year. Is it now defunct ordoes it still have a future, including a print edition?

No Heroin Love Songs is dead. Completely. I have no desireor compulsion to publish.

How is your head now?What challenges await you? Are you still working on your novel Red Lincoln?

Interesting question. In my heart I am done with writing, atleast for a public audience, which is not to say I will never publish orattempt to publish again. But there is a spark that has left me. In 2006 Icould sit down and write all day, now I can barely focus on a piece. It's justnot there. Some say it's writers block but I don't buy into that. I just amdone.

Cheers!

Jack Henry

Rob Plath We're No Butchers (2011)

2011-09-09T18:06:00.000+10:00

Rob Plath’s new play ‘We’re No Butchers’ was recently released and info about it can be found in the following ERP link: http://www.epicrites.org/were-no-butchers.html

On the same page there is also a review by Chris Yurkowski of Doomsday Notebook, who reviews recently published underground books: http://domesday.posterous.com/

I've never read a play like it. I describe it as having 'the subtlety of a roadside bomb.'

The Australian Poetry Library

2011-09-03T18:33:00.002+10:00

In June, Marie Bashir, the Governor General of Australia, launched theAustralian Poetry Library which gives the general reader access to over 42,000poems from more than 170 Australia poets. This is an ambitious project whichhopes to encourage the wider reading and teaching of Australian poetry.

As a suggestion, start with Robert Adamson, Ken Bolton, Michael Brennan,Joanne Burns, Michael Dransfield, John Forbes, Peter Goldsworthy, PhilipHodgins, Chris Mansell, Peter Minter, Dorothy Porter, Kenneth Slessor.

Find it here: http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/

Mike Meraz BLACK-LISTED THOUGHTS. Propaganda Press, Palo Alto CA, 2011 (42 pages)

2011-08-29T21:35:00.002+10:00

Mike Meraz is the long time editor of Black-Listed Magazine http://black-listedmagazine.blogspot.com/and he has recently released an innovative micro book through Propaganda Press.The book is quarter-sized (4¼x 2¾ inches) and containsshort proverbial like quotes in the ‘wisdom literature’ tradition. The quotes are varied and expound onphilosophical, ethical and literary principles. Taken together they appear toembody Meraz’s hard earned reflections on life.

It will only take you about ten minutes or so to read thebook but it’s interesting to dip into it later and put your own personal spinon the quotes. About half the book consists of universal aphorisms dealing withthe nature of truth, happiness and love. The best ones are less obvious and havean elusive ambiguity central to them:

“truth is rarely shouted.

truth comes in awhisper.”

“if you look at something too long

you lose sight of what it truly is.”

Other quotes are maxims of a more personal kind, such as: “Iam constantly vacillating between a/ life of brilliant misery and happy/mediocrity.’ Or the terse paradox: “in separation we find closeness.”

Some of the other quotes represent Meraz’s take onliterature. He reveals his underground credentials when he writes:

“I have come to realize

the only good thing

about Modern Art

is the free wine and beer.”

Black-Listed Thoughtsis a book largely created through instinct. Meraz attempts to distilthe raw emotions from his personal experience into language. The ideas in the book resonate in your mindlong after you have read it.

Buy the book at Propaganda Press:

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_catalog.html

Some other comments about the book:

http://black-listedthoughts.blogspot.com/

ESSAY: J.D.Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951): Failure of the American Dream?

2011-08-16T21:49:00.007+10:00

What I admire most about Holden Caulfield is his spontaneity, his ability to speak his mind, without fear or favour. He is an ‘all-licensed fool’ who condemns the values and institutions of post World War 2 America from the vantage point of his mental hospital window. Yet arguably, his rebellionis apolitical and is rather a response to his inability to cope with the deathof his brother Allie and his fear of growing up and accepting responsibilityfor his actions. This discussion will examine the extent to which Salinger's highly influential novelis a representation of rebellion and the failure of the American Dream.

The concept of the American Dream was expressed byJames Truslow Adams in 1931 in his book Epicof America: ‘The American Dream is that dream of a land in which lifeshould be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for eachaccording to ability and achievement… It is not a dream of motor cars and highwages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each womanshall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innatelycapable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of thefortuitous circumstances of birth of position.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream

In other words, according to Adams the American Dream was notoriginally about attaining wealth and property but about maximizing an individual'spotentials.

Holden Caulfield is a stunted boy in many ways who experiences many difficulties fitting in.Although he is from a rich middle class family he hates material values and hisapproaching physical ‘fall’ is symbolic of his spiritual decay. In the contextof the disintegration of Western values following the mass slaughter duringWorld War 2, including the Holocaust, the dropping of atomic bombs on civilianpopulations and the advent of the Cold War, Holden is a teenager trying to make sense of it all.

School

Pencey Prep is the fourth private high school Holden hasbeen kicked out because of his inadequate effort. He has been given frequentwarnings to apply himself but he usually comes to class unprepared and makes noeffort at all. He admits to his history teacher old Spencer that he had ‘sortof glanced’ through his textbook ‘a couple of times.’ He is easily bored andhas difficulty concentrating. Pressed by Spencer Holden he concedes that he has‘not too much’ concern for his future and suggests that ‘I’m just going througha phase right now.’

Spencer tries to instill in Holden the notion that life is agame and that ‘you should play it according to the rules.’ He readily agreeswith his teacher, but in his thoughts he is disdainful, dismissive and sideswith the underdog:

Game my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all thehot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right- I’ll admit that. But if you get onthe other side, where there aren’tany hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game.’

We discover later the underlying reasons why Holden isstruggling at school. His rebellion is not out of mischief or indifference. Heis failing at school because he has not learnt to cope with the death of hisyounger brother Allie from leukemia and he has yet to accept that his life ischanging and he will have to accept the responsibilities which come withadulthood.

Ivy League Bastards

Holden’s father is a corporate lawyer who wants him toattend ‘Yale, or maybe Princeton’ when he finishes high school. Holden insiststhat he ‘wouldn’t go to one of those Ivy League colleges if I was dying.’ He hates their ‘tired, snobbyvoices’. He is nauseated by their ‘goddam checkered vests’ and phonyegotistical conversations. He takes considerable delight in telling an anecdoteabout ‘this Joe Yale-looking guy’ at Ernie’s jazz club. The guy tries to feelup his girlfriend under the table while telling her about some guy in his dormwho tried to kill himself by swallowing a whole bottle of aspirin. If these phonies' lives were the pinnacle of success, why would the flit want to top himself?

Phoniness

Holden seeks authenticity in phony world. He sees phoninesseverywhere. He is repulsed by phoniness- people who big-note themselves and whotreat ordinary people with disdain. He calls his headmaster Mr Haas ‘thephoniest bastard I ever met in my life’ because of his duplicity in judgingparents by their appearance. He mocks the local undertaker Mr Ossenburger whohas donated money to Pencey and has had a dorm named after him:

He said he talkedto Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving the car. That killed me. I canjust see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus tosend him a few more stiffs.’

He tells his sister Phoebe that Pencey is ‘full of phonies.’He ‘damn near puked’ listening to his dorm mate Stradlater putting on a fake‘Abraham Lincoln, sincere voice’ trying to crack on to Jane in the back seat ofcoach Ed Banky’s car. What he dislikes about Ernie the piano player is that‘when he plays, he sounds like thekind of guy that won’t talk to you unless you’re a big-shot.’ In the Wicker Barhe expresses his disgust at the bartender who ‘didn’t talk to you at allhardly, unless you were a big-shot or celebrity or something.’

Holden’s basic problem is that he fails to see his own phoniness.He frequently lives in the fantasy world in his head and constantly lies abouthis identity and the events in his life. He is obviously deeply confused and depressedand often impulsively responds to situations by crying. After he is smacked bythe pimp Maurice he feels like jumping out the window and imagines‘rubbernecks’ gawking at his dead body on the ground. Later, after heaccidentally drops and smashes the vinyl record he has bought for Phoebe, hevisualizes ‘millions of jerks’ attending his funeral.

Holden is too traumatized to understand his own hypocrisy.He is clearly deluded and instead of taking concrete steps to ease histransition from youth to adulthood, he desires to escape from it all:

In an important conversation with Sally Hayes as they strollhome from the skating rink, Holden tells her they could leave tomorrow forMassachusetts and Vermont:

We’ll stay in these cabins and stuff like that till thedough runs out. Then, when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere andwe could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could getmarried or something.’

Sally is astonished and knows it won’t work: ‘You can’t justdo something like that…in the firstplace, we’re both practically children.’

Holden’s desire to escape the responsibilities of growing upreach a climax after he visits his ex-teacher Mr Antolini and his family. As hewalks up Fifth Avenue he feels like he is disappearing and he makes believethat he is talking to his deceased brother Allie to help hold his sanitytogether. He pleads with him ‘don’t let me disappear.’ He decides that he needsto leave. To hitchhike out west:

I figured I could get a job at a filing station somewhere,putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was,though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought whatI’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t haveto have any goddamn stupid useless conversations with anybody.

He goes on to explain how he’d build himself a cabin nearthe woods and grow and cook his own food and later perhaps how he’d meet abeautiful deaf-mute girl and marry her and how they would communicate throughmessages on scraps of paper.

This is fanciful, deluded stuff. His desire to drop out andescape from the pressures of modern living is ill-founded and more a responseto his confusion and mental fatigue than to a genuine rebellion.

Materialism

Arriving at the Lavender Room, Holden is given a ‘lousytable way in the back’ and says ‘in New York, boy, money really talks- I’m notkidding.’ His grandmother provides Holden with most of his pocket money and thecasually way he throws it around creates the impression that he does notappreciate the value of it. Although he accepts that everything he had ‘wasbourgeois as hell’ including his posh fountain pen and suitcase, he is naïve inappreciating how really privileged his life is materially. After donating tendollars to the nun’s charity, Holden is annoyed that he running low on cash andneeds to save a few bucks so he can take Sally out to a movie, ‘Goddamn money.It always ends up making you blue as hell.’ From his upper middle class whiteperspective, he clearly has no clue how the poor struggle to survive from weekto week.

In a concerted plea for help Holden strongly expresses toSally his disgust for city life:

I hate living in New York. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenuebuses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the reardoor.’ He shifts to a vitriolic rant to people’s obsession with cars:

Take most people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry ifthey get a little scratch on them, and they’re always talking about how manymiles they get to the gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already theystart thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer. I don’t even likeold cars. I mean they don’t eveninterest me. I’d rather have a goddam horse.’

Sally is hugely puzzled, she has no idea what Holden is tryingto explain to her, ‘I don’t know what you’re even talking about.’

Holden takes care to sum up his angst to her. His hatred ofboarding school, of early 1950s American values:

You ought to go to a boy’s school sometime. It’s full ofphonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be able to buya goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damnif the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor andsex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddamcliques.’

Holden’s anger largely stems from his inability to fit in,to conform, to get anything significant out of life. He admits he is in ‘lousyshape’ and his discussion with Sally tweaks his desire to finally escape NewYork City. He imagines a life of conformity. It is a life full of amusementsand distractions, but overall, a life with little substance or meaning:

I’d be working in some office, making a lot of dough, andriding to work in cabs and Madison Avenue buses, and reading newspapers, andplaying bridge all the time, and going to the movies and seeing a lot of stupidshorts and coming attractions and newsreels. Newsreels. Christ almighty.There’s always a dumb horse race, and some dame breaking a bottle over a ship,and some chimpanzee riding a goddam bicycle with pants on.

This is as close as Holden’s rebellion gets. He is adissatisfied with his life and the phoniness of everybody and everything butrather than challenge society head-on he seeks to escape from it. His rebellionis unfocussed and self-destructive. Like thousands of other dysfunctionalteenagers

in the shadow of the bomb and the paranoia of the Cold War,he is lost. Mockingly, he is glad that the atomic bomb was invented because hecan make good use to it:

I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. Ifthere’s ever another war, I’m going to sit right the hell on top of it, I’llvolunteer for it, I swear to God I will.’

The Catcher in theRye

Holden’s real concern is the need to preserve his innocenceand that of children against the assault of the corrupting influences ofsociety. While waiting for Sally in a leather couch at her private school heconsiders the fate of girls who are about to finish school:

You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys.Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddamcars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or evenjust some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that neverread books. Guys that are very boring.

Further to this incident while talking to Phoebe in theirparent’s apartment, Holden expresses a strong desire to be ‘a catcher in therye’ after he leaves school:

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game inthis big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big, I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazycliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go overthe cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going Ihave to come out from somewhere and catchthem. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I knowit’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.

In an important scene when Holden visits Phoebe at herschool to say goodbye, he sees the word ‘Fuck you’ on a wall and rubs it out toprotect her and other young students from the base profanity. He soon spotsanother, this time scratched into the wall by a knife, and in a moment ofepiphany, he realizes his impotence in protecting the young, ‘If you had amillion years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘Fuck you’ signs in the world. It’s impossible.’

The Museum of NaturalHistory

Holden is curious about where the ducks in Central Park goin winter because the uncertainty and wild flux in his own life. In thinkingabout the ducks he is symbolically thinking about what direction his own lifewill take. He loves the museum because it represents a sense of permanence andorder in contrast to his own world which is spinning totally out of control:

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everythingalways stayed right where it was. Nobody’d move…nobody’d be different. The onlything that would be different would be you.

He reaches the museum, and significantly, it no longer holdsan appeal to him, ‘I wouldn’t have gone inside for a million bucks.’ He hopsinto a cab and heads for Biltmore.

Religion

Holden rejects traditional notions of organized religion anddoes not attend Church. Although he considers himself as ‘a sort of atheist’ helikes Jesus, but he ‘doesn’t care too much for most of the stuff in the Bible.’What he admires about Jesus is his life of self sacrifice and devotion for thepoor as exemplified by the nuns he meets at Grand Central Station, ‘What Iliked about those nuns. You could tell, for one thing, that they never wentanywhere swanky for lunch.’ In contrast, he hates the fake pomp of the sermonsdelivered by the ‘Holy Joe voices’ of the ministers, ‘I don’t see why the hellthey can’t talk in their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk.’Holden also despises the superficial images associated with Christmas. When hesees a Christmas tree being unloaded from the back of a truck after visiting MrAntolini he feels like laughing and then vomiting. When he hears a bunch of Christianssinging ‘come All Ye Faithful’ and carrying crucifixes for Radio City he quips,‘Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it- all those fancy costumes andall. He is also sacra-religious in mentioning his brother Allie’s soul is ‘inheaven and all that crap.’

Conclusion

In the course of the novel Holden Caulfield expresses manyrebellious views in relation to school, materialism, war, religion and thephoniness of community leaders, but ironically, he wishes for a world whichstays the same. Salinger’s perspective on Cold War American society often hitshome, particularly in terms of the alienation of disenfranchised middle classyouth in the face of atomic destruction. In the end, Mr Antolini advises that Holden’s‘first move will to apply yourself at school.’ The writing of this novel fromthe point of view of the asylum is ‘a record of his troubles’ for others tolearn from.

Book Recommendation: BARRY MILES Charles BUKOWSKI. London, Virgin Books 2009. 345 pages (originally published 2005).

2011-07-16T18:44:00.010+10:00

Finished this book a couple of days ago. This is a highly engaging and lucid account of Bukowski’s mad,full-on life. Barry Miles attempts to unravel the man from the myth, pointingout how Bukowski’s celebration of the low life was probably 50% fact 50%fantasy. He describes in detail how Bukowski uses the character Henry Chinaski as a distancing device to embellishmany of his experiences. He provides an interesting and elaborate overview of thefull gamut of things related to Buk: his thoughts on horse racing, work, drinking,suicide, women, writers, people, shit, the writing process, death and so on. Miles is an excellent writer and clearly evokes Bukowski, his friends and lovers and the times he lived in.

http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bukowski-Barry-Miles/dp/1852272716

Miles does not conduct much original research but largely distilswhat has already been written about Bukowki. For a more substantial biographyread Howard Sounces’s CHARLES BUKOWSKI: LOCKED IN THE ARMS OF A CRAZY LIFE (1998).http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802136974/wwwhowardsoun-20 Most compelling for me were the opening chapters 'Twisted Childhood' and 'The Barfly Years'.

This excellent New York Times article discusses the twobooks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/books/review/Powers.t.html

I few years ago I read Barry Miles' biography Jack Kerouac: king of thebeats- a portrait (1999). Particularly fascinating is his relationship to hismother who often scrubbed him in the bathtub in NY as an adult. http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Kerouac-Beats-Barry-Miles/dp/0805060448

I fondly remember wandering around Chelsea a few years ago checking out the old haunts of Kerouac and Ginsberg and others. I was thinking 'New York's fantastic' and far less crazy than in the 80s and then seeing this guy sleeping in a doorway with a blown up paperbag for a face.

Miles' biography on Kerouac is certainly no match for Anne Charters' epic Kerouac bio.

BOOK REVIEW: Kenneth Slawenski J.D. SALINGER: A Life Raised High. St Lucia, University of Queensland Press, 2010 (432 pages)

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This Australian edition of Slawenski’s biography was publishedshortly after J.D. Salinger’s death in 2010. Slawenski claims he took seven years to writethe book and is best known for his website DEAD CAULFIELDS dedicated to thelife and work of Salinger http://deadcaulfields.com/

He fleshes out in considerable detail Salinger’s professionalpublishing career which ended prematurely with his last story ‘Hapworth 161924’ which appeared in The New Yorkerin 1965. Two short chapters ‘The Poetry of Silence’ and ‘Coming Through TheRye’ inadequately cover the remaining forty-five years of his life.

It was particularly fascinating to read accounts of Salinger’sinvolvement during World War 2 which took him to D-Day, the Hurtgen Forest, theBattle of the Bulge and the freeing of the death camp at Dachau. But becauseSalinger never directly commented on his harrowing war experiences Slawenskifills the reader in with details of his infantry division’s deployment andcombines it with a detailed discussion of short stories that Salinger waswriting at the time. I was reminded in a way of Bill Bryson’s 2007 biography of Shakespeare http://www.billbryson.co.uk/books_shakespeare.html.Despite Bryson’s extensive research he isn’t able to nail the voice of the manbecause of the paucity of primarymaterial.

Slawenski’s account of Salinger’s ambition to be a writerand of his remarkable early professional life is probably the most intriguingin the book. The strongest aspect of this is his dealings with The NewYorker, and how in 1947, after much struggle and rejection, he is finallygiven a retainer and annual salary by the prestigious magazine for theprivilege of being the first to reviewhis stories for possible publication.

Salinger’s life-long pursuit to protect his privacy,especially after the publication of Catcherin the Rye (1951), makes it difficult for biographers to reveal Salinger’sperspective on any significant event in his life. He rarely granted interviewsand he avoided at all costs in disclosing personal facts regardless of howharmless they were.

Salinger was deeply suspicious of and had a healthy contemptfor publishers which grew in venom throughout his life. According to Salingerthey mangled his work in pursuit of their gluttonous profits and he ‘was neversatisfied with the financial portion he received from his publications.’

Of particular interest to me were Salinger’s attempts tocontrol all aspects of his books’ publication, including cover design,publicity and reprints. He appears to have been an extremely pedantic andquarrelsome man. Slawenski’s view is that Salinger fought for contract clausesthat granted final say over the narrowest details in regard his work so hecould protect its integrity. He chose innocuous covers and spurned publicitylaunches because he didn’t want to appear smug. Salinger hated being acelebrity and he felt tremendously relieved when the season of success over Catcher in the Rye waned: ‘It’s agoddamn embarrassment, publishing. The poor boob who lets himself in for itmight as well walk down Madison Avenue with his pants down.'

I enjoyed immensely the descriptions of Salinger’s life inCornish, a small rural town in upstate New York. He moved there in 1953 toescape the gaze of people and to start a new life with his second wife ClareDouglas. He built a 'bunker' away from themain home so he was able to find the isolation conducive to evoking thespiritual revelation characteristic of his best work. Yet the striving forperfection in his writing alienated him from his family and he became aprisoner to his life's work.

I was particularly interested in finding out more aboutSalinger’s life after 1965 and the reasons why he ceased publishing. Slawenski’sview is that ‘Salinger did not deliberately choose to withdraw from the world’that it was the media who drove Salinger into seclusion. He needed seclusionfor his art and his writing became his method of prayer: ‘His work had become aholy obligation and he accepted that loneliness and seclusion might well be theprice it demanded for fulfillment.’ In a rare interview with the New York Timesin 1974 Salinger tried to explain why he no longer published, ‘There is amarvelous peace in not publishing…I like to write…I love to write..But I writejust for myself and my own pleasure.’ It is rumored that Salinger left behindfifteen previously unpublished novels in a secret vault, but none unfortunately,have emerged as yet.

Slawenski provides a highly readable but limited account ofSalinger’s life. Because of Salinger’s obsession with secrecy perhaps many ofthe gaps may never be filled. Slawenski writes from the point of view of anadorning fan and tends to apologise or quickly quash discussion of some ofSalinger’s more outrageous or eccentric behaviors. I enjoyed the descriptionsof his literary career and family life, but there is far too much recount ofstories without sufficient depth of analysis.

Poetry International -

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This is a useful site if you are interested in contemporary mainstream Australian poetry. Many detailed, highly informative interviews with many iconic figures in the industry, including the ugly farmer-poet on the right.

http://australia.poetryinternational.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_name=australia

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski HAM ON RYE (2001) Canongate, 318 pages (originally published in 1982).

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In my continuing appraisal of Bukowski’s writing, I am now going to take a close look at his fourth novel HAM ON RYE (1982). This is Bukowski’s Bildungsroman and chronologically slots in before his best written novel Factotum (1975). It begins with narrator Henry Chinaski’s earliest memories in Germany in 1922 and ends with news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. This novel is clearly auto-biographical and dramatises many of Bukowski’s anecdotes about his early life in L.A. which readers, familiar with his life, will vividly recall- the vicious beatings by his father, his terrible affliction with acne vulgaris, his visits to the public library & his days at LA City College and his early struggles on skid row.

The first hundred pages or so of the novel are slow going and do not include many memorable incidents but the writing is characteristically sparkling clear and easy to imagine in your head. Probably the turning point in my interest is an incident Chinaski recounts when he is in Grade 8. He acts as a look-out so his friend Pete can have sex with Lilly in the back seat of an abandoned car behind the school. Pete has difficulty getting his ‘meat’ hard because he thinks he is being watched. Lilly calls him a queer and as she tongues him about fifty people from a nearby football field race up and surround the car.

Also hilarious is Chinaski’s description of his mother & grandmother attempting to exorcise the large swollen boils on his back in chapter 32. In the scene’s climax, grandma pokes a crucifix into the center of his infested back and screams out, “PURGE THE DEVIL FROM MY BOY’S BODY!’

On Writing & Reading

More fascinating are Chinaski’s recollections of his first attempts at writing fiction. In Grade 9 he undergoes painful acne treatment and his whole head is bandaged. He feels wonderful because his boils are hidden: ‘I felt very exceptional and a bit evil. Nobody had any idea of what happened to me. Car crash. A fight to the death. A murder. Fire. Nobody knew.’ The next day resting at home he begins to write imaginary first-hand accounts from the point of view of World War 1 German flying ace Baron Von Himmlen. The fantasy helps him deal with the lack of a male role model in his own life: ‘It make me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn’t anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be.’

When Chinaski is fifteen he discovers the La Cienega Public Library. At first he does not find the books engaging: ‘They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn’t say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all.’ Then he finds Upton Sinclair and other writers like D.H. Laurence, Sherwood Anderson and Hemingway. Chinaski reads a book a day and realises in a moment of epiphany the power of words to enlighten and transform one’s life: ‘Words weren’t dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.’

In an interview with Hustler Magazine Bukowski claimed to that his fiction was 93 per cent accurate and the remainder an improvement on his life. In his 2005 biography CHARLES BUKOWSKI Barry Miles states that his stories were 'closer to 50 per cent fact, 50 per cent fantasy.'

http://www.amazon.com/Charles-Bukowski-Barry-Miles/dp/0753511029 Many of the anecdotes in this novel appear larger than life. Chinaski is a cynical, self doubting loner & hater of people but he constantly seems to attract a constant stream of people. At school, he realizes that ‘the poor and the lost and the idiots continued to flock around me.’ He concludes, ‘It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life…I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone, I felt best being alone, cleaner.’

Although Chinaski is depicted in high school as an unsporty outsider, his successful exploits in boxing, baseball, football and cards show him as a winner against all odds. These exploits appear contrived and largely hyperbolic, but highly entertaining nonetheless.

The Future

Outside his school at the Senior Prom he catches a glimpse of his ugly face. He feels sickened, rejected but ultimately defiant, ‘As I watched them I said to myself, someday my dance will begin. When that day comes I will have something that they don’t have.’

While attending L.A. City College Chinaski’s father reads some of his short stories hidden under the lining of his wardrobe drawer and kicks him out of the house because of their vulgarity. Henry is torn between continuing his formal education in journalism and the lure of knowledge from the street. He decides to quit college to gain practical life experience: ‘The whole college scene was soft. They never told you what to expect out there in the real world. They just crammed you with theory and never told you how hard the pavements were.’

After he contemplates leaving college Chinaski has only a vague idea what he wants to do and is uncertain whether he will survive. ‘Maybe I could live off my wits. The eight-hour was impossible, yet almost everybody submitted to it.’ He also rejects the idea of enlisting in the Army as America enters World War II, ‘Here I was a virgin. Could you imagine getting your ass blown off for the sake of history before you even knew what a woman was? Or owned an automobile? What would I be protecting? Somebody else. Somebody else who didn’t give a shit about me.’ He concludes rashly, ‘ I could make it. I could win drinking contests, I could gamble. Maybe I could pull a few holdups. I didn’t ask much, just to be left alone.’

In a conventional Bildungsroman, or a story of growing up, the protagonist reaches maturity and resolves his conflict with society and is accepted by the community. Chinaski, in contrast, strongly rejects middle class notions of belonging. As his high school life is coming to an end, he strongly states his position, ‘I didn’t know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn’t have to do anything. The thought of being something didn’t only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and return. It was impossible.’

Due to his abusive treatment as a child he despises his father and his hypocritical family values, ‘Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what you needed.’ When he looks at his father he sees him as ‘a stranger’ and because his mother did nothing to prevent his beatings, he sees her as ‘non-existent.’ Tragically, he rejects the pain and triviality of family life and prefers the freedom of living alone, ‘To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4^th of July, labor Day, Mother’s Day… was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.’ When he lands a permanent job at Mears-Starbuck as a stockclerk he soon finds it demeaning & thinks of exiling himself, ‘What I wanted was a cave in Colorado with three-years worth of foodstuffs and drink. I’d wipe my ass with sand. Anything, anything to stop drowning in this dull, trivial and cowardly existence.’

After his first few visits to skid row he finds the lifestyle ‘disgusting’ but recognizes that ‘the life of the sane, average man was dull, worse than death.’ He understands clearly that he is different and will never fit into a conventional 9 to 5 life, “I knew that I wasn’t entirely sane. I still knew, as I had as a child, there was something strange about myself. I felt as if I were destined to be a murderer, a bank robber, a saint, a rapist, a monk, a hermit. I needed an isolated place to hide.’ As a teenager he joins the ROTC and is quickly disillusioned and makes a scathing assessment of Americans, 'At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.’

After he is kicked out of home Chinaski drinks more heavily and abandons writing. To him, drinking ‘took away the obvious’, that ‘drink was the only thing that kept a man from feeling forever stunned and useless.’ Near the end of the novel, he admits to his friend Becker, ‘Without drink I would have long ago cut my god-damned throat.’

Chinaski is dissatisfied with his first attempts at writing short stories and views them as coming out ‘very bitter and ragged. Not that that was so bad but the stories seemed to beg, they didn’t have their own vitality.’ He recognizes his stories are darker and stranger than his friend Becker, ‘but they didn’t work.’ Later in a conversation with Becker about publication of short stories in elite magazines such as The New Yorker, Chinaski voices his frustration at their in-house style, ‘This is 1940. They’re still publishing 19^th-century stuff, heavy, labored, pretentious. You either get a headache reading the stuff or you fall asleep.’ He concludes that like education, like the divide between the rich and the poor, the system is fixed, a trap, ‘It’s a trick, it’s a con, a little inside game.’ Becker tries to pursue the matter and Chinaski is blunt, ‘Only assholes talk about writing.’ There is a violent fist fight and a mirror and furniture are smashed. Chinaski is forced to vacate his room as he cannot afford to pay for the damage. He finds another cheap room. For the next eight years Bukowski lives on the edge moving from job to job and nearly drinking himself to death as fictionalised in his novel Factotum.

Conclusion

Despite the novel's lackluster start it is certainly worth reading- particularly for Bukowski’s detailed take on his iconic childhood experiences. Bukowski's style and subject matter are simple but what I admire about his writing is that he never pulls a punch. He never self censures to placate a nervy publisher or readership. He tells it like it is. Without restraint. Without dumbing it down. Without insulting the reader’s intelligence. And he always offers something more for the reader to think about. Arguably, how they can improve their own lives. How they can find worth and happiness. Ironically, how they can make the little things matter.

Poetry or Pornography?

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It has reared its ugly head again- but you might find interesting the current debate on Overland as to whether porno is art, as represented in the work of Ben John Smith and Koraly Dimitriadis. It's great to see poetry discussed in the general community again!

WARNING: ADULT REFERENCES.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Al Purdy: BEYOND REMEMBERING: The Collected Poems (2000) 606 pages

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I was born in Montreal and lived there until I escaped the weather and the separatists to live in Australia when I was 23. This is probably as good as it gets- in Canadian poetry. The late great Al Purdy's poems of the remote north are mandatory reading before you die.

Buy it here- Harbour Publishing: http://www.harbourpublishing.com/title/BeyondRemembering

"If you want to read some decent strong human stuff without fakery I'd say Al Purdy the Canadian. . . one of the few very good poets since 1900." Charles Bukowski

Bukowski corresponded extensively with Purdy and Paget Press published a collection of some of their letters:

"THE BUKOWSKI/PURDY LETTERS, A DECADE OF DIALOGUE, 1964-1974," Charles Bukowski & Al Purdy, Edited by Seamus Cooney, The Paget Press, 117 pages, $10.00 paper (0-920348-25-4).

You will find Robert Sward’s 1997 fine review of the book here:

http://www.redroom.com/blog/robert-sward/charles-bukowski-al-purdy-writers-friendship

BOOK REVIEW/ BEST QUOTES: Charles Bukowski WOMEN (1978)

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BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski WOMEN. Wild & Wooley, Sydney, 1979. 291 pages.

This is Bukowski’s third novel and explicitly recounts Henry Chinaski’s life as a poet, a drunkard and lover. It is written in Bukowski’s characteristic terse, matter-of-fact style and is considered largely autobiographical despite the blurb at the front of the book which cautions that 'this novel is a work of fiction and no character is intended to portray any person or combination of persons living or dead.’

Chinaski is over fifty and has published about twenty-five books and makes enough money to pay his rent in East Hollywood. He eats well and can afford good wine but is still struggling for wider literary fame. He flies around the continent giving usually ineffective, drunken readings of his poetry and in between he hops into bed with his young female readers.

If you are familiar with Bukowski’s writing, you will enjoy this book. The numerous interchangeable groupies Chinaski befriends becomes rather repetitive but never predictable. Any idiot can get drunk, fuck & write free verse but it takes a special talent like Bukowski to write about it credibly and with great humour & spirit. Bukowski is a disgraceful role model for any aspiring writer but he writes with extraordinary candor and conviction.

The incidents which Chinaski recounts are fascinating in themselves, but what lifts his words above the page, what makes this book great is how he is able to distil in a few sentences, in between his vile acts, his unique take on life.

Here is an overview of some of Chinaski’s best lines in Women. I’ll call this section ’The Beast with Three Legs’ after Chinask’s fictitious book of short stories of the same name he imagines in this novel. It is an apt metaphor to describe the animal in Bukowski.

‘The Beast With Three Legs’

On Women

Chinaski has undertaken a lot of 'research' for this book. He originally craved whores but since he has gained attention for his writing, he has developed a soft spot for more sensitive and caring woman. Against his will, he is ruled by his 'third leg':

‘I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them.’

‘Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price.’

‘Her dress was up around her thighs, showing that flank, that leg wrapped in nylon… I got horny. The goddamned strumpet, I’d give her a hundred strokes, I’d give her 7-and-one-half inches of throbbing purple!’

On Relationships

Chinaski is not interested in long-term relationships which involve personal commitment and responsibility. He views love cynically and sees relationships largely in terms of lust:

‘Human relationships were strange. I mean, you were with one person a while, eating and sleeping and living with them, loving them, talking to them, going places together, and then it stopped.’

‘Only the first two weeks had any zing, then the participants lost their interest…the most one could hope for in a human relationship, I decided, was one year.’

On Love

‘I accepted them for what they were, and love came hard and very seldom. When it did it was usually for the wrong reasons…Then usually there was trouble.’

‘It’s like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.’

On Sex

Bukowski is highly inventive and varied in his many descriptions of fucking. He often describes intercourse as ‘murder’ or ‘murdering’ his partner. It is seen as a violent, animal activity as sometimes attempting to break a women in two:

‘The thought of sex as something forbidden excited me beyond reason. It was like one animal knifing another into submission. When I came I felt it was in the face of everything decent, white sperm dripping down over the heads and souls of my dead parents. If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute.’

‘Then I gave up trying to please her and simply fucked her, ripping viciously. It was like murder. I didn’t care: my cock had gone crazy. All that hair, her young and beautiful face. It was like raping the Virgin Mary.’

‘I gave her a long slamming gallop full of unexpected variables and inventiveness before I finally shot into her.’

On Drinking

It’s amazing Bukowski lived to 72 considering the excessive drinking he did throughout his life.

Be interesting to carefully examine his original drafts and how Martin edited them:

‘I hated it when the beer wouldn’t stay down.’

‘If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.’

‘I’m just an alcoholic who became a writer so that I would be able to stay in bed until noon.’

On Old Age

Bukowski was a dirty old man until the end:

‘I decided to live to be 80. Think of being 80 and fucking an 18 year old girl. If there was any way to cheat the game of death, that was it.’

‘I was old and I was ugly. Maybe that’s why it felt so good to stick it into young girls. I was King Kong and they were lithe and tender. Was I trying to screw my way past death?

On Education

‘In a sense, as much as I disliked it, education helped when you were looking at a menu or for a job, especially when you were looking at a menu.’

On Life

‘People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing…backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking…People had to find things to do while waiting to die.’

Chinaski on Chinaski

Like Bukowski, he paints himself as a loner who has no god or politics. After mauling dozens of mostly young, naïve women Chinaski surprisingly sees himself for what he is: a ‘selfish, spoilt fucker’ and cries pathetically to himself near the end of the novel. This sudden change is not adequately prepared for and does not ring true:

‘I was naturally a loner, content just to live with a woman, eat with her, sleep with her, walk down the street with her. I didn’t want conversations, or to go anywhere except the racetrack or the boxing matches.’

‘I was drawn to all the wrong things: I liked to drink, I was lazy, I didn’t have a god, politics, ideas, ideals. I was settled into nothingness, a kind of non-being, and I accepted it.’

‘I ate meat. I had no god. I liked to fuck. Nature didn’t interest me. I never voted. I liked wars. Outer space bored me. Baseball bored me. History bored me. Zoos bored me.’

‘I was simply letting things happen without thinking about them. I wasn’t considering anything but my own selfish, cheap pleasure. I was like a spoiled high school kid. I was worse than any whore; a whore took your money and nothing more. I tinkered with lives and souls as if they were my playthings. How could I call myself a man? How could I write poems? What did I consist of? I was a bush-league de Sade, without the intellect.’

‘I had imagined myself special because I had come out of the factories at the age of 50 and become a poet. Hot shit. So I pissed on everybody just like those bosses and managers had pissed on me when I was helpless. It came to the same thing. I was a drunken spoiled rotten fucker with a very minor fame.’

On Writing

Chinaski portrays himself as someone who is compelled to write. He hates other writers and attends book readings only because they help pay the bills:

‘There’s no way I can stop writing, it’s a form of insanity.’

“Art takes discipline. Any asshole can chase a shirt.’

‘I write fiction. Fiction is an improvement on life.’

On Writers

‘The worst thing for a writer to know is another writer, and worst than that, to know a number of other writers.’

‘You could be sure that the worst writers had the most confidence, the least self-doubt. Anyway, writers were to be avoided.’

‘I was best to stay away from other writers and just do your work, or just not do your work.’

On Poetry Readings

'Readings diminished me. They were soul-sucks…Readings got you a piece of ass sometimes.’

‘Drunk as they were they could immediately detect any false gesture, any false word. You could never underestimate an audience.’

‘I hated readings, but they helped with the rent and maybe they helped sell books.’

Bukowski makes writing look easy but it is obviously a skill which he has honed from writing thousands of short stories & poems. This book is long but it doesn't really have the feel of a novel. It is rather a series of short anecdotes loosely tied by the woman Chinaski is 'researching'. Chinaski never forces himself on any woman but still comes across as a brutal opportunist. He really doesn't have the empathy for the working poor he strongly expressed in Factotum and only when it is far too late does he show any regret or compassion for his actions.

Wild & Wooley had a license from Black Sparrow Press to publish Women in Australia in 1979. Only 750 copies were printed. A book in good condition will now fetch $150 and upwards.

Sketches of Shelton

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Another excellent Australian poet from the street is Shelton Lea (1946-2005). He honed his early poetry skills in prison. Poetica recently produced this fascinating radio program and include many readings of his poems. Unfortunately, few records remain of his vibrant public poetry performances.

Listen now:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/poetica/stories/2011/3193167.htm

BOOK RECOMMENDATION- JOHN FORBES COLLECTED POEMS

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The best book of Collected Poems I have ever read by an Australian writer is easily by John Forbes.

John Forbes 1950-1998

This site provides links to his on-line poems, a list of publications and resources. There is also a ‘In Memorium’ section in which writers pay tribute to the great poet.

http://afactor.net/forbes/info/jf.html

‘Form, Intuition and (a) song’ (Otis Rush):

Cath Kenneally interviewed John Forbes in September 1991 for her arts breakfast program on radio 5UV. Forbes talks about why he decided to become a poet, his writing process and about several of his poems. This is a frank and informative discussion. http://www.eaf.asn.au/otis/jfwck.html

Jacket 3 April 1998

This issue is dedicated to John Forbes.

http://jacketmagazine.com/03/index.shtml

Update 3 September 2011: The Australian Poetry Library hasrecently included 30 of Forbes’ poems on their mammoth site. Discover his workhere: http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/forbes-john

Frank Zappa YOU CAN’T DO THAT ON STAGE ANYMORE (1995). Volume 1 (Live) Disc 1. Song 14:‘Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow’ 20:16

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This is an extended version of Zappa’s famous song 'Don't Eat the Yellow Snow.' It has an incredible segment in which Zappa asks for ‘audience participation.’ A mad poet (who is an obvious plant) recites a couple of his bizarre attempts at literature. Funny. Ridiculously clever. A brutal take on the wankery of meta-fiction.

A copyof the lyrics can be found here: http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/lyrics/You_Can%27t_Do_That_On_Stage_Anymore_Vol_1.html#Yellow

Original transcription from St. Alphonzo's Pancake Homepage mainly by Hans Hendriks and Patrick Neve.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Michael Dransfield COLLECTED POEMS. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1987 (401 pages).

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A clever, self taught American writer recently asked me who I regarded as the greatest Australian underground poet of all time. Who was i to offer my bullshit opinion?- but I was quick off the mark: Michael Dransfield (1948-1973).

After Dransfeld left his privileged private school life behind he roamed the back streets of Sydney. He became a celebrated poet and drug addict and reportedly died of ‘acute broncho-pneumonia and brain damage’. He was only twenty-four years old. Dransfield left a legacy of close to one thousand poems.

As a starting point a net sampling of Dransfield’s extraordinary work can be found here: http://www.sweatywheels.com/Dransfield/Poetry.html

‘Shit’, ‘Endsight’, ‘Jazz Baby’, ‘Fix’, ‘Overdose’: it is life as viewed from the margins but it is still highly accessible stuff. Tough first person narrative poems. Without a parachute. Knifed reality.

Photo from: http://www.sweatywheels.com/Dransfield/home.html

If you are interested in reading a highly readable scholarly study of Dransfield’s work have a look at Louis Armard’s article, ‘STILL LIFE WITH HYPODERMIC: MICHAEL DRANSFIELD AND THE POETRY OF ADDICTION.’

http://www.webcitation.org/query?url=http://www.geocities.com/louis_armand/dransfield.html&amp;date=2009-10-26+01:57:25

Also check out Derek Motion's valiant attempt to make some sense of Dransfield's work in his article 'Michael Dransfield's Innocent Eyes' (2007) in his Cordite Poetry Review article:

http://cordite.org.au/features/derek-motion-michael-dransfields-innocent-eyes/

According to Amazon.com a Collected Poems copy is now worth close to $150 (AUS). Buy it here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0702218286/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&amp;condition=used

UPDATE 3 September 2011: The Australian Poetry Library has recently put an amazing 398 of Dransfield’s poems on theirmassive Australian poetry site for free. Check it out here: http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/dransfield-michael

BOOK ANALYSIS/ INTERVIEW: Rob Plath ‘there’s a fist dunked in blood beating in my chest’. Epic Rites Press, Sherwood Park, Alberta, 2010, 179 pages.

2011-04-22T16:28:00.009+10:00

This is Rob Plath’s second collection of poetry published by Epic Rites Press. It is tightly edited and reveals a more sensitive and vulnerable side to Plath. Gone is the defiant poet/ warrior of a bellyful of anarchy raising his middle finger to American society and its empty values. Instead we witness Plath on a more personal journey dismantling his ego, stripping his soul to the bone, baring his emotional guts for all to see. In the most memorable poems in this collection Plath explores the concept of love, in particular, the harrowing, self destructive effects of its loss. He authentically documents the betrayal of his love, his feelings of numbness and grief, his rage and the process towards acceptance and personal renewal. This review will focus on Plath’s complex representation of love and of loss in this important groundbreaking book.

Plath doesn’t make shit up. He writes narrative poems based on his own experiences. In the interview with Plath which follows he explains why he has adopted this approach, ‘I prefer to risk it all by putting myself out there-as stripped down as possible…I've written this way most of my life. Before that I was mainly writing bullshit-detached stuff.’ His poem ‘the faith healers’ explicitly points to the method and subject matter of his work. While conventional poets play it safe and reassure their readers ‘there’s only beauty/ in the world’ Plath is intent on exploring the rot within, the secretly mushrooming ‘tumors of disillusionment’. He occasionally expresses a nostalgic desire to return to the ‘candy-apple’ innocence of his childhood, but characteristically, his poetry is a broken bottle of fucked-up feelings and memories poised to irrationally slash out in any direction.

In a press release for the book’s launch, Plath says that the catalyst for this book was ‘a damaging, crazy’ four-year relationship in which he almost married: ‘In a way, I am glad I went though it- like so many other things I write about that are very painful. It also opened the door to writing about other relationships…and also, other kinds of loss that comes with intimacy.’ Plath stated that before writing ‘a fist dunked in blood’ he ‘was always hesitant to write about relationships’ because of the fights it caused amongst the women he was with. ‘I’ll never be that way again,’ he says, ‘They all left in the end anyway.’

http://issuu.com/epic_rites_press/docs/press_release__there_s_a_fist_dunked_in_blood_beat

Plath’s book is his way of disentangling the debris of his failed relationships, his way of comprehending the sense of loss required for him to move forward. His approach is to closely examine his relationships from a multiple of perspectives until he has fully fleshed it out in all their complexities. His conception of reality is developed over dozens of interlocking poems and they need to be carefully read together to feel the full thrust of Plath’s self disembowelment.

The title of the book ‘there’s a fist dunked in blood beating in my chest’ is a motif which Plath uses to express the harrowing pain and anger he feels at his betrayal and the process of personal transformation he needs to undertake. His image of the heart as a ‘fist dunked in blood’ is presented through a variety of prisms. In ‘although it can be torn to shreds’ he cautions the reader ‘that/ blood-soaked fist’ is ‘only second/ to the brain/ in viciousness.’ In ‘what on earth does this thing in my chest beat for?’ he calculates that ‘this fistful/ of blood in/ my chest’ has beaten over a billion times. Now without love he questions whether his heart should beat at all: Are those billion beats ‘meaninglessly beating/ upon an/ exit?’ In ‘maybe, just maybe’ he sees of photo of himself ‘at six years old/ clutching a baseball bat’ and longs for the innocence and joys of his childhood before he knew women: ‘my heart was an apple/ for christ-sakes/ not a fist dunked in blood.’

Early in the collection there are a few key poems which touch on the joys of intimacy, of connecting with another person. These poems provide the reader with a framework from which to view Plath’s subsequent disillusionment and to heighten the tragedy of his loss of love. In ‘two cigarettes in the dark’ there is a brief moment of calm, of togetherness as a couple sit in the dark exchanging cigarette smoke:

they gather the smoke into the branches

of their lungs

& blow it out towards one another

they are both saying the same thing

w/smoke signals

their individual clouds rise above them

forming one shape beneath the stars

‘do you remember Ithaca’ is directly addressed to a former lover by the speaker asking her to recall some of the simple pleasures they shared. ‘fuck you, gravity, you bitch’ is about the sexual attraction he has for Sari who had large ‘pinky finger’ nipples and who ‘used to wear surgical tape over each one/ to keep them from showing when she wore no bra.’ In ‘I don’t think she ever knew it’ Plath finds consolation in thinking about the comforting rituals he & his partner performed in preparing for bed: ‘me checking the door locks/ her cracking the bedroom window/ allowing some cool night to slip through the mesh/ me turning down all the lights one by one…’ The poem ends ominously as they lie together:

a wordless time in the dark

only the lines of our palms reading

each other

a peaceful future

if only so brief as a night’s sleep

In these lines Plath integrates his central ideas of fate- ‘palms reading’ with the notion that security and comfort in any relationship is only temporary.

Love is seen by Plath as ephemeral, as doomed from the start, as already multiplying like an undiscovered cancer within (‘this dark dance of replication’). In ‘sitting in the bar I see lovers racing to their doom’ he watches joyful lovers and raises his glass to himself to toast their impending doom. He sees love as fated, as intrinsically limited in scope, ‘there is always a limited number of kisses/…always a pre-determined amount of embraces/…before an inner ribbon that tallies them/ is snipped.’ In ‘fifteen hundred days & she was still a stranger to me’ Plath juxtaposes the pleasurable & innocent experience of eating a home cooked meal together with the underlying deceit of his partner: ‘the day I brought home that good cheese/ she was cheating on me// even as she smiled cutting up the bread.’ In the interview which follows, Plath explains the origins of his pessimistic view of love: ‘That comes from bad experiences I've had . Once one goes wrong, you wait for the others to fall apart too. It's like they're doomed before they even begin. And then you are also more aware of lovers falling apart around you too.’

Plath’s cynical stamp on love and its essentially toxic nature is bitterly probed in ‘love’. The poem enfolds like a manifesto of disease in the list of physical ailments love evokes -

this product may cause one or more of the following:

dry mouth, grinding of teeth, abdominal cramps, peptic

ulcers, diarrhea, vomiting, loss of appetite, loss of personal

hygiene…testicular shrinkage…extended bouts of weeping…

He concludes, extending his wrath to include love’s destructive capacities of humanity in general:

swelling of the brain stem, anxiety, paranoia, hysteria, domestic

violence, racism, war, & hatred for all humanity.

In the poem ‘some hearts are wood chipper machines’ he uses an extended metaphor of a wood chipper to describe the violent way in which his girlfriend churned up his love and spat him out in ‘bits & pieces.’ Similarly, in ‘that loveless peaceful shape,’ Plath reflects on how she had cheated on him and now bitterly considers the heart ‘a sick shape.’ He prefers the ‘dark rectangular ditch’ of the void ‘safe from the human heart.’

Arguably, the best poems in the collection focus on how Plath concretely deals with the day to day vicissitudes of his betrayal, anger, grief and renewal.

Plath focuses on his initial moments of doubt, when he first forms the impression that his partner of four years is fucking behind his back. At the aquarium in ‘as the sharks forever swim through my cigarette smoke’ he hears a highly suggestive Patsy Cline song and realizes ‘the enormous crushing truth’ of her guilt. She doesn’t confess her affair but a week later their relationship is finished. He also recalls fights they had prior to their split up. In ‘the monster in the fog at 5 a.m.’ They return drunk from a party & she pounds his spine and demands, ‘WHAT DO YOU DO FOR ME?’ and later cries, “I CAN’T TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’ and packs a small bag and stays with her mother. The poem ‘other ways to get inside’ explores further the venom, the irrationality of a love/hate relationship which dissembles. Plath’s partner sprays him with insults and concludes, ‘if she can’t love me she’ll hate me’ and expects him to explode ‘w/my own unkind words.’

Plath is often driven to desperation as he sees his dream of love disappear. ‘always on the verge’ is a powerful poem which expresses his inner turmoil through the use of the extended metaphor of an out of control motor vehicle on a suburban road:

always on the verge

of swerving on the curve,

at high speeds

this shape, this heap

called a body

bursting into flames

This self destructive rage expresses itself in the smashing of ‘several pieces of furniture, in the downing of ‘vodka & beer/ every day for months’ (‘the unart of poetry’) and in the drunken exhilaration of driving in cars late at night (‘in-between love’). The poem ‘hearts full of war paint’ effectively translates the transition from love to the ‘cursing,’ to the smashing of glasses, to the slashing ‘at each other’s jugular/ w/ the jagged shards.’

In ‘the real goddamn battle’ Plath concludes that the real battle is ‘w/the enemy inside.’ Plath wavers between reveling in his pain and realizing the damaging effects it has on him both physically and mentally. In ‘getting the black ants of despair shit-faced’ he drinks himself blind to slow down the black ants of despair and to ward off his thoughts of suicide: ‘Every third drink/ pulls a bullet/ from the full chamber/ of the pistol.’ In ‘Don Juan of melancholia’ he alludes to Hamlet’s famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy. Everything stabs him: ‘every hour/ contains/ sixty/ arrows’. More explicit, is his threat to do himself in with his pocket knife bookmark in ‘forget flowers, knives make better bookmarks.’ He explains candidly, ‘words/ won’t/ delay/ the/ inevitable.’ In a rare third person poem ‘waiting it out’ suicide comes calling again. The speaker stares at death’s personified ‘frumpy ass/ in front of/ the gas stove’ and realizes ‘the thrill/ was finished’:

it was then

he decided to

wait it out for

natural death

however long

it would take

besides he’d

heard death’s

blow jobs were

worth waiting for

In ‘this takes guts’ Plath fronts up to a restaurant and orders a meal he and his partner always used to order there. The whole process ‘is like going up to a body/ at a funeral// of someone you’d thought/ would never die.’ But Plath toughs it out to help him better understand his sense of loss. In one of my favourite poems in the collection ‘just a mesh of disconnected lines,’ Plath accidentally runs into his ex-lover and her husband. He is torn between knowing the intimacy of her flesh and seeing her with another man. In one of his strongest poems ‘as if it wasn’t crowded enough,’ Plath despairingly attempts to explain his sense of loss by imagining his ex-lover’s skeleton churning ‘in a tight embrace’ within him:

it’s almost kind of sweet

on those nights i drink away

& whistle a solemn tune

to this strange moving union’

Plath also lets us in on his secrets as to the reasons for his failure as a partner. ‘dear 1’ is a second person poem addressed to his former lover reminiscent of Ted Hughes poems to his dead wife Sylvia Plath in his Birthday Letters. He puts on a record ‘we used to screw to/ & lit the same scented/ incense.’ Sitting alone he smokes and recalls he’d often think of her as a ghost ‘& i was really imagining/ all of it- the love, the closeness.’ He realizes ‘there’s no shape/ beneath the covers’ now, ‘no one calling my name.’ He states starkly, ‘maybe i was a ghost to you.’ In ‘eating alone w/ghosts’ he admits that ‘I’m no good at affection/ I even hate shaking hands/ … i prefer the darkness.’ Examining his hands he concludes that they are ‘solitary hands made only/ for speaking w/ghosts.’ These attempts at self confession to accept some responsibility for the breakdown heightens Plath’s appeal.

Plath’s existential yearning for the void of Nothingness is inexplicable but real. In the interview he deliberately keeps vague his concept of the void: ‘It's the biggest thing you have to come up against in this existence. And that motherfucker is going to stare you down no matter how tough you think you are. I think it's humbling. Nothingness is humbling’. The poem ‘arranged marriage to the void’ probably best sums up his views. He believes the void is revealed after human beings step ‘out of their clothes’ of convention, & unhook ‘the bones/ from their frame/ they’d see their real suitor: / Nothingness.’ This concept sounds similar to King Lear’s ‘unaccomodated man’ or perhaps that of Beckett’s bowler capped bums wandering across bleak landscapes stripped of all reference points. Whichever way we may define or understand it, the dark rectangle of the Void is ever present in casting its shadow across Plath’s essential writing.

In ‘for some hearts just two factors alone are enough’ Plath has finally come to terms with his breakup and finds comfort in the knowledge that he has survived the horrors of his personal ordeal. He makes himself a meal and pours a glass of wine to the rim. He savors ‘it in complete silence/ & entirely alone.’ In ‘12 a.m. epiphany’ he sits with his cat in his room and she blinks three times at him. He convinces himself that this is ‘perhaps a cat signal/ to let me know that i’ve found/ something like grace on my own.’ This victory perhaps is a hollow one, one that will not last. The poem concludes in a tone of dark uncertainty: ‘as the hands of the clock/ begin to separate/ & night comes on deeper.’

In one of the book’s concluding poems ‘sitting alone in thinned-out rooms’ Plath, the survivor, points to a new beginning. A new hope. He admits frankly that his loss of love has meant ‘fewer pieces of furniture’ and the only solution is to ‘give it another whirl’, ‘to fill up a goddamn room/ again.’ In the interview which follows, Plath acknowledges that the last poem in the collection ‘skin magicians’ best sums up his take on love. Sitting alone, he sometimes imagines his room the same as before his last partner had left him. One day he is cooking for a new girlfriend & after an epiphany in which he transposes the legs of his former with his latest girlfriend he realizes that’ the old pair’ are gone:

they’re gone

& now there’s these

& you grin at one another

in all of yr newness

& you continue

stirring the black beans

thinking to yrself

how really goddam

crazy it all is

‘A fist dunked in blood’ is an intense personal collection of poems seared in the blood of Plath’s bitter/sweet experiences. He documents with extraordinary honesty and insight the thrills of love and the dogs of despair triggered by his relationship breakdown. Yet he emerges transfigured and a more resilient person & writer.

Plath is a rare talent. He is a poet of great courage, integrity and ingenuity. His book can be purchased here: http://www.epicrites.org/theres-a-fist-dunked-in-blood-beating-in-my-chest.html

INTERVIEW WITH ROB PLATH 19 APRIL 2011

Q1: You have a distinct preference in writing poems in first person about your real life experiences. When did you decide to adopt this approach and why?

A: Detachment is uninteresting to me--most of the time. I prefer to risk it all by putting myself out there--as stripped down as possible. I am drawn to the writers who are fully in their work. I've written this way most of my life. Before that I was mainly writing bullshit--detached stuff. I think narrative poems are much more honest and powerful than lyric poems. Lyric poems are bullshit most of the time. Full of literary devices and detachment.

Q2: You include some early poems in the collection which capture intimate moments in your relationships, such as ‘two cigarettes in the dark’ and ‘do you remember Ithaca’. Why didn’t you include more poems of love & intimacy to counterbalance the mass of narratives which later deal with love’s loss and the terrible sense of dread and ugliness it brings?

A: I actually think there are more in there besides those two--for example, "i don't think she ever knew it" and "fuck you, gravity, you bitch." I believe there are others as well.

Q3: A central motif in ‘fist dunked in blood’ is that love is doomed from the start. Where does this idea come from? Is there anything that a pair of lovers can do to extend their ‘predetermined amount of embraces’?

A: That comes from bad experiences I've had . Once one goes wrong, you wait for the others to fall apart too. It's like they're doomed before they even begin. And then you are also more aware of lovers falling apart around you too. Everything seems to be working against you. You ask is there anything lovers can do in order to extend love? Maybe see each other every two weeks . The day after day thing seems to never work and if it does, there's a hell of a lot of fighting and boredom there.

Q4: You have a great interest and facility in describing the biology of the human body. Skeletons, flesh, spines, marrow, lungs crowd your work. Is this related to the concept that humans are primarily physical rather than spiritual beings or are there other underlying intentions with this fascination?

A:Yes. The body completely repulses me and at the same time fascinates me. I feel hyper-aware of all these strange parts we have. I don't believe we possess a soul or anything that isn't physical. It all begins and ends with the body. We're meat straight jacketed to a skeleton. That's all I think.

Q5: You provide many diverse takes on love but does your poem ‘love’ best sum up your overall impressions of the thing at the moment?

A: I think the last poem in the book sums it up best--"skin magicians." The absurd act of "switching partners."

Q6: Your world view seems to incorporate elements of fatalism and nihilism. You often use the motif of the void. Does this represent the black dog of depression or something more?

A: The void is something that is so mind-blowing that it can cause depression. It's the biggest thing you have to come up against in this existence. And that motherfucker is going to stare you down no matter how tough you think you are. I think it's humbling. Nothingness is humbling.

Q7: You call yourself ‘The Don Juan of Melancholia’. Many of your poems drill into and try to fathom the terrible pain you have experienced. I sense you sometimes find a morbid satisfaction in this and use it to propel your writing. Do you think that down the track you might write a collection of playful, humorous poems which will reveal a lighter side of you?

A: I doubt that. But maybe somewhere down the road there will be something I will write that is humorous. You can never tell what your mind might want to spit out in the future. Or maybe I'll be dead before that happens.

Q8: In the back bio of the book the blurb states that you are ‘a significant figure who is carving a new path in the post-Bukowski era where underground poetry is without a father figure.’ Can you explain in what ways you are carving a distinct path?

A: I hate answering this question because I am very modest and that blurb is so intense. I'm not sure I know exactly what the fuck I am doing. If I had to name one thing though, in terms of carving a new path it's continuing to write with brutal honesty and not worrying about forms or literary gimmicks to propel my writing. It's day after fucking day of writing down the things nobody has the guts to say or think about.

Q9: Your first prose book Swallowtude: a novella will shortly be published by Epic Rites Press. Can you give your readers an idea what it will be about? What main difficulties did you encounter in the writing of the book?

A: It'll make Henry Miller blush in his grave. That's all I'm saying for now. I did have some difficulties with the book. Mainly the self-discipline of writing long, long stretches of prose without getting restless and quitting. Poetry is one thing, but sustaining lengthy prose is very difficult for me. I am very glad to be able to do it. The next one should be much easier.

Q10: Do you have any other projects in the pipeline?

A: Yes. A few. A strange children's book. A creative writing book. The creative writing book is actually a third of the way finished. The children's book is being worked on right now.

Thanks Rob, for the privilege of interviewing you and for your brutally honest comments.

Thanks George.

Check out Rob Plath’s blog: http://mysoulisabrokendownvalise.blogspot.com/

BOOK REVIEW: Pierre Bayard How to TALK About BOOKS You Haven’t READ. Granta Publications. London 2008 (185 pages).

2011-04-17T22:49:00.011+10:00

This clever, intellectually tricky book will become a classic in post-modern literary criticism. Professor Bayard’s thesis is that ‘it is sometimes easier to do justice to a book if you haven’t read it in its entirety- or even opened it.’ His position is that being cultivated is a matter not of how many books you have read, but rather to understand their place in our culture. He controversially states that ‘skimming books without actually reading them does not in any way prevent you from commenting on them.’ He believes the reader can absorb the ‘depth and richness’ of a text within ten minutes without getting lost in the detail. The biggest loss in reading a book word for word is you will ‘vanish into other peoples’ books and you will be unable ‘to create any work’ of their own.

Ironically, it is through the close reading of Musil, Valery, Eco, Montaigne, the film ‘Groundhog Day & others where Bayard develops his brilliant arguments. Most fascinating and hilarious are his analysis of the anthropologist Laura Bohannan’s stay with the Tiv tribe of western Africa. She learns that even though the tribe has never read a line of Shakespeare’s Hamlet the locals find themselves fully capable of discussing and debunking Western notions of the text.

Bayard sees reading as a complex and fragmentary activity. Once we have read a text forgetfulness immediately sets in transforming the book ‘to a few approximate pages, into dim shadows gliding along the surface of our consciousness.’ Therefore, a discussion ‘is less about a book itself than about a fragmentary and reconstituted object’ from our memory, or our ‘inner library’ of books we have read.

I am impressed that Bayard has students who can discuss books they have never read. They must be a bunch of pretentious wankers! They remind me of revolving-door politicians who try to explain policy they have never mastered. Pontiffs who have never seen past this life. His theory of reading is highly original but deeply flawed. Bayard ignores discussion of the reading process as an end in itself. There is great satisfaction to be savored, of course, in reading a creative text in depth and discovering its many layers and interconnections. If you are always skimming what eventual understanding of anything of profound worth will readers ever have?

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski The Last Night of the Earth Poems. ECCO, New York, 2002 (first published 1992).

2011-04-12T12:28:00.009+10:00

running out of days

as the banister glints

in the early morning sun.

there will be no rest

even in our dreams

now, all there is to do is

reset

broken moments.

‘blasted apart with the first breath’

This is the last book of poetry that Bukowski published during his lifetime. It is a substantial collection which strengthens our understanding of the Bukowski legend. You get the impression that he is setting the record of his life straight as he senses his ‘luck is running thin.’ The poems are characteristically acutely observational and recall incidents from his lifetime of drinking, writing and womanizing. These poems are highly entertaining, humorous and occasionally profound. The book is certainly more consistent and stronger than any of the many posthumous collections ECCO has churned out since.

Bukowski’s voice is highly personable and often directly addressed at the reader. I can imagine him propped up in bed writing poems in his yellow journal or cursing the computer after he accidently deletes one as in ‘Hemingway never did this’. Many of the poems revisit Bukowski’s young adult life as a starving writer. The poems ‘young in New Orleans’, ‘flophouse’ and ‘spark’ are particularly brilliant in capturing Bukowski’s defiant rejection of mainstream ‘working stiff’ life and demonstrate his great resilience in developing his writing about people on the fringe. He lives in cheap motel rooms with crazy women and sits unshaven in his underwear drinking beer and writing poems into the dead of night. This is the Buk we know best and allows the reader to enter the book and helps us prepare for his more recent thoughts as he contemplates his rapidly approaching death, the legacy of his life’s work and the impact his loss will have on the loved ones he will leave behind.

In ‘days like razors, nights full of rats’ he writes about how his visits to libraries in the early days helped get him past his ‘birds of pain’. In ‘the word’ he lists many of his favourite writers and says matter-of-factly near the end of the poem, ‘it possibly kept me from/ murdering somebody,/ myself/ included.’ In ‘cool black air’ he praises how the typewriter had mellowed ‘his nightmares into a gentle sanity’ and how ‘it has loved me at my lowest.’ In ‘only one Cervantes’ while struggling with writer’s block he metaphorically explains the importance of the creative process in his life, ‘writing has been my fountain/ of youth,/ my whore,/ my love,/ my gamble.’

More interesting and subtle are his reflections on his health, his family and people in general as he ‘runs out of days.’ As the clock ticks down he writes and listens to Brahms and drinks wine and thinks about his cats and his wife. In ‘darkling’ he has a sleepless night and thinks of death out there ‘beyond the venetian blinds.’ In ‘confession’ as he waits for death he imagines his wife discovering his ‘stiff/ white/ body’ and feels sorry for her. Despite their ‘useless arguments’ he utters to her the words he always feared, ‘I love/ you.’ There are also some harrowing poems where Bukowski grapples with his nightmarish thoughts. The poems ‘eyeless through space’ and ‘in the bottom’ are particularly chilling.

Bukowski also sees the lighter side of growing old and of his impending death. In ‘mugged’ he wryly sums up his situation: ‘I now allow cars to pass me on the freeway./ I haven’t been in a fist fight for 15 years./ I have to get up and piss 3 times a night.’ In ‘the damnation of Buk’ he is ‘concerned that there will be nothing to/ drink in hell.’ And scarier still he is concerned that he will ‘have to listen to/ one poetry reading/ after another/ after another…’

Bukowski relishes his hard earned role as an outsider and occasionally uses it to condemn the values of middle America. He says in ‘in and out of the dark’, ‘I must have been a mole in another life, something that burrowed and hid alone.’ He is particularly disdainful of people who have deliberately wasted their lives by refusing ‘to see’ (‘be kind’). He hates people who have led unexamined lives, ‘splashing around in their dumbness’ and although ‘they are able to/ speak,/ form sentences-/ but what/ comes out/ of their mouths/ are the stalest/ concepts, the most/ warped beliefs’ (‘splashing’). In ‘the area of pause’ he is scathing of ‘people who are worn away with striving’, who are unable to think for themselves- especially in an imaginative way:

they become unalive

because they are unable to

pause

undo themselves

unkink

unsee

unlearn

roll clear.

In ‘they are everywhere’ he encounters vicious, small-minded ‘violently unhappy souls’ who rage against everything ‘wasting their lives/ in hatred.’

‘Dinosauria, we’ is the best and most condemning poem in the collection and was made famous by director John Dullaghan’s film Bukowski: born into this (2003). http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/bukowski-born-into-this/ The poem points to the unequal, war-ridden planet and prophesies its destruction through nuclear fallout. In a rare overtly political poem Bukowski believes that this will be a purifying act which will eventually lead to Earth's rebirth.

In contrast,‘the bluebird’ shows a more sensitive, personal side to Bukowski’s writing. The birdbird in his heart ‘that wants to get out’ symbolises the nice guy lurking under Bukowski’s tough façade. If you haven’t already done so, check out Bukowski reading the poem on YouTube:

This stripping back of pretense is echoed in other poems which might surprise the seasoned Bukowski reader. In ‘oh, I was a ladies’ man’ he is disgusted by his treatment of woman as a young man. He sees himself as a selfish, self satisfied ‘fucking dog.’ As ‘the walls get closer’ he attends a track meeting and watches ‘the horses run by/ and it seems/ meaningless’ (‘are you drinking?’). In ‘a suborder of naked buds he senses the failure of language to capture the whole of what he has experienced:

I would like to make

this

piece of paper

shriek and dance and

laugh

but

the keys just

strike it harmlessly

and

we settle

for just a fraction of

the whole.

This growing sense of doubt humanises and broadens the reader's perspectives on Bukowski's self parodies of his drunken bum hero Chinaski.

This collection shows Bukowski’s ongoing search and development as a mature writer. These poems are highly engaging but substantial in content. They wet the appetite of those traditional readers wanting to hear more from Buk the tough, hard drinking man but also point to new, more sensitive and fragile directions as Bukowski braces himself for death.

BOOK REVIEW: Charles Bukowski New Poems COME ON IN! Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, 2006, 279 pages.

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This is one of the many posthumous Bukowski books published by Ecco after they bought out Black Sparrow Press in 2002. The preface states officiously that ‘these poems are part of an archive of unpublished work that Charles Bukowski left to be published after his death.’ The book is edited by Buk’s long term editor John Martin and is a highly readable blend of poems which will not disappoint Bukowski’s ‘true believers’. The collection is not presented chronologically but provides an overview of the full gamut of Bukowski’s work. You will find here recollections from his childhood, fascinating anecdotes about writers, conversations with his fans, barkeeps, strangers, an eclectic mix of damaged women & also poems which document his struggle with cancer and his descent into death.

The title poem 'come on in' invites the reader into Bukowski's 'wormy hell' where the reader, like the poet is 'a pawn', 'a sucker'. The speaker makes a direct appeal to the reader, 'we need to discover a new will and a new/ way.' I'm not sure what Bukowski's new way is but he finds many inventive ways in which to entertain the reader through his use of humour, the crudity of his insights into humanity and his continuous experimentation with form, subject matter and point of view.

Bukowski is full of contradictions. He is disgusted by life around him but takes joy in being called a 'depraved' drunkard who calls 'every woman a whore' (‘my personal psychologist’). He hates people but craves their affections. He resists death but longs for its embrace. It is in the paradoxical interplay between humour and tragedy that Bukowski produces his best work.

On Writing

Much of Bukowski's appeal amongst underground writers results from his self conscious discussion of the writing process and the many satirical portraits of the literary world that he creates. Through his extraordinary determination and some help from 'lady luck' Bukowski was able to pave his own way as an imaginative writer and seventeen years after his death he still sells tens of thousands of books each year.

He has many enemies of literature in his sights. Characteristically, Bukowski is scathing of academic verse and puts the boot into those who have sold out along the way by accepting comfortable university tenures. In ‘the "Beats"’ he is derisive that some people still connect him with Beat writers who he dismisses as vain and full of ‘public postering.' He views them as 'hucksters of the despoiled word' & clamoring for handouts,/ still talking the same/ dumb/ shit.' The poem ‘do you believe a man can be taught to write?’ is essentially a critique of the writing industry, particularly of MFA programs which work from the premise that any idiot can write. The hard hitting ‘a note upon modern poesy’ goes further by critiquing modern poetry in general- in particular, its reliance on literary allusion and obscurity. Bukowski sarcastically quips, ‘if you can’t understand a poem then/ it almost certainly is a/ good one.’ More to the point he argues that poetry is headed in the right direction ‘when your average garage mechanics/ start bringing books of poesy to read/ on their lunch breaks.’ In another venomous poem ‘talking about the poets’ he concludes that it ‘will be a beautiful day’ when ‘many a darling/ poet would either be allowed to/ starve or forced to get a/ real job.’ He outrageously states that they might be better off robbing banks or selling drugs.

More interesting perhaps are Bukowski’s views on his own motivations & writing processes. In ‘on the sunny banks of the university’ while considering the ‘comfortable’ poetry of an English Lit professor he quips:

I think good poetry should startle, shatter and,

yes, entertain while getting as close to the truth as

possible.

I can get all the comfort I need from a good

cigar.

One of the best poems in the collection ‘200 years’ he clearly spells out how poetry differs from the factories and time clocks:

writing’s different, you’re floating out there in the

white air, you’re hanging from the high-wire,

you’re sitting up in a tree and they’re working at

the trunk with a power

saw…

A main message to readers is to ‘keep it going/ keep it/ hot’ (‘this machine is a fountain’) And ‘once the poem is written, the only need after that/ is to write/ another’ not to read it to other people (‘I’m not all-knowing but…’). In ‘Paris in the spring’ Bukowski explains that he never wrote for money ‘but to keep himself out of the madhouse.’

What I admire about Bukowski is that he understands the limitations of his writing but knows that the form he uses best suits his material. In an amusing conversion about Bukowski's alter ego Chinaski, an unknown third person speaker castigates the fictional writer as having 'no idea what a stanza is/ or for that matter- a line break./ he just begins at the top/ of the page and runs to the/ bottom.' A common criticism of Bukowski's poetry is that it is merely prose dissected to resemble poetry. In 'from the Dept. of English' he thinks it is sweetly ironic that his poems have been accepted for the department's Literary Journal. His poems and stories are now regularly taught in universities around the world.

On Relationships

Bukowski’s poems about his relationships with women often raise charges of sexism because of his speaker’s blunt, egotistical views. The poems in this collection are hugely varied in their view of relationships and cover many of the author’s favourite topics- sexual attraction, infidelity, betrayal, unrequited love, incompatibility and love making. In ‘endless love’ he writes about a passionless married couple who have stayed together for ’60 or 70 years’ and have stayed together not out of love but because ‘fate / fear and/ circumstances have/ bound them/ eternally together.’ In ‘sex sister’ it is his girlfriend who is the sexual predator. She stalks him everywhere & later trashes his car. In the third person ‘fooling marie (the poem)’ he meets his archetypal woman at the race track- ‘strawberry blond with round hips, well-bosomed, long legs’. He wins big & after his fat frame mounts her ‘young marvelous’ body he takes a shower. When he opens the bathroom door she is gone and so has ‘his pants with the car keys and his wallet.’ In ‘red hot mail’ young women send the elderly poet suggestive letters. He trashes them and asks himself: ‘where were all these eager/ girls/ when I was starving, broke, young and/ alone?... I only wished now some lass had/ chanced upon me then/ when I so needed her hair blowing in my/ face/ and her eyes smiling into mine.’ Instead they left him sitting in tiny rented rooms ‘terribly alone with/ suicide mornings and/ park bench/ nights.’

Bukowski entertains us with his adult takes on relationships. This is not the messy, dragged out affairs which involve the children or grandchildren of real life, but rather Bukowski’s fantasy world which does not involve true responsibility or long-term commitment. As in ‘alone again’ the speaker thinks about past women in his life ‘living somewhere else/ sitting somewhere else/ standing somewhere else/ or maybe feeding a child.’ He directly addresses those women who think their relationship with him can be revived. The poem concludes harshly: ‘this poem will last much/ longer than we/ did.// it deserves to:/ you see/ its strength is/ that it seeks/ no/ mate at/ all.’ He seems to play the tough guy that he doesn’t need women while at other times he is so desperate to hear a female voice that he dials up an automated operator to listen to her announcing the time (‘operator’). Bukowski’s own life didn’t seem to have much long-term stability until he married Linda Lee in 1985 when he was sixty-five.

On Death

Many of the poems in this collection are contemplations of his certain death approaching, ‘towards the loss, the leaking away’ without god. In 'to the ladies no longer here' while driving to the race track he finds temporary consolation in the thought that he is waiting for death, 'Death sits in the seat next to/ me// we make a lovely/ couple. In ‘hello there’ he jokes that ‘when death comes with its last cold kiss/ I’ll be ready:/ just another whore/ come to/ shake me/ down.’ More disturbing in 'hello and goodbye' he feels ‘stuck’ in his poor body & ‘poor life’ as it slowly dissolves into nothing. He exclaims, 'there's no hell like your own hell.' In 'alone in the chair' after a harrowing 'twisting/ screaming/ churning' pain inside his brain & guts he feels 'trapped like a fish to bake.'

He wavers between an acceptance of death and the joy that he is still alive. In 'hello there!' he says, 'when death comes with its last cold kiss/ I'll be ready.' In 'Sumatra Cum Laude' he says, 'you can only pray for a quick clean finish.' In a remission in 'another comeback' he considers himself lucky to be able to climb 'back up out of the ooze, out of the thick black tar' and rise up like 'a modern Lazarus.' But inevitably, the pain returns and as in 'hurry slowly' the dark voices remind him he has lived too long & tell him to 'give way' and to 'get out.' The bleakest poem is 'the disease of existence.' He waits for death in his bed, feeling 'mutilated', but it won't come. He finds solace in the idea that death will bring 'that final separation' from humanity whom he despises, but in the waiting he feels more greatly 'dark humanity's/ insufferable/ relentless/ presence.'

In the end Bukowski must learn to balance the horror of waiting for death with his ‘endless determination to endure.' In ‘two nights before my 72^nd birthday’ he mockingly suggests he ‘should be able to afford a decent burial.’ In ‘everything hurts’ as he senses his mortality, he appreciates more the ‘small things’ how everything around him ‘suddenly seem…new.’ Driving along streets, he watches people in their cars and he thinks; ‘each of them must finally/ die.’ In the last poem in the collection ‘mind and heart’ he anticipates his own death and appeals again to the reader: 'grieve not for me. /read/ what I’ve written/ then forget it /all’.

Conclusion

This is a solid collection which represents some of Bukowski’s last work, consciously written when he knew he was dying of cancer. He knows he has nothing to lose and continues writing for his growing readership. He writes about what he knows best- relationships, writing and the pain which will kill him and end all sensations, all memories. His writing is clear, accessible and always full of fresh insights and surprises. He is far more than ‘just a drunk who writes’ (‘Paris in the spring’). He is far more than an aberrant American voice who writes about whores and puking (‘I have continued on regardless’). Bukowski is a smart, funny, irreverent voice amongst a wasteland of conformity.