Bukowski - being a prolific writer.

Charles Bukowski may come across as the ‘laureate of American low-life’ (Time magazine); drunken, crass; open disdain for most everybody in the literary world, ignorant, un-educated; but there are two things about his work that I aspire to – one, he was a “prolific” writer.  Something inspired him to write and nothing got in the way of that; every day, every night, write, laying down lines on paper.  OK, in the pure poetic art world a lot of it may be dismissed as no craft.  But being productive is a measure of a writer’s worth – there, I’ve introduced a third indicator to quality work, there’s the content of the poetry; the crafting of the poetry, and now, the productivity of the poet.  Bukowski was productive and I’m aware of that quality when I push myself along – how many poems will I complete this month, this year? what am I working on? when is my writing time and how will I insist on it (or how can I work it in with all the other stuff I’ve got going on?).  Most of us work at ordinary jobs and we have family commitments that by necessity take priority over anything as selfish as writing poetry – “what good’s that gonna do for us”, I hear her say, “you’d be far better off spending your time helping me with the washing or you could fix that balcony rail like I’ve been asking you to do a million times, do I have to do it myself or get someone in, is that what you want …………..”  OK, OK, the writing can wait!  Another quality of the writer is to know that you have forsaken your art for the greater good of the family unit (no you haven’t; you’re just basically afraid!).  Hank didn’t seem to let that shit get in his way.  Another aid to productivity is to not spend too much time going back over your work.  Don’t try to polish it, what is written, is written, and move on.  Bukowski seemed to work this way.  It’s sort of a belief that the work comes from pure inspiration, from a ‘muse’ who inspires the words to be written and it’s only when the morning comes that I will look and see what it really was that I wrote.  Fair enough.

The second thing about Bukowski that inspires me is, despite his lack of education and formal training in the art, he appears to have read widely and was familiar with the work of recognized poets (some whom he admired) – Hemingway, e.e. cummings, Esra Pound, Nietzsche, Celine, D.H. Lawrence, A. Huxley, Hamsun, J.D. Salinger.  In his poetry, Hank often pays tribute to the names of great writers – almost like an academic snob educated name-dropping, like he does with his self-taught knowledge of classical music.  OK, putting aside the lack of humility (though he would not have become so published if he’d been humble), it shows the importance for a non established writer to read and read and read the work of those who have already been recognized.  In this, Bukowski was quite educated.

 

hand-outs

Charles Bukowski (1921 – 1994)

 

sometimes I am hit

for change

3 or 4 times

in twenty minutes

and nine times out of

ten I’ll

give.

the time or two

that I don’t

I have an instinctive

reaction

not to

and I

don’t

but mostly I

dig and

give

but each time

I can’t help but

remember

the many times

hollow-eyed

my skin tight to the

ribs my mind airy and

mad

I never asked

anybody

for anything

and it wasn’t

pride

it was simply because

I didn’t respect

them

didn’t regard them

as worthy human

beings.

they were the

enemy

and they still are

as I dig

in

and

give.

 

‘hand-outs’ is fairly typical of Bukowski – autobiographical; mundane content, considered line breaks that pick up a conversational flow that helps in reading.  I include this poem from Bukowski (The Last Night of the Earth Poems, Ecco) because I wrote a poem with similar content – not inspired by ‘hand-outs’ but the crafting is certainly with Bukowski in mind:

2005.  I remember saying once that Melbourne was my conscience. 

 

Melbourne

 

I lit five candles,

one for each of us,

and stood them in the sand tray

at the feet of the statue of Mary

in St Augustines,

down the Spencer Street Station end of Little Collins.

 

Outside in the afternoon sun,

I knew from the act

that I was now good

for being hit upon

by any bum

drunk

wino

druggy

dead beat

addict

derro, or

street dweller

enterprising enough

to give it a go,

the word must have got out

because up ahead

I could see the beggars

pushing off building pedestals

and going into their routine,

brushing down

baggy brown clothing,

drawing last minute inspiration

from cigarette butts

and then flicking the distractions

away to the foot-path.

 

I let one go,

maybe two,

prepared to be generous

to a red haired young bloke

reminded me something of Matthew,

he worked his spiel,

and I obliged

with a number of suggestions

that could hook him up

with welfare agencies,

and he beat me with reasons

why they didn’t always work,

and all the time

I’m pulling my wallet

from out of my back pocket

knowing that the talk

about agencies

and the advice

and concern to identify the problem

is all bullshit,

for me

and for him.

 

I’m so imbued

I’m going for a note

but only a five,

too cautious

to push the charity, dependency, generosity

boundary

too far,

the wallet becomes like a lure

as I hold it out

opening it’s slit mouth a tiny fraction,

and the bum

hovers his fingers above mine

willing to settle

the transaction

here and now,

though he knows there’s

gotta be

throw away lines

of deep appreciation

and thank you sirs.

 

We’re both

at opposite ends

of the note,

I mumble something stupid, like

don’t spend this on grog,

when the bum reels back

as if burnt with brimstone,

reefs both sleeves

back from fore-arms

turned outwards for inspection, and

equally stupid,

protests that he’s clean.

 

.......... we both leave it at that.

                                                                                                           J. O. White

 

Charles (Hank) Bukowski - so you want to be a writer.

I got more books in my poetry collection by Charles Bukowski than any other poet there is.  Why is that?  Am I such a big fan?  I don’t know.  I think it’s because Bukowski was such a prolific writer (that there are so many books).  Of course I’m a fan – the poet most people try to copy.  I try to copy because Bukowski writes at a social level that I (and I guess, the masses) can relate to.  It’s telling it as it is; no bull-shit.  But Bukowski, more than a lot of others, knew what it was to live and be a writer.  And that’s something I like about him.  He sums it up in his poem, ‘so you want to be a writer’.  I keep this poem pinned above my desk like one of those motivational reminders, ‘every artist was first an amateur’, or ‘you cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind’.  You have got to just love to write no matter where it may not lead or how it may not serve any purpose.  But with Bukowski, is there justification for a writer’s creativity being formed from an alcohol or drug induced state?  I do know that I’m relaxed and free roaming the times at the keyboard when I’ve got a glass of port or a stone’s green ginger wine and the weather outside whips at my window – love it.

so you want to be a writer

                        Charles Bukowski (1921 – 1994)

 

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

 

Bukowski was a ‘beat’ poet, and from this style I am encouraged to lay lines down as I would in a diary – spontaneous, no construction, no revision, conversational, pure ………..  One of my favourite Bukowski poems where I can hear the voice as I read it is, ‘back to the machine gun’.  This has a mundane tone like a dude who knows being hung over.  The tone is created by the line breaks that capture Hank’s voice and delivery in telling the story.  It’s a mundane story; one that any dumb-arse could tell, but there’s a nice ‘hook’ at the end.  That’s something I get from Bukowski – it’s OK to free wheel and write about nothing, but you have to leave the reader with a punch line, something to wrap it up and send them back over the lines to summarise why you were rambling on about nothing

 

                                                         back to the machine gun

                                                           (Charles Bukowski, 1921 - 1994)

I awaken about noon and go out to get the mail
in my old torn bathrobe.
I'm hung over
hair down in my eyes
barefoot
gingerly walking on the small sharp rocks
in my path
still afraid of pain behind my four-day beard.

the young housewife next door shakes a rug
out of her window and sees me:
"hello, Hank!"

god damn! it's almost like being shot in the ass
with a .22

"hello," I say
gathering up my Visa card bill, my Pennysaver coupons,
a Dept. of Water and Power past-due notice,
a letter from the mortgage people
plus a demand from the Weed Abatement Department
giving me 30 days to clean up my act.

I mince back again over the small sharp rocks
thinking, maybe I'd better write something tonight,
they all seem
to be closing in.

there's only one way to handle those motherfuckers.

the night harness races will have to wait.

‘back to the machine gun’ acted as an influence when I wrote my poem, ‘Must Be at My Best’.  I tried to capture my own mundane tone (not hung over but similar).  I borrow the dishevelled appearance and clothing of somebody in a fever state, and I put a punch line at the end.

 

2011.  This was another year sucked quietly from the blood (Kenneth Slessor).  We went to Malaysia for a holiday and then I stumble from one disaster to another.  I come down with some fever-chill virus (Chicka Wu Wu virus for the want of a professional term).  I abandon myself to that relaxed realm where I don’t give a damn.
 

                                                                        Must Be at My Best.
 

In the Priceline chemist

the old bird behind the cash counter

has her eyes follow me in,

she stays with me a tad too long,

either suspicious, or

she fancies me,

I’m fighting off the fever chills,

dressed in my old black corduroys,

a black T-shirt beneath the V

of a black sweat top

that I slept in recently.

I think maybe she’s watching me,

but then I’m sitting in a chair

at the prescription counter, and

she comes out from behind the cash counter

through a swinging door, and

talks to the prescription guys

about going to lunch

and could they man the counter

and all the time, I’m sure

she’s taking peek glances at me,

I’m slouched back as much as I can

in the plastic chair

with my corduroy legs stuck straight out

above my brown suede slip-ons.

She disappears out the back to lunch.

The prescription guy takes my money

at the cash counter,

and as I go through the automatic sliding doors

I’m thinking about other missed opportunities.

                                                                                 J.O. White

Bruce Dawe - anti war poems.

I want to continue with Bruce Dawe and poems showing his familiarity with the military.  This one is called, ‘weapons training’.  When you read it you are left in no doubt that Bruce has been part of a squad (all male) receiving instruction from a tough drill sergeant or quarter master gunner with a touch of mongrel in him, like how they used to be.  From the poem you would think maybe this is Bruce taking the ‘mickey’ out of the military system and military instruction.  But I don’t think it is.  I don’t think it’s as much the satire as it first appears.  It certainly comes across as mockingly humorous with impossible personal insults, racial slurs, low level language and cheap gags.  But Bruce hasn’t made anything up here, he has not created a pretend character with pretend lines.  Nor has he created the sequence of the training session.  This is reality.  Every word, every sentence in 'weapons training' is exactly as a drill instructor (from the 1960’s, 1970’s) would have said it.  I find it’s another example of the poet listening carefully to conversation, finding the language colourful and entertaining, and then crafting it into a great poem.  The other reality thread that runs through the poem is the style and sequence of instruction.  Trainers know that there are set steps in a lesson plan – gain attention; state the objectives; link to previous learning, etc, etc.  'weapons training' is a true example of how a military instructor might have delivered a training session given the circumstances and the audience for which it was delivered back in those times.  The reason for training in weapons training, if not in preparation for deployment to Vietnam, is certainly structured with the Vietnam experience in mind (Charlies are coming ..; cockpit drill when you go down ..; mob of the little yellows ..).  In that sense, the consequence of poor performance is extreme, this is life and death stuff (dead dead dead).  The instructor knows this (may even have done his tour).  In terms of his Situational Leadership model (used by the military) he’s got a group at ‘task readiness’ level 1.  That means he’s the one who will do the talking and the others will shut up and listen.  It takes the first eight and a half lines for the instructor to establish his leadership position by singling out likely troublemakers and belittling them so everybody knows their position (no time for political correctness or hurt feelings when it could be you or your mates who get killed, while you thought it would be fun to dick around).  Then the lesson can start, ‘remember first ….’  The instructor’s tone becomes a little friendlier.  He’s set the boundaries.  Now he needs to inject a bit of humour to soften the reality of what these people may face in the field.  The final lines of the poem deal with practice and feedback where the skill is not yet mastered and the trainer paints the mental picture of the consequences of failure – too slow! too slow! dead dead dead.

Interpretation of 'weapons training' is one thing, but what I find more interesting is how it is constructed.  Bruce Dawe seems to have rendered a whole bunch of drill instructor sayings and one liner’s into a single, natural presentation that still manages great rhythm and ryhme.  The things I notice immediately in the poem are, only one capital letter; no commas, no full stops, extra word spacing used to indicate a pause mid-line, and the rhyming is there but so not obvious – ends up as a number of quatrains joined together.  On the syllable count it appears to follow five beats to the line (pentameter, classic) (iambic? maybe).

weapons training

(Bruce Dawe, 1930 - )

And when / I say / eyes right / I want  / to hear

those eyeballs click and the gentle pitter-patter

of falling dandruff    you there what’s the matter

why are you looking at me   are you a queer?

look to your front    if you had one more brain

it’d be lonely    what are you laughing at

you in the back row with the unsightly fat

between your elephant ears    open that drain

you call a mind and listen    remember first

the cockpit drill when you go down    be sure

the old crown jewels are safely tucked away   what could be more

distressing than to hold off with a burst

from your trusty weapon a mob of the little yellows

only to find back home because of your position

your chances of turning the key in the ignition

considerably reduced?    allright now suppose

for the sake of argument you’ve got

a number-one blockage and a brand-new pack

of Charlies are coming at you   you can smell their rotten

         fish-sauce breath hot on the back

of your stupid neck allright now what

are you going to do about it?   that’s right grab and check

the magazine man it’s not a woman’s tit

worse luck or you’d be set    too late you nit

they’re on you and your tripes are round your neck

you’ve copped the bloody lot just like I said

and you know what you are?   you’re dead dead dead
 

For my poem and its’ link to the poet, I’m posting two that are more inspired by ‘homecoming’ than by ‘weapons training’.  I wish I’d listened more to what the drill instructors were saying.  These two poems belong together.  They are not anti-war poems, rather an expression of the senselessness of a person getting killed in these non-war conflicts and a protest against the way the deaths are reported in a statistical manner.  I don’t know why, but I find I’m developing a dislike of stats – cold, hard figures that de-humanise, but broach no argument because they are the facts and everything has to be measured, somehow.

 

2004.  The evening news carries an item informing us that today the one thousandth American soldier was killed in Iraq.  This milestone was reached in less than twelve months since the invasion.

 

                                              The 1 Thousandth

 

Three soldiers were killed in the latest incident

Involving an ambush or suicide bomb or fire fight

Fought along a rubble littered street in Baghdad

But he was singled out as the 1 thousandth.

One thousand blood-smeared, sagging body bags

Lifted at the corners by four thousand buddies

Who remember from boot camp

One thousand NCO’s of the platoon,

Two thousand parents,

Four thousand grand parents

Three thousand brothers and sisters, give or take

The three thousand uncles and aunts,

Six thousand cousins

A thousand wives, sweethearts, girlfriends or lovers

Hug the 4 hundredth child

To have his daddy taken away

In one thousand caskets draped with one thousand flags.

 

2012.  I’m watching TV as I do every night; walk in from work, get a glass of wine, put on ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ or ‘Deal or No Deal’. Then the news comes on, and I know there was another casualty in Afghanistan (Cpl Scott Smith). A photo of the young soldier is displayed while the standard words are read out – so official, the Prime Minister’s deep sorrow; successful operation; struck a telling blow; disruption to the Taliban – not in vain. And always there’s the obsession with ‘stats’. This is a report of a young life sacrificed on behalf of the free, civilised world’s stand against terrorism, not a bloody number. Say something human for crying out loud! Moving right along, there’s a final insult when the report breaks to an ad with cartoon figures acting out the benefits of chewing Extra gum after you’ve eaten.

                                                  Becoming a Statistic

 

It bursts,

Usually listening to Radio National and then carried

on the 6 o’clock television news channels,

Carried on shoulders, on a C-130 Hercules,

Following the ramp ceremony at Tarin Kowt,

 

The 39^{th Australian}

 

soldier in total since 2002,

To be killed in action in Afghanistan

is shown as he was half turned, seated

in the bush-master turret,

In the studio shot now frozen

to his poor parents mantle-piece,

 

The 18^{th Member}

 

of Special Forces,

To sigh, so young, just a kid

in need of a shave and a haircut,

and a hug, what a shame,

 

The 6^{th Elite Soldier}

 

to be killed by an insurgent IED, and

 

The 15^{th Digger}

 

overall, from IED’s.

 

Then having dealt with the statistics,

The nation returns the audience

to a most ridiculous ad break,

Knowing it’s all over ……. and we can move on,

“Bad boys! bad boys!,

What-cha gonna chew?

What-cha gonna chew,

When they come for you?

Bad boys! bad boys!”

                                                                                 J.O. White

Slessor - 'Metempsychosis', an interpretation.

In my blog I don't set myself up to be a critic or to joust in the world of academics, but I feel compelled to set the record straight about the meaning of Kenneth Slessor's poem Metempsychosis.  As I've posted previously, I love this poem.  It's one of my favourite Slessor poems.  I've been influenced by it in my own work.  It has profound meaning to me and brings me closer to Slessor, the man than some of his other poems.  So I'm cruising the net keen to see how others feel about Metempsychosis and I come across essays and interviews that just blow my mind.  How can people apply these interpretations?  It makes me wonder whether it's the reason Slessor stopped publishing well before his time.  Poetry and art - why does one assume there must be greater meaning; why do some poets feel they must obscure meaning?  This is an extract of an essay/journal written by Kate Lilley, "Living Backward" (Slessor & Masculine Elegy), University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1997 (www.austlit.edu.au).  The extract gives an interpretation of Metempsychosis.  Now I don't know the context in which Kate wrote, or had to write the essay.  Maybe she had to argue along a certain academic line about a poem selected purely for study.  Anyway, this is Kenneth Slessor's Metempsychosis, Kate's critique, and my take on the poem:

 

Metempsychosis

(Kenneth Slessor, 1901 - 1971)

 

Suddenly to become John Benbow, walking down William

               Street

With a tin trunk and a five-pound note, looking for a place

               to eat,

And a peajacket the colour of a shark’s behind

That a Jew might buy in the morning ……

 

To fry potatoes (God save us!) if you feel inclined,

Or to kiss the landlady’s daughter, and no one mind,

In a peel-papered bedroom with a whistling jet

And a picture of the Holy Virgin ………

 

Wake in a shaggy bale of blankets with a fished-up

               cigarette,

Picking over ‘Turfbird’s Tattle’ for a Saturday morning

               bet,

With a bottle in the wardrobe easy to reach

And a blast of onions from the landing ……..

 

Tattooed with foreign ladies’ tokens, a heart and dagger

               Each,

In places that make the delicate female inquirer screech,

And over a chest smoky with gunpowder-blue –

Behold! – a mermaid piping through a coach-horn!

 

Banjo-playing, firing off guns, and other momentous things

               to do,

Such as blowing through pea-shooters at hawkers to

               Improve the view –

 

Suddenly paid-off and forgotten in Woolloomooloo ……

 

Suddenly to become John Benbow …….

 

Kate Lilley (Slessor & Masculine Elegy). "In “Metempsychosis” Slessor projects himself into the generic character of John Benbow and the romance of urban shiftlessness:  “Suddenly paid-off and forgotten in Woolloomooloo”.  Benbow is offered as the icon of spontaneous, independent, improvised masculinity, free from work and routinised heterosexual domesticity (of the kind which encumbers Alexander Home): “walking down William Street/With a tin trunk and a five-pound note, looking for a place to eat”.  His tattooed body, with its “places that make the delicate female inquirer screech”, is the ground of the inscription of desire, but Slessor's desire is nothing less than “Suddenly to become John Benbow …”, the phrase with which Slessor opens and closes the circle of his intricately and asymmetrically rhymed poem with its long, rangy (“walking”) line.  A triple rhyme (“do”, “view”, “Woolloomooloo”) leads to the suspended last line, “Suddenly to become John Benbow …” the only unrhymed line in the poem, but also an exact repetition of the poem's opening phrase.  The final aposiopesis marks a space of contingency and overlap, but also of equivocation and impossibility. It is both an attempt “suddenly” to instantiate Slessor as Benbow, to effect metempsychosis, and a strategy to keep the wishful circuit of metempsychosis open, to indicate a suspended structure of eternal return."

 

I have a completely different take on John Benbow compared to the interpretation offered by Kate Lilley.  To me the poem is about a sailor, a matelot, a junior rating, a man who has done his time in the Navy.  It is not "Slessor projecting himself into a generic character (John Benbow) or a suggested romance of urban shiftlessness".  How do we know this?  Because:

 

“Walking down William Street” – Slessor didn't place John Benbow in William Street by chance.  William Street is the major road leading up to Kings Cross in Sydney.  Kings Cross is a red-light / night-life suburb at the bottom of which is Garden Island, the main naval base for the Royal Australian Navy (in Slessor’s time anyway).  Every Australian service man who ever pulled on blue serge knows William Street (and also thousands of swabs, gobs, tars, shellbacks who have ever visited from foreign navies).  If you’re up the ‘Cross’ or ‘walking down William Street’, then there’s a greater than even chance you’re a ‘pusser’ (a sailor).  Slessor lived all his life up around the ‘Cross’ and Darlinghurst.  He spent time as a war correspondent in WWII.  He would have been very familiar with sailors, their social mannerisms, habits and behaviours around Kings Cross.

 

“With a tin trunk and a five pound note looking for a place to eat …..”  This is not Slessor painting a picture of himself with some hidden desire to be "spontaneous, independent, improvised masculinity, free from work and routinised heterosexual domesticity".  No, this is John Benbow, the poor bastard who has only this minute taken his discharge from the Navy.  The ‘tin trunk’ is a sailor’s sea chest containing all of his kit and worldly possessions (in Slessor’s time; later to become a ‘kit bag’).  The ‘five pound note’ is the sailor’s final discharge pay, leave and travel allowance. 

“And a peajacket the colour of a shark’s behind” – Sailors wear ‘peajackets’ (not "icons of spontaneous, …. routinised heterosexual domesticity"). This is referring to a sailor’s winter dress uniform, referred to as ‘blues’, though the actual cloth colour is not blue, it’s black.  With sea weathering and wear, the colour may become like the ‘colour of a shark’s behind’.  The discharged sailor (John Benbow) has no further use of his uniform so he will hock it and see if he can get some money for it (in the morning).

 

“His tattooed body, with its “places that make the delicate female inquirer screech”, is the ground of the inscription of desire”.  Kate has got this all wrong.  Slessor says John Benbow has got tattoos located in places on his body that make females screech.  Kate’s interpretation implies that it is the male body itself that has places that make females screech (big difference, and shows Kate has never been out with a sailor – not a tattooed sailor, anyway).  “the ground of the inscription of desire??” 

 

“Suddenly paid off and forgotten in Woolloomooloo”.  The term, ‘paid off’ refers to sailors who have been discharged from the Navy – “I’m paid off; when did you pay off? He’s been paid off for years; that’ll be the day when he pays off, a lifer he is”.

 

The final aposiopesis marks a space of contingency and overlap, but also of equivocation and impossibility.  The way Slessor ends the poem (aposiopesis – breaking off of speech) doesn’t reveal the poet’s self reflection and regret of an impossibility, Slessor isn’t John Benbow, he is not saying he wants to transmigrate into John Benbow (“it is both an attempt “suddenly” to instantiate Slessor as Benbow, to effect metempsychosis, and a strategy to keep the wishful circuit of metempsychosis open, to indicate a suspended structure of eternal return.”).  The ending, “Suddenly to become John Benbow . . . .”

reflects a regret from the character John Benbow himself, not Slessor.   In a previous life John Benbow wasn’t John Benbow. He was a serving member of the Navy, known by his rank, a part of a whole who shared in the success and achievements of the whole. But now he’s suddenly become just another bloke called, ‘John Benbow’, and all the silly things he crafted as part of his character in the Navy now no longer matter. Shocked awake by his discharge. This is what the poem is about. If anything, it challenges the notion of people becoming institutionalised from serving in military organisations.   Some are afraid to leave; some can’t; some do and find that life is completely different from what they know and expect and they find it difficult to cope.