drinking stale beer with Curtis Zahn and J.B. May. I thought about the dollar I owed Larsen. I thought maybe I’d better pay it. He might tell J.B.” Larsen was actually the publisher of Existaria, a little magazine in Hermosa Beach, Southern California, hence the “sand from between his toes”; three Bukowski poems appeared in the September/October 1957 issue. Later Larsen would launch Seven Poets Press, which published Bukowski’s Longshot Pomes for Broke Players (1961).2 Readers are left to speculate that Bukowski may have owed money to Larsen, perhaps for a subscription to Existaria. In any case, it is noteworthy that the intertextuality here to the little magazines is brought directly into the narrative, indicating Bukowski’s later practice of constantly foregrounding the fact that for him, reality exists in order to be turned into literature. Another person mentioned—Curtis Zahn (1912–1990)—had been incarcerated for a year as a conscientious objector against WWII and was a journalist and playwright; John Boyer May (1904–1981) was the editor of Trace magazine—which began as a little magazine directory in 1951 in Los Angeles—until 1970.3 Bukowski submitted several letters/brief essays to Trace, which was extremely important for him during his early career because this directory provided outlets to which he would send his poetry.
Bukowski also produced a number of literary “manifestoes,” and “Upon the Mathematics of the Breath and the Way”—first published in Tony Quagliano’s Small Press Review in 1973—is one the strongest essays in this genre, in which Bukowski explores the connections between daily life and the transformation of experience into poetry.4 And in his several introductions to fellow poets’ works, he often takes the opportunity not only to praise the author, but also to adumbrate further aspects of his own poetics. For example, in his introduction to Doug Blazek’s Skull Juices, Bukowski declares:
It is not easy to realize that you are dying in your twenties. It is much easier not to know that you are dying in your twenties as is the case with most young men, almost all young men, their faces already oaken slabs, shined puke. They only imagine that death might happen in some jungle war of nobody’s business. Blazek can see death and life in a shabby piece of curling wallpaper, in a roach wandering through the beercans of a tired and sad and rented kitchen. Blazek, although he would be the last to realize it and is not conscious of it at all, is one of the leading, most mangling, most lovely (yes, I said, “lovely”)! Sledges of the new way— The Poetic Revolution. It is difficult to say exactly when the Revolution began, but roughly I’d judge about 1955, which is more than ten years, and the effect of it has reached into and over the sacred ivy walls and even out into the streets of Man. Poetry has turned from a diffuse and careful voice of formula and studied ineffectiveness to a voice of clarity and burnt toast and spilled olives and me and you and the spider in the corner. By this, I mean the most living poetry; there will always be the other kind.
In announcing a new “Poetic Revolution,” which he dates as beginning in the mid-Fifties—interestingly, about the time Allen Ginsberg’s Howl appeared—Bukowski is also describing the so-called “Meat School” of poetry which began to loosely coalesce around him with the appearance of Blazek’s Ole magazine and with which poets William Wantling and Steve Richmond were associated. In Ole Anthology (1967), Blazek declares the rationale for the new poetry:
But remember, there are still things to celebrate & the best celebration is expressed in song & the logical extension of song is a shout. So, don’t be timid. If you still care, if that goddamned sun strikes you in the eye right & you feel jubilant, THEN SHOUT! Put your teeth into those words. Lift some weights. Get that blood to cooking. Sneak in a peek between your crotch & see if you still have hair there. If there is hair, say there is hair. Don’t hide the balls either. If there are balls then include the balls & make them look like balls, know they are balls. POETRY WITH BALLS! POETRY THAT IS DANGEROUS! MEAT POETRY! Juice to make the ears jump . . . SOMETHING! as Bukowski says.5
Although Bukowski himself never acknowledged being either a founder or member of such a movement, it is clear that both he and the poets he inspired attempted to loosely formulate an aesthetic position which distinguished them from the other “schools” of American poetry: Confessional, Black Mountain, Deep Image, New York, Objectivist, Imagist.
Another distinguishing feature of Bukowski’s autobiographical prose/fiction is its structure as an extended roman à clef. Fellow writers continually appear under different names and he settles scores with them—as D.H. Lawrence often did in his satirical portraits of friends and acquaintances—while also often portraying himself in the worst possible light. For example, “Tony Kinnard” is Kenneth Patchen, and although the story carried a disclaimer— “Note: There is no intent to hurt or malign living persons with this story. I am sincere when I say this. There is enough hurt now. I doubt that anything happened as happened in this story. The author was only caught in the inventiveness of his own mind. If this is a sin, then all creators of all times have sinned . . . c.b.”—Kenneth Rexroth was reportedly infuriated by the tale, vowing that he would cause physical injury to Bukowski were they ever to meet.6 Bukowski’s relationship with another poet—William Wantling, here named “Jim”—forms the background of the story involving the woman “Helen,” actually Ruth Wantling, the poet’s widow. Bukowski picks Helen up at the airport and then spends several odd days and nights in boorish emotional combat with her. Again, Bukowski describes his own boorish behavior as he attempts to get Helen into bed. Yet another example is the story about “June” and “Clyde,” editors of the magazine Dustbird—clearly Jon and Louise “Gypsy Lou” Webb, editors of The Outsider and publishers of two Bukowski poetry collections, It Catches My Heart in Its Hands (1963) and Crucifix in a Deathhand (1965).7 Here again he makes a pass at Gypsy Lou, another widow of a close friend. In other stories not included in this volume, John Bryan—editor of Open City—is pilloried, as is Harold Norse. Clearly, Bukowski lavishly criticizes others, but he also holds himself up for ridicule. Like Henry Miller, he enjoys magnifying his faults and madness, delighting in caricatures of sins of all kinds.
During the early 1970s, Bukowski’s fame increased following the premiere of Taylor Hackford’s documentary on public television and his readings in San Francisco. Linda King figures in the story describing his reading at City Lights: here literary figures again proliferate as we find allusions to Ginsberg, McClure, and Ferlinghetti. Furthermore, a story dealing with the early days of his relationship with Linda King—some of which reappears in Bukowski’s novel Women (1977)—is entirely composed and shaped within a literary framework. The tale begins with an allusion to W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge and to the composition of Bukowski’s first novel, Post Office; he then meets Linda at a poetry reading. King has read Bukowski’s writings about women and critiqued them; they write letters to each other; he writes a poem about her; and finally writes the story itself. In fact, several of the most important women in Bukowski’s life were connected to him through his writing. Barbara Frye was editor of Harlequin, where his early work was published; Frances Smith was herself a poet who became curious about him after reading his work; Linda Lee Beighle also knew of Bukowski through his writings and met him for the first time at a poetry reading.
After quitting his job at the post office, Bukowski began to earn his living by giving poetry readings, as well as from his royalties, book sales, and writing for periodicals. His account describing two readings at university campuses, which appeared in Candid Press, December 20, 1970, opens with a bravura non-stop paragraph containing not a single period: “I swung three deep out of Vacantsville, like bursting out of a herd of cow, and next thing I knew we had set down, the bird burst its stupid stewardesses, and I was the last man out, to meet a teacher-student in a shag of yellow and he said, you, Bukowski, and there was something about his car needing oil . . .” and the energetic sentence continues unimpeded on its way. Several of our selections depict him in a typical scenario: arriving on a college or university campus, drinking, giving his reading, and ending up in bed with a usually admiring female. Again the role of “writer” is both celebrated and lampooned as he exaggerates, jokes, and gives comical
