Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Bukowski was honest about what he thought
about other writers and poets
he saw the world in a very straightforward way
his was the world of a writer that could drink
huge quantities of alcohol

he became well known in the hippie era
his matter of fact manner against the backdrop
of the late sixties culture shift, us hippie kids
thought we were going to change the world
but even though Bukowski disdained the hippies
it's not possible to imagine him not juxtaposed
against the psychedelic frenzy of those times
the experimental sexual freedom
the freaks, protesters, wild eyed innocence,
his poetry filled in the crazy cracks of beatnik lingo
that now had become phrases of the love generation
far out man, because everything was a trip now

I doubt Bukowski ever read Kerouac, he liked Celine's
'Journey to the End of Night' he liked Knut Hamsun too
he did mention Ezra pound, I guess he tried to read Pound
but it's a cinch he did not read the mystics, or about magic
but he did have a keen sense of the moral vacuum
of existence, of what we are born into, just how insane
the mundane life of everyday reality is, yes Hank drank
and listened to classical music on the radio
while his drunk imagination typed until the end of night

but Burroughs and Bukowski will never come back again
the junkie and the drunk, and nobody wants to read
a poet that writes about their psychedelic days like I did

personally I like it all.....honest stories, be they psychedelic or beat, or raw like Bukowski, affect the way I relate to the world.....I always wanted to hear all the stories....I just recently observed among many of my academic friends they tend to always go to their GO TO sources for "truth"...and I feel when you shut out new voices, you're only always getting part of the picture....so sing it loud poet man/woman/other......

I loved Bukowski's Post Office because I worked there 26 years and only a true insider could have written that ( he worked there for a while )....

He also really turned me off....seeing him kick his girlfriend on a video ....wtf ?

humans are so complex

Bukowski was traumatized by the beatings his father gave him, so it's a wonder he became the writer/poet he did, that video captured him in a drunken moment, I'm not always sure why some people liked his writing, I think most people relate to his raw view of things, but it was also very entertaining, a real rare view into a very different personality, not a Hollywood
cartoon character, but the poet that worked at a post office. He always said that he hated doing poetry readings, I was at a reading he did in the 70's because I was a ticket taker, it was a huge reading with a lot of famous poets and local poets, he was with two woman, and I looked over at him, just before he got up to read and he looked very serious, but when he got up to read the large audience became silent.I wonder if he ever had to read before such a large audience again.