than I ever have in English classes, Art classes, or other writers knocking upon my door.
Just because men work with the art form, this does not necessarily justify them or purify their gut. For the same reason, priests and dwarfs or legless men and whores are not to be elevated needlessly.
When I call Norse a âproâ I only mean that he is
the right man in the right place
doing it more than properly
and thatâs done so little that itâs enough to make a man cry.
We all exalt the cauliflower-ear belter. Norse. American bum:
dante lived here
& got kicked out
now heâs worshipped
like a saint
Harold Norse: poet:
kick him in the nuts
until he leaps wildly
among the dancing couples
until he falls
unconscious
out of the dream.
Christ, have you ever been in a hospital as much as I have? as much as Norse has? Laugh with us, the bedpan mewk, the Trojan horse.
nurses/stealing my pens/&roses/snakebrained/nurses/with wrong
medicine/they laugh/slamming doors/while fragile old/ladies gasp
for breath/tubes stuck in their throats
Perhaps it is a mistake to give you parts of these poems for if this bit is accepted, you might get these poems in total anyhow; I am simply trying to pinpoint for you how well, how simply, how like his honor old Hotshot Jersey Joe gets it across, like Braddock got it across, coming off the relief rolls, to one fat and cocky Max Baer one night many nights ago. You know. My god:
ah go on
bury your head
in the bug-infested blanket
let the fleas
bounce in yr crotch
there are no
fuhrers of
enlightenment
baby
and heâs right, we take it on the way in or out, sleeping under volcanoes or on park benches, itâs sweet stale shit, this poeming, and it isnât that poeming is asking for sense or a chance or righteousness or $$$; it isnât really that at all.
None of us knows what it is. Itâs like awakening in the morning with a boil on your back and it wonât go away. To ask a Patchenesque donation upon the qualities of our Art would be chickenshitâthere are too many other good men with bad backs or good Art. And some with worse backs, some with Better Art.
But there sure as hell arenât any fuhrers of enlightenment, baby. And sometimes it makes for long evenings, sharp razors, accidents while cleaning shotguns.
Good writing, without fucking relent, is nothing but g.d. trying to bust through a wall of steel, and we are just not going to make it. But when I see the fade-outs, the flake-outs, the sell-outs, the chicken-livered punks of our age sucking it up, itâs good to see the old hard headâthe pro, Jersey Joe, still bumming the European sideroads, missing the ski meets, the Olympic games, the rich sag-tit balloon-head broads, and still hammering hammering.
the word.
I am listening to something by Wagner tonight over the radio, which is all right, and my 20-month-old daughter is asleep in the other roomâthe woman left her here while she went to some kind of Trotskyite meeting. And my crazy drawings are all over the walls and I am not even drunk yet. So I guess I can safely say,
old Pro Norse
I think that with 5 or 6 less of you
I might not have made it this
long.
man o man, thatâs enough.
âCharles Bukowski
Los Angeles, 1966
Reviews of Allen Ginsberg/Louis Zukofsky
Empty Mirror . Early poems by Allen Ginsberg/Totem Corinth Books/17 W. 8th St./New York/N.Y./10011/$1.25
It is not easy being Allen Ginsberg. Nor is it easy to review him. For in spite of his romantically-avowed homosexualism, we still subconsciously look up and expect top performance. The favorite parlor games of little magazine freaks (and big magazine freaks) is to knock Allen Ginsberg, and Mailer and Albee and Capote and and andâI know. I do it myself. Imagine, for instance, that these early poems had been written by somebody called Harry Wedge . Iâd immediately have myself a new culture hero. But since they were written by
Just because men work with the art form, this does not necessarily justify them or purify their gut. For the same reason, priests and dwarfs or legless men and whores are not to be elevated needlessly.
When I call Norse a âproâ I only mean that he is
the right man in the right place
doing it more than properly
and thatâs done so little that itâs enough to make a man cry.
We all exalt the cauliflower-ear belter. Norse. American bum:
dante lived here
& got kicked out
now heâs worshipped
like a saint
Harold Norse: poet:
kick him in the nuts
until he leaps wildly
among the dancing couples
until he falls
unconscious
out of the dream.
Christ, have you ever been in a hospital as much as I have? as much as Norse has? Laugh with us, the bedpan mewk, the Trojan horse.
nurses/stealing my pens/&roses/snakebrained/nurses/with wrong
medicine/they laugh/slamming doors/while fragile old/ladies gasp
for breath/tubes stuck in their throats
Perhaps it is a mistake to give you parts of these poems for if this bit is accepted, you might get these poems in total anyhow; I am simply trying to pinpoint for you how well, how simply, how like his honor old Hotshot Jersey Joe gets it across, like Braddock got it across, coming off the relief rolls, to one fat and cocky Max Baer one night many nights ago. You know. My god:
ah go on
bury your head
in the bug-infested blanket
let the fleas
bounce in yr crotch
there are no
fuhrers of
enlightenment
baby
and heâs right, we take it on the way in or out, sleeping under volcanoes or on park benches, itâs sweet stale shit, this poeming, and it isnât that poeming is asking for sense or a chance or righteousness or $$$; it isnât really that at all.
None of us knows what it is. Itâs like awakening in the morning with a boil on your back and it wonât go away. To ask a Patchenesque donation upon the qualities of our Art would be chickenshitâthere are too many other good men with bad backs or good Art. And some with worse backs, some with Better Art.
But there sure as hell arenât any fuhrers of enlightenment, baby. And sometimes it makes for long evenings, sharp razors, accidents while cleaning shotguns.
Good writing, without fucking relent, is nothing but g.d. trying to bust through a wall of steel, and we are just not going to make it. But when I see the fade-outs, the flake-outs, the sell-outs, the chicken-livered punks of our age sucking it up, itâs good to see the old hard headâthe pro, Jersey Joe, still bumming the European sideroads, missing the ski meets, the Olympic games, the rich sag-tit balloon-head broads, and still hammering hammering.
the word.
I am listening to something by Wagner tonight over the radio, which is all right, and my 20-month-old daughter is asleep in the other roomâthe woman left her here while she went to some kind of Trotskyite meeting. And my crazy drawings are all over the walls and I am not even drunk yet. So I guess I can safely say,
old Pro Norse
I think that with 5 or 6 less of you
I might not have made it this
long.
man o man, thatâs enough.
âCharles Bukowski
Los Angeles, 1966
Reviews of Allen Ginsberg/Louis Zukofsky
Empty Mirror . Early poems by Allen Ginsberg/Totem Corinth Books/17 W. 8th St./New York/N.Y./10011/$1.25
It is not easy being Allen Ginsberg. Nor is it easy to review him. For in spite of his romantically-avowed homosexualism, we still subconsciously look up and expect top performance. The favorite parlor games of little magazine freaks (and big magazine freaks) is to knock Allen Ginsberg, and Mailer and Albee and Capote and and andâI know. I do it myself. Imagine, for instance, that these early poems had been written by somebody called Harry Wedge . Iâd immediately have myself a new culture hero. But since they were written by
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