When you’re away from your place do you carry a notebook with you? Do you jot down ideas as they come to you during the day or do you store them in your head for later?
I don’t carry notebooks and I don’t consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don’t like writers, but then I don’t like insurance salesmen either.
Do you ever go through dry periods, no writing at all? If so how often? What do you do during these periods? Anything to get you back on the track?
A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I’m not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn’t much good. But sometimes I do get aware that it isn’t going too well. Then I go to the racetrack and bet more money than usual and come home and drink much more than usual and scream at and abuse my woman. And it’s best that I lose at the track without trying to. I can almost always write a damn near immortal poem if I have lost somewhere between 150 and 200 dollars.
Need for isolation? Do you work best alone? Most of your poems concern your going from a state of love/sex to a state of isolation. Does that tie in with the way you have to have things in order to write?
I love solitude but I don’t need it to the exclusion of somebody I care for in order to get some words down. I figure if I can’t write under all circumstances, then I’m just not good enough to do it. Some of my poems indicate that I am writing while living alone after a split with a woman, and I’ve had many splits with women. I need solitude more often when I’m not writing than when I am. I have written with children running about the room having at me with squirt guns. That often helps rather that hinders the writing: some of the laughter enters. One thing does bother me, though: to overhear somebody’s loud TV, a comedy program with a laugh track.
When did you begin writing? How old? What writers did you admire?
The first thing I ever remembered writing was about a German aviator with a steel hand who shot hundreds of Americans out of the sky during World War II. It was in longhand in pen and it covered every page of a huge memo ringed notebook. I was about 13 at the time and I was in bed covered with the worst case of boils the medics ever remembered seeing. There weren’t any writers to admire at the time. Since then there has been John Fante, Knut Hamsun, the Céline of Journey; Dostoevsky, of course; Jeffers of the long poems only; Conrad Aiken, Catullus . . . not too many. I sucked mostly at the classical music boys. It was good to come home from the factories at night, take off my clothes, climb on the bed in the dark, get drunk on beer, and listen to them.
Do you think there’s too much poetry being written today? How would you characterize what you think is really bad poetry? What do you think is good poetry today?
There’s too much bad poetry being written today. People just don’t know how to write down a simple easy line. It’s difficult for them; it’s like trying to keep a hard-on while drowning—not many can do it. Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, “Now I am going to write a Poem.” And it comes out the way they think a poem should be. Take a cat. He doesn’t think, well, now I’m a cat and I’m going to kill this bird. He just does it. Good poetry today? Well, it’s being written by a couple of cats called Gerald Locklin and Ronald Koertge.
You’ve read most of the NYQ craft interviews we’ve published. What do you think of our approach, the interviews you’ve read. What interviews have told you something?
I’m sorry you asked that question. I haven’t learned anything from the interviews except that the poets were studious, trained, self-assured, and obnoxiously self-important. I don’t think that I was ever able to finish an interview; the print began to blur and the trained seals vanished below the surface. These people lack joy, madness, and gamble in their answers just as they do in their work (poems).
Although you write strong voice poems, that voice rarely extends beyond the circumference of your own psychosexual concerns. Are you interested in national, international affairs, do you consciously restrict yourself as to what you will and will not write about?
I photograph and record what I see and what happens to me. I am not a guru or leader of any sort. I am not a man who looks for solutions in God or politics. If somebody else wants to do the dirty work and create a better world for us and he can do it, I will accept it. In Europe where my work is having much luck, various groups have put a claim on me, revolutionaries, anarchists, so forth, because I have written of the common man of the streets, but in interviews over there I have had to disclaim a conscious working relationship with them because there isn’t any. I have compassion for almost all the individuals of the world; at the same time, they repulse me.
What do you think a young poet starting out today needs to learn the most?
He should realize that if he writes something and it bores him it’s going to bore many other people also. There is nothing wrong with a poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way. He should stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what’s happening around the corner. And bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success, or the ability to do anything very well.
Over the last few decades California has been the residence of many of our most independent voice poets—like Jeffers, Rexroth, Patchen, even Henry Miller. Why is this? What is your attitude towards the East, towards New York?
Well, there was a little more space out here, the long run up the coast, all that water, a feeling of Mexico and China and Canada, Hollywood, sunburn, starlets turned to prostitutes. I don’t know, really, I guess if your ass is freezing some of the time it’s harder to be a “voice poet.” Being a voice poet is the big gamble because you’re putting your guts up for view and you’re going to get a lot more reaction than if you’re writing something like your mother’s soul being like a daisy field.
New York, I don’t know. I landed there with $7 and no job and no friends and no occupation except common laborer. I suppose if I had come in from the top instead of the bottom I might have laughed a little more. I stayed three months and the buildings scared the shit out of me and the people scared the shit out of me, and I had done a lot of bumming all over the country under the same conditions but New York City was the Inferno, all the way. The way Woody Allen’s intellectuals suffer in N.Y.C. is a lot different than what happens to my type of people. I never got laid in New York, in fact, the women wouldn’t even speak to me. The only way I ever got laid in New York was to come back three decades later and bring my own with me, a terrible wench, we stayed at the Chelsea, of course. The New York Quarterly is the only good thing that has happened to me out there.
You’ve written short stories, novels. Do they come from the same place your poems come from?
Yes, they do, there’s not much difference—line and line length. The short story helped get the rent and the novel was a way of saying how many different things could happen to the same man on the way to suicide, madness, old age, natural and unnatural death.
You have a fairly distinct persona in most of your poems, and your strong voice seems to come out of that persona. It’s the mask of a bored, dirty old man who’s boozing it up in Li Po manner because the straight world isn’t worth taking seriously. Usually there’s a hysterical broad banging your door down while the poem is taking shape. First do you admit to this persona in your poems, and then to what extent do you think it reflects Bukowski the man? In other words are you the person you present to us in your poems?
Things change a bit: what once was is not quite what it is now. I began writing poetry at the age of 35 after coming out of the death ward on the L.A. County General Hospital and not as a visitor. To get somebody to read your poems you have to be noticed, so I got my act up. I wrote vile (but interesting) stuff that made people hate me, that made them curious about this Bukowski. I threw bodies off my front porch into the n
ight. I pissed on police cars, sneered at hippies. After my second reading down at Venice, I grabbed the money, leaped into my car, intoxicated, and drove it about on the sidewalks at 60 m.p.h. I had parties at my place which were interrupted by police raids. A professor from U.C.L.A. invited me to his place for dinner. His wife cooked a nice meal which I ate and then I went over and broke up his China closet. I was in and out of drunktanks. A lady accused me of rape, the whore. Meanwhile, I wrote about most of this, it was my persona, it was me but it wasn’t me. As time went on, trouble and action arrived by itself and I didn’t have to force it and I wrote about that and this was closer to my real persona. Actually, I am not a tough person and sexually, most of the time, I am almost a prude, but I am often a nasty drunk and many strange things happen to me when I am drunk. I am not saying this very well and I’m taking too long. What I am trying to say is that the longer I write the closer I am getting to what I am. I am one of those slow starters but I am all hell in the stretch run. I am 93 percent the person I present in my poems; the other 7 percent is where art improves upon life, call it background music.
You refer to Hemingway a lot, seem to have a love/hate thing for him, what he does in his work. Any comment?
I guess for me Hemingway is a lot like it is for others: he goes down well when we are young. Gertie taught him the line but I think he improved on it. Hemingway and Saroyan had the line, the magic of it. The problem was that Hemingway didn’t know how to laugh and Saroyan was filled with sugar. John Fante had the line too and he was the first who knew how to let passion enter in, emotion in, without letting it destroy the concept. I speak here of moderns who write the simple line; I am aware that Blake was once around. So when I write about Hemingway it’s sometimes a joke thing but I’m probably more in debt to him that I’d care to admit. His early work was screwed down tight, you couldn’t get your fingers under it. But now I get more out of reading about his life and fuckups, it’s almost as good as reading about D.H. Lawrence.
What do you think of this interview and what question do you wish we’d asked you? Go ahead and ask it of yourself and then answer it.
I think the interview is all right. I suppose that some people will object that the answers lack polish and erudition, then they’ll go out and buy my books. I can’t think of any questions to ask myself. For me to get paid for writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money. I’ll take it. Why don’t we stop here?
New York Quarterly 27, Summer 1985
Gin-Soaked Boy
Interviewed by Chris Hodenfield
. . .
Have you known people who’ve worked in movies?
Fortunately, I have not. Oh, people have come by, even before this shit started. Godard. Werner Herzog. James Woods—before he became big time. We met a lot of these people through Barbet [Schroeder]. Harry Dean Stanton. Sean Penn and Madonna. Elliot Gould. They all come by.
Harry Dean’s a strange fellow. He doesn’t put on much of a hot-shot front. And I make him more depressed. I say, “Harry, for Chrissakes, it’s not so bad.” When you’re feeling bad and someone says that, you only feel worse.
Barbet just showed up one day. Said he wanted to make a film about my life. He kinda talked me into it. I was very reluctant, because I don’t like film. I don’t like actors, I don’t like directors, I don’t like Hollywood. I just don’t like it. He laid a little cash on the table—not a great deal, but some. So I typed it out. That was seven years ago.
I started writing dirty stores and I ended up writing a fucking screenplay. And now I have Godard, Werner Herzog, and Sean Penn coming by. The little girl next door says, “Oh, Hank, is it true that Madonna came to see you?” I said yeah. “But why would Madonna come see you?”
Sean [Penn] wanted Dennis Hopper to direct, and I wanted Barbet. Because Barbet put seven years into this. They gave Barbet a pretty lush offer, to be the producer, a whole deal. But he said, “No! I must direct this myself.”
. . .
What was your first reaction to Mickey Rourke?
I hadn’t met Mickey, but I heard many stories about him. I thought, “This guy will be a complete prick. I better not get drunk and take a swing at him. I better watch my drinking. I could ruin the whole move by getting into it with this kid and being completely honest.”
But he was so nice. His eyes were good. Even one time Linda and I were walking onto the set, they weren’t shooting. Mickey was being interviewed, they had the cameras on him. He saw me and said, “Hey Hank, c’mere! Help me!” They got me on, talking.
I think we just liked each other. One time Linda and I were sitting in the bar when they were shooting. We were getting plastered, which was a mistake. The bar was still open while they were shooting around the corner. I saw Mickey and I said, “Hey, c’mon, have a drink.” He said, “No, I can’t, we neeeeed you!” Just like a little boy. He needed me to watch him act.
The guy was great. He really became this barfly. He added his own dimension, which at first I thought, this is awful, he’s overdoing it. But as the shooting went on, I saw he’d done the right thing. He’d created a very strange, fantastic, lovable character. When it comes out, I can see all sorts of kids acting like him. All the kids are gonna start drinking!
How was Faye Dunaway?
I saw her in Bonnie & Clyde. She filled the role. Period. She wasn’t exceptional. She wasn’t bad. She just filled the role. [To the microphone.] Sorry to say this, Faye, you want me to lie? I just made an enemy. That’s one of my problems—I can’t lie.
Is [Barfly] pretty much as you wrote it?
Yeah. Barbet wrote in the contract that nothing could be changed without my permission. It’s pretty good for a screenwriter. Never heard of that before.
Barbet has a lot of respect for what I write. He even phones from the set when I’m not there and says the actors can’t say the line. You know, sometimes you write a line and it looks good on paper, but with the human voice it doesn’t work. So I give him another line. So we’ve been working together that way. It’s right down to what I wrote. If the writing’s good, you’ve got a good chance for a good movie.
He’s been improving the pace. The first cut I saw was very slow in the beginning. It’s marvelous what they can do to pep it up just by cutting here and there—you get a sense of rhythm. A certain zip develops, you can feel it, like a horse galloping. When you get these deadly pauses, you can just sense them. We saw that in the beginning; it just bothered me, “This is so labored.” They’d just put everything together, with no music.
He’s really pushing it. He sent the Cannes people a rough cut, and they liked that. The last I heard, they had seven rooms with people working on it in each one, and he’s running from one to the other.
The whole movie was shot in six weeks. And what’s the cutting time, four weeks? We’re working under the mad whip here, but instead of detracting, it seems to be giving it more jazz.
Did you get some screenplays and study the form?
Hell, no. [Disgusted.] Well, you know, it’s just dialogue, people walking around. You don’t have to study that. I can’t see taking instruction on anything. . . .
I guess it was because I had a tough childhood, with my father telling me what to do all the time. So if anybody tells me, “This is how you do this . . .” I don’t ever like to be told how you do this. I just want to do it, whatever has to be done. If somebody says, “You do it like this,” I immediately cut off and go cold. And it extends to trivial areas of life. . . . Things must come through joy and wanting to do them. I don’t like instruction. I can’t handle it.
. . .
If the promise of screenplay fortunes had come at a more pressing time, might it have been a more distracting lure?
It did come at a pressing time, and that’s just why I did it. Because I was living in a dive and just barely getting by. I really hadn’t been lucky until three or four years ago. And I’m not ri
ch. And I’m not poor. Neither are you, right? So the money looked good. And I think they got a bargain—for what they paid for.
And if the movie’s a success, you’ll participate?
It will be a success, because Mickey did a great job of acting. He really did it.
Had you ever given a thought as to who might play you in in your life story?
No, because I never thought anyone would do my life story. I did think, well, maybe I’ll die sometime and somebody will take a shot at it. Usually they fuck it up. There was a thing about Kerouac on TV the other night—it was awful. You can’t watch it too long. This guy smiling. We were switching back and forth between F. Scott and Kerouac; we finally had to stop watching both of them.
Most writers’ lives are more interesting than what they write. Mine is both. They meet on an equal plane.
I just wrote it and said it was in the hands of God, they’ll fuck it up. I didn’t expect a great deal. So I was ready for when they fucked it up. Fortunately, because of Barbet Schroeder’s directing and Mickey Rourke’s acting and all the barflies—took them right out of the bar—they got a great cast and it worked. It’s going to be a fine movie. It might even win a fucking Academy Award for Mickey. For screenwriter? Well, maybe. I’ll get a tuxedo.
. . .
You once wrote a regular column in the L.A. Free Press, and in a column on how to pick the ponies you said, “Having talent but no follow-through is worse than having no talent at all.”