Jewel and the Baton

[Zlatko Waterman]

Those of you who have glimpsed, occasionally, what I have to say about poetry and literature here on StudioEight, know that when the worship of Charles Bukowski comes up as a subject, I quietly take exception.

Bukowski has his moments, his lines and images, though much of it is re-scrambled Hemingway, who somehow seemed to get the "lost macho" melancholia right the first time, in the 1920's.

So many of Buk's poems seem so empty. As a friend of mine said, "He needs a merciless editor . . ."

I reproduce the sort of thing I mean below.

But Doreen also recently mentioned Jewel Kilcher, in a thread bemoaning the difficulty of publishing one's poems in volumes printed and distributed under the impress of big-time publishers
( such as HarperCollins, who publishes JK . . .).

(Doreen's thread)

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... ght=#29398


Rod McKuen was the idol of the poetry know-nothings of my generation. Perhaps Jewel Kilcher can take up the baton for some future generation. ( see below).







Poetry
it
takes
a lot of

desperation

dissatisfaction

and
disillusion

to
write

a
few
good
poems.

it's not
for
everybody

either to

write
it

or even to

read
it.


--Charles Bukowski






I Guess What I Wanted Was



I guess what I
wanted was
to hear
you'd stay with me always.

I guess what I
wanted was
to see

those hands vowing
never to leave my own.

I guess what
I wanted was
to know
I am not loving in vain.


--Jewel Kilcher