when it stops.
Can’t you see that the changing of Layover to Lay Over violates the essence of the poem? By Layover, I meant getting out of the stream of dead life. But my editor friend seemed to think it was just a lay that was over. Which it probably would have been if it had been him or Judson Crews….and while we are on The Naked Ear #9, there is a poem by your friend Mike McClure.—
I think that cigarettes are
killing me
and then I take the lion posture
to clear my throat out.
This is a poem? Or are the boys just playing with each other? There are too many homosexuals, and handshakes under the table to suit me…All right, Shed.
Truly,
Buk
Los Angeles, Calif.
March 12th., 1961
Dear Shed, Spirit-Love Mine:
First, hello, to my buddy, Po Li, hello, hello.
Bad day: blades turned in…but not for shaving.
I hate to see a full-grown man cry (or woman either) and use Art as an excuse, but on the other hand, I hate to see them going around being soft and subtle as if they have everything under control and are tasting their words like olives or pickled pigs feet. (See Gil Orlovitz: Act of the Sonnet). Yeah, it’s an act, all right. He gave himself away and didn’t know it. Even to stealing one of my lines after first carefully draining the blood from it.
I hate to see a full-grown man cry, but maybe that’s the hun in me; the hun and the pollack and everything else backalley; but I don’t hate to see the sun go down, especially after I have walked around in it all day dreaming pleasantries against the blade. Besides, I am pretty good in the dark, I’m told (I was once cornered in a closet with a man with brass-knucks, but I guess he was only a boy because I left him in there among the ladies’ habits and scarf-shadows, and I stepped out and asked for something cold to drink).
I furthermore do not care for the Ginsburg flippancy of seeming-modernity about his grandmother’s beard Howling, or whatever, and it was tough of him to go visit Castro amongst the chicken bones; but why why why…do they call it DARKNESS simply because I can see light and shadesdown growing flower AND weed, love AND the spilled bottle beside the elbow of what was once a halfgod…or now a fishpond is floating dead tadpoles that might be better than any of us? Certainly they can be…dead as they are…if they do not sell out, and it is so hard not to sell out with all the lights they flash upon us, with the weewee shit full of sea fulla boats fulla whores.
I know that Ernie is the new young Jew of the Adoration, but I hope that you have caught your head by now, and not lost it again. It’s none of my damn business. maby it’s Ginsburg’s granmaw’s business. I’ve elected you ar knew Gertrude S. but insteada u keepin’ me in shape, now an’ then Gerty, Buk gona SAY.
Let’s begin with some lines you didn’t understand.
Shed: bird-light is very simply any light that falls upon a bird or follows it around, just as Po Li has his very dark little ball that follows him around on a leash. As I was saying, any light that falls upon a bird or any light that falls away from a bird UPON something ELSE. Say in a form of final living light
as eagle-light or owl-light falls upon a mouse,
the last important light he will see here upon earth,
and
I tried
to explain this to a ballet dancer outside the Biltmore
the other night as I smoked one of his cigarettes
but he was queer, which I didn’t hold against him,
but he did not understand what I was trying to say,
which I did not hold against him, and that was all
I held against him
that night
or any other, and I went in and watched him kick and dance but the music and the ladies held my charcoal heart, and I’m sorry I borrowed his goddamned cigarette which was perfumed and made me cough; but to go on, and since Mrs. Po Li has no idea what “the terror of a mouse reaches dormitory levels” signifies here OR on the West Coast of Africa, I will tell her that
dor’ mi-to-ri, n., (L. dormitorium) is a
place, a room or a building
to sleep in
and that mice sleep in all these places
and that I have lived in a lot of these places and that they and I the mice and I
may sometimes dream, and that all our dreams may not be
either pleasant
or wet; and now…READY? ah!
let’s put them together:
IN BIRD-LIGHT
THE TERROR OF A MOUSE REACHES DORMITORY LEVELS…
simple, isn’t it? I’m sure Gertrude would have understood although I doubt she would have approved.
And to answer another question: IF WE ARE NOT GOING TO EVALUATE OUR OWN SELVES’ WORTH
WHO IN HELL IS GOING TO DO IT
WHILST WE WALK ON THE EARTH?
The critics, my dear, and the neighbors and the police and the press and all the ugly things that hem us in, but really—too many of us think we are genuii and are ready to admit it (I am thinking especially of C. Major and one or 2 others); so MANY men think they can make better LOVE and better POETRY than their brothers…but this fkn can’t be helped: it is a thing nature put in us to keep us going, but we’ve got to step aside from nature now and then and see the spider sucking the fly, we have to see that there is a web for us too, and if we can begin to see this…instead of ACCEPTING nature, which has been the formula for centuries…we must say we are larger than nature because we know it is there. The first things are very hard to say because they have never been said before. But nature can be tamed like a tiger to do our will instead of the way we have been tasting it. I will even say that eventually the human race will call the day of its own death gladly, and nature in a way is God, and God in a way has been cruel, trying to prove something with a set of toys.
But getting back. If Pound has “a map of love poetry in his head & knows immediately where a love poem stands in relation to the race of love poetry” I’d say that the man has read too much and loved too little, and that his maps
like the ones he went over with Muss
have been changed, and the world is harder to fool now
and I see Rommel now directing his tanks
and Muss from the pulpit bragging under the shadow of
Adolph,
and I don’t like the way they got Muss and his whore, who was she, Carlotta somebody? the Italians are good winners and poor losers, they are loud and laugh too much and will fart their dinner right in your face, and you can see how far they have come from Rome, it is another person entirely, only the Teutons have never changed, I will never change and as I fall drunk over this typewriter I will laugh I will know the secret has god damn been given us, somehow, and as the years go on and I die out the window and the young men grow, it will not matter.
And I can see Rommel now directing his tanks, and so they hung Ben from his heels and his whore from her heels, and there was probably many an asshole in the crowd who jerked off with joy, for the first time seeing the body of a woman he was never man enough to possess, dead, wrong or right, they were both greater than the crowd, greater than an all beloved nature that had brought them to a fix.
they hung Ben from his heels like an old shark weighed out of slime, but Ez has his castle now
we bunked him up on weenies and beans
and a red shirt like the nigger wore and we let him have his mistress from the street, but he’s in his castle now, and Art’s winging it down the halls of his mind, a pretty good mind, but really not much better than mine who nobody’s heard of
but that’s all right
because that’s the way history works
and I may be wrong, but it seems to me when I look at the wallpaper n hear the sounds would be whirling when I smoke a simple cigarette, perhaps they enjoyed Ezra too early and they have gutted me up to wait through granite.
WE HAVE WAITED THROUGH GRANITE.
But Ezra can and is r
eal enough
to still be punched when he gets too fat or too mad in the bird-light of his life, the hoarded seasons, the withered Jews, the love of Mr. Po Li’ and a thousand critics afraid to scratch his fame.
…well, Shed, I have lit your little rocks. Good stuff. Didn’t think they would burn…Can still smell good fullness.
I love you,
Charles
BUKOWSKI
L.A., sometime March nineteensixtyone
Ho, Shed:
On the visit thing, I think not. And, of course, would warn you far far early. It is, I think, that I am very tired. Instead of all the driving, I need to flatten out a little and simply stare at the ceiling. It is a matter of survival. There’s little or no sense in coming up there if I am dead, and I can often times feel the dying and I just know sense whatthe hellwat thru some divine law that if I corner myself or cross one more line just one more I am finished. I have just about reached the edge lately. I do not want to be a hard bark in the middle of a desert. I want to see out with eyes. And I need the fill-in gap badly. Good to be invited. you are the one person in the world who comes across through space to me. perhaps later. I get 4 day periods off throughout the year, I can come up at a time when the edge is not so close. If I can keep this job. and they have almost accepted me like an oddity, like a drinking fountain or an elevator, they have found a name and a place for me, and I let them have it that way…whatever front they draw, so that I may walk off in peace.
Ginsburg, of course, may have a formulated concept of strength tasted through the dirt and blood of centuries, but it seems unfortunate to me, that more and more his poetry seems to lack lack realness
which seems to be his central concept
and it is a shame that one has a concept in mind and not in
action;
ACTION:…meaning and being the poem.
Fer[linghetti] runs off beautifully at times letting the words take him running but it seems that in each of his poems he stops the running and throws in something practical which exposes him as quite not pure, and I say pure not as Bartok or Bach but as something that should be
without interference.
Webb is a tough good man who is learning slowly very slowly the ways of rocks and error, but the best thing about Webb is that he began at an age when most men forget. A man is always dangerous and strong when he begins late at things that tickle most young men who have nothing else to do. Webb is capable of growth, and growing. In an age of insignificant editors I find him a very good one mistaken, of course, raw, a simple beginning, but he seems to be slowly cracking through. I will take one Webb for a dozen Shermans because Sherman is only fame-happy and bubbling in his milk (as is your beloved Major) while Webb is prodding through his backbone other sounds not his through pain and experience and error
all right he has a way to go
let him go it.
maybe you get good laugh. I met a young man who speaks seven languages who said “I can personally introduce you to a man who knew Ezra Pound 32 years ago.”
…sure, sure, I’m afraid Gib would be too aloof…I can imagine him coming home and wondering if I stole one of his cookies. Jesus, he’s just by gd getting over the Ernie thing. Let just let him rest in peace. Besides, I’m an old man…Gib wd take me out behind the nearest pine tree and whip my ass. And prob all we would have done is talk about my boy Jeffers. And damn you, Shed, I tol’ you to read Tamar, Roan Stallion and tother poems and you HAVE NOT DONE IT!!!
HOW CAN YOU DRAW JUDGEMENT UPON A PERSON IF YOU HAVE NOT READ HIS WORK? Don’t let Pound make you think that there was only ONE…there were and are 3 or 4, and you are only blind if you do not INVESTIGATE!!!
And yet, by god, you sit there stroking paint upon canvas as if you have it all figured…Gal, sometimes you get me to steaming, sometimes you need somebody to TALK TO YOU!
what the hell is this?
…oh, you needn’t PRESUME I’d be on your side.
there’s no other side I cd take.
Gib’s all right
but his roots only go down
as far as he bends to tie his shoes.
Now I’m gona get rot drunk. Something—private—has interrupted my day—but now I’m going to fill up again.
sure love, why not?
lost pen again,
Buk
[postcard dated by SM 3 April 1961]
Deah Shed,
Howja ever make out with kaja? I imagine a lot of literary hair-pulling, and I know from experience that you can outcuss the gal. Women poets, garrh! Your H.D. prolly best of lot. Christina Rossetti, now dead long, very strong. Bettern most men at it, living or dead, and was fine looking woman too. Kay Boyle once very beautiful, well-worked prose style, but as poet-essa loses out. Better in novel or short story, but getting tiresome…Look now, her still wailing over dead Vienna, dead Europe. Repetitive. One subject gal. You gotta get these women organized, Shed. They’s runnin in all directions getting nowhere. Elizabeth Bartlett sees the most print and is the worst of the lot. Carson McCullers wrote some brilliant novels and then disappeared. Easy on kaja now. She’s just a child, I’d imagine.
Bukowski the CHARLES…
Buk
Los Angeles, Calif. April 3, 1961
Deah Sheri:
I am told your lad Wang now claims he is a communist and a black supremacist; Wang’s trouble is that he wants to make a sound and be heard irregardless of the cost…he made some kind of statement in the Golden Gater, a state college newspaper. Why in the hell a college newspaper should bother to announce the new-found so-called principles of Mr. Shift-with-winds Wang. With one wing communist and one wing black-supremacist he hopes to fly to fame, just as rubbing against Pound like a dog against the legs of the master he hoped some of it would rub off on Mr. Wang. Meanwhile he tries to make up his mind whether he is a homosexual or not…but on or off…not or no or yes…he dedicates each of his poems to somebody, somebody in power.
Why are they so hungry?
Your lad Jory writes…where is Sheri? she has vanished completely. It is evident you did not send him a copy of A & P, or he wd have your address. I did not give him your location as I figure you are too busy with the brush and the herbs and treegod. Sheri, you must not dump people like you do, like so much slag. I feel for poor Ernie, you built him so high, so very high, popping cookies and love into him, bloating him with joy, and then something went wrong—a premise somewhere was crossed, a Martinelli set of nerves jumped in the moonlight, and all the sketches you made of the lad while he pretended to sleep, all the preening and primping and fattening of his soft soul, and then—BANG!!!—you let him go, all the way back, and he will never be the same. You are too cruel and you should not be cruel to children. I am tough and I can see, I see out of my own eyes, and you cannot destroy me because you cannot mould me. I will destroy myself. But you must be kinder to children and dogs and half-poets and old men. I guess because Ez booted you you have to boot back but you are wrong wrong you can live without Ez and you can live
without booting; it is different to sack them and throw them in the sea while they sleep, that is another matter. It is true that the consciousness finally can’t take an intrusion that first appeared to be holy and then suddenly shows signs of rot, but all things can be handled without the hot and sterilized knife. My Engoilish professor from Louisiana…he started blurring up my windshield with all manner and matter of personal crap, and though he is getting to be a fairly well-known poet, and he tried to pop a lot of cookies into my mouth by telling me I was one of the 2 living poets today writing anything worthwhile…and as my goil friend said—HOOS THE OTHER BASTARD?—I had to cut the strings on him, but I did it gently and he was man enough to take the hint, and he went way up on my scale when I saw this, and I think there’s a chance for him, and when I see one of his poems now…I can sense the gentleness and explorative understanding working, and instead of having the bitter taste, I am for him as a man and a person and I hope h
e understands that all the confessional crap was a mistake. I didn’t want to see the birthmark on his left shoulder. I went through all that with Jory. There is a manner of saying a thing. You can say anything as long as you keep the light on it like a goddamned leaf but when you start getting chummy and measuring lengths of cock and placements in literary journals it’s time to halt.
well, tough mama, I am coming off a good one, I am sitting here sweating like a pig about to be murdered, sucking on a beer, looking for cigarettes, thinking my god my god my god I’m still alive…
Webb? Webb is growing. It’s something about working so hard with the magazine and reading all the scripts and being haunted by visitors and pests and those agonizing for fame and chitchat, it has brought him up to where he can almost see. He wrote a rather amusing letter about how they are bombing down on him. Eating out his icebox, stealing his novels and neckties, borrowing money, endlessly chitting and chatting very well causing him hours of loss that he needs for sleep or turning the crank. He’s made the mag too big, and each day a new page of my stuff, a Bukowski album—which is all right with me, but I think he should close the thing down and get it out before it eats him alive. Webb is tough and he tries to be fair, which is more than you can say for most. I can talk at him without losing perspective and in working out the poems, we do not argue.
I don’t know anything about Ferlinghetti except the bookshop and censorship fight put him out into the light
and where nobody’d heard of him before, he is suddenly known, not now as a bookshop owner but as a poet and novelist, and I understand he is a very bad novelist (Her).
Ginsburg got put out in the light with his Howl which like War and Peace, I have never been able to read without boredom. Boredom, hell yes. And I do not think Ginsburg has come through with a consistent body of work that points in any direction with force. He may be active as hell, but anybody can be ACTIVE, the milkman can be ACTIVE, but the poet’s job if he has to be ACTIVE is to be so through his POEMS. That is the gun of his strength. And that is where the Wangs and Ginsburgs fail—milking one teat with one hand and the other with the spare. Most things are so terribly simple, and in a sense, terribly horrible, and both of them are blind to the obvious, and both of them are too god damned hungrey to make a SOUND