César Franck and photos of [Aldous] Huxley talking to [D. H.] Lawrence over spilled wine. God dam it: bio, bio, bio . . . I hate myself, but must get on. This is blahbuk, well, christ, I dunno, I slugged the old man one night when I was drunk, 17, headed out of town. He didn’t fight back and it made me sick because that was part of me . . . staring up from the couch, weak coward. I traveled all over this rotten U. states working for nothing so others could have something. I am not a commy, I am nothing political but it is a bad setup. Worked in slaughterhouse, dog biscuit factory, Di Pinna’s of Miami beach, copy boy on the New Orleans’ Item, blood bank in Frisco, hung posters in New York subways 40 feet below the sky drunk hopping beautiful golden third rails, cotton in Berdo, tomatoes; shipping clerk, truck driver, horseplayer ordinary, holder down of barstools throughout a dull alarmclock nation, supported by shackjob whores; foreman for American newsco., New York, Sears-Roebuck stock boy, gas station attendant, mailman . . . I can’t remember them all, it’s all rather drab and common and any man you see next to you in the unemployment line has done the same things. [ . . . ]
Where were we??? Christ. Anyhow, during all this, I wrote a poem or 2, published in Matrix, and then lost interest in poetry. Started fucking with the short story. By the way, got a letter from [Evelyn] Thorne who prints a lot of my more fancy and classical poetry—ho shit, I can write any old way, I am no good—cussing me for ussing bad langwich. Now wait. Let’s see. The short story. Whit Burnett of the old Story mag printed my first one in 1944. I was a 24 year old kid then living in Greenwich Village and realizing the first day that the Village was dead, a signpost that someone had once been there. Shit, the mockery. Got a letter from a lady agent asking me to lunch and drinks . . . wants to talk to me and agent my stuff. Told her I couldn’t meet her, wasn’t ready, couldn’t write, and goodbye, had my own drink under bed in form of wine bottle. Ended up in a Father Divine place 6 o’clock in the morning, drunk, locked outa room, freezing in shirt sleeves. You didn’t ask for a bio, did you, Webb? In fact, whata hell, you ant even accepted onea ma pomes?
Well, anyhow, short story here and there, not too many accepted. I would send airmail to Atlantic Monthly and if not accepted would tear up. I don’t know how many thousand masterpieces I tore up. Pro none. Various people on way try to get me to do novel. Fuck ’em. I wouldn’t do novel for Khrushchev. Forget everything for awhile, 10, 15 years didn’t write. Couldn’t pass Cichristarist to get in Army. Good feeling. Had shorts on backwards but not intentional after 4 week drunk. They thot I was nuts, the crazy sunkabitches!
Well, look here, Wegg, I mean Webb, let me drag another beer. I am wondering about you going 21 days without a drink, this has to STOP. I ended up once in charity ward of general hospital . . . hemorrhaging blood out like fountain from ass and mouth . . . they let me lie for 2 days before they touched me, then got idea I had connections with the underworld and pumped 7 pints of blood and 8 pints of glucose into me without stopping. They told me if I ever drank again I was dead. 13 days later I was driving a truck, lifting 50 pound packages and drinking cheap wine full of sulphur. They missed the point: I wanted to die. And as some suicides have experienced: the human frame can be tougher than steel.
Now what a minute Webb w where we?
Anyhow, I came off this blackout 10, 15 year drunk, shack jobs, terror, walnuts in the sheets, walnut shells, mice leaping like rockets thru rooms 3 weeks behind in rent thru hangover dreams, green potatoes, purple bread, the love of fat grey women to make you cry their large potato bellies and dry love and rosary under pillow and photos of children impure . . . nothing to make a man feel savage and daring because he simply wants to strange himself. The women were better than we. Every last one of them. There is no such thing as a whore. I have been robbed and slugged and crabbed with the rest of them, I say, there is no such thing as a whore. Women are not built that way. Men are. The term is whoredom. I was one. Still am. But let’s get on.
Anyway, ten or 15 years later I began to write again . . . at age 35, but this time it came out all POETRY. What the hell? The way I saw it—it saved the words . . . Ger. would have liked that, altho I am wasting a lot of words here, I am sure I will be forgiven . . . because somebody has on his power mower and WHIRRRRR CLICKWHRRIRR, it is all right with all the sun coming in and there’s something on the radio . . . I don’t know what . . . might have heard it only once or 2twice, so tired of the same . . . Beethoven, Brahms, Bach, Tchaikovsky, etc . . .
Anyhow, I came on with the little pome because I liked it and it seemed ok. Now I am getting a little tired and don’t know quite what.
Anyhow, published here and there, drawer fulla little mags where shirts should be.
I would like to say that I have or had some gods—Ezra P. before I started corres. with an ex-mistress [Sheri Martinelli] . . . There’s still, however, [Robinson] Jeffers. Eliot seemed to me an opportunist, going where the slickest gods gave the quietest gifts, which is great and gentile, but not human and the roar of blood or some bum dying on skid row in underwear which has not been washed for 4 weeks. I am not exactly knocking Eliot, I am knocking education and its false teeth. I could and can get more knowledge of life by talking to a garbage man than I could by talking to T.S., or for that matter, to you, Jon E. W. Where were we? [ . . . ]
Look, Jon, I hope you can fin’ a pome. Somewhere among the bloody tunes . . . I dunno, I’m tired . . . everyplace people water lawns . . . good deal. Well, look, this was the bio.
lost my pen,
let’s knock ’em dead with Alcatraz ramble . . .
Stefanile published a Bukowski poem in The Sparrow 14 (1960).
[To Felix Stefanile]
September 19, 1960
No “bookworm or sissy” am I . . .
Your criticism correct: poem submitted was loose, sloppy,
repetitive, but here’s the kernel: I cannot WORK at a poem. Too many poets work too consciously at their stuff and when you see their work in print, they seem to be saying . . . see here, old man, just look at this POEM. I might even say that a poem should not be a poem, but more a chunk of something that happens to come out right. I do not believe in technique or schools or sissies . . . I believe in grasping at the curtains like a drunken monk . . . and tearing them down, down, down . . .
I hope to submit to you again, and believe me, I far more appreciate criticism than “sorry” or “no” or “overstocked.”
[To Jon Webb]
Late September 1960
[ . . . ] Also got your new card today, must agree with you that one can talk poetry away and your life away, and I get more out of being around people—if I have to—who never heard of Dylan or Shakey or Proust or Bach or Picasso or Remb. or color wheels, or what. I know a couple of fighters (one with 8 win streak going), a horseplayer or two, a few whores, x-whores, and the alcoholics; but poets are bad on the digestion and sensibility, and I could make it stronger, but then they are probably better than I make them, and there is a lot of wrong in me. [ . . . ]
Agree with you on “poetic poetry,” and rather feel that almost all poetry written, past and present, is a failure because the intent, the slant and accent, is not a carving like stone or eating a good sandwich or drinking a good drink, but more like somebody saying, “Look, I have written a poem . . . see my POEM!”
