Afam Akeh – "Bukowski revisited" 3/4 The first poem in this collection is ‘The Mockingbird’,
about a fatal encounter between that bird of the title and a
cat. It introduces a number of animal poems and images in
this collection, some like ‘Taby Cat’, ‘One for the Old Boy’
and ‘The History of a Tough Motherfucker’, featuring
felines. Other animal related titles and poems include ‘The
Elephants of Vietnam’, ‘White Flag’, ‘Spring Swan’ and
‘Goldfish’. Sometimes, these referenced animals are symbolic
representations of other Bukowski concerns but the poet
really does celebrate many of the animals he has known.
There are also references to western and eastern classical
masters or their work in such poems or titles as ‘Verdi’,
‘1813 – 1883’ (on Wagner), ‘Was Li Po Wrong’ (referring to
the Chinese master), and ‘The Beast’ (borrowing from
Beowulf). The literary practice itself – the creative
process and the literary business – is another important
theme in the work of Bukowski. There are poems registering
his displeasure with the practice of his contemporaries
(‘The Replacements’), applauding the work of some past
master craftsman (‘I Liked Him’, on D. H. Lawrence), and
poems of self criticism (‘About the Pen Conference’ ‘The
Poetry Reading’ and also ‘3.16 and One Half’). But Bukowski
also took the time to raise a poetic toast in celebration of
his continued productivity as a writer at the age of 50
(‘One More Good One’):
to be writing poetry at the age of 50
like a schoolboy,
surely, I must be crazy;
…………………………………..
this is where the action is,
this is the hot horse that
comes in.
there is no grander fort
no better fag
no better woman
‘Destroying Beauty’ and ‘Poetry’ are examples of interesting
short poems in this collection. There are also some
‘make-weight’ poems, surely not among “the best of the best
of Bukowski”? An example is ‘The Young Man on the Bus Stop
Bench’, in which his subject is seen as a portrait of the
poet as a younger man. The language is limpid, prosaic, and
the juxtaposition of the poet’s life with that of the young
man not done with any degree of mastery, but the poem
manages to string a reader along with the promise of its
story. Bukowski identified from his own early interest in
books that reading can also be a voyeuristic act, that
readers can be counted on to stay with tantalizing tales
which regale them with the revealed secrets or denuded
experiences of others. He is aware too that the sense of
expectation heightens if it is believed that the revealed is
from real rather than fictive experiences. So even in an
unfulfilled work, like ‘The Young Man’, he still manages to
arouse reader interest. It can be said of Bukowski that he
was an important twentieth century factor in making
mainstream page poetry accessible and interesting again for
all readers, especially those without formal training in
poetry appreciation. Even at his most ordinary, he manages
to retain his reader, whetting the appetite for more, with
yet another colourful tale rich in surprising imagery,
dealing his ironies and shuffling alternate realities like
some sharp master of the cards. There are unique Bukowskian
images all over his work but the following are examples:
a John F. Kennedy flower knocks upon my door and is
shot through the neck;
the gladiolas gather by the dozens around the tip of
India
dripping into Ceylon;
dozens of oysters read Germain Greer.
(‘Notes Upon the Flaxen Aspect’)
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-sucking:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
(‘Death Wants More Death’)
Bukowski was also noted for bear-baiting, his instinctive
antagonism of official or accepted social and literary
positions, attacking any injustices or hypocrisies he might
identify in these centred positions. But he did not offer
himself as some paragon of virtue – he did the opposite in
fact – and was fairly surrounded by his own unjust treatment
of others, especially some of the women in his life (unless
you see things his way). He was certainly not a poet for the
squeamish, but could it be that he was also less than
fair-minded in his utterances and work, that bigotry was a
feature of his alienation? That is a charge those who accuse
him of sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, fascism and other
kinds of people-prejudice have offered in mostly peripheral
criticism of the poet. These perceptions of a darker
personality beyond the known poet may indeed have their
foundation in fact, but such evidence as may be found in
support of these charges are ultimately incomplete
indicators of what we might think of the poet. Like much
else about the poet, including our evaluation of his work
and place in the canon of twentieth century poetry, there is
usually more complexity, several more sides to the reality,
than the easy damning judgements of some of his accusers
will allow. A fair interpretation of these challenged or
challenging poems and acts of Bukowski as a people-person is
impossible without contextualisation and critical exposure
to those other imaginaries and representations from his work
and legacy that would seem to differently and more
positively define the poet. However, if as already
indicated, only an extended reading of Bukowski will suffice
in this review of Pleasures, his omnibus posthumous
collection, then it seems appropriate that we also engage
this indicated and presumed ‘ugly side’ of the poet.
Though Pleasures excludes ‘The Black Poets’ (p. 52 of the
1972 collection, Mockingbird Wish Me Luck), a racially
charged poem, it does include other work that some may also
consider insensitive or offensive, including ‘The Japanese
Wife’ (p. 63) and ‘The Coloured Birds’ (p. 231). There is
also a significant inclusion of unflattering poems on women,
one of the chief subjects of Bukowski’s poetry. The first
thing to note about ‘The Black Poets’ is that it was written
to express his disgust at what was then a developing and
growing tendency towards a differential criticism of
literary work by race or gender challenged writers, and
writers from other cultural minorities. It is not known that
there was an actual encounter between the poet-narrator and
his black poet visitor/s as in the poem. Bukowski did indeed
lead a full life and a half but it makes critical sense to
conclude that in Bukowskian realism the anecdote is just a
creative device for delivering his imaginative retelling,
and also invention, of experience. If we assume that the
famous poet Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), then a leading
voice of the poetry school known as the Black Arts Movement,
is the character of that name in the poem, then it is safe
to assume that the poetic intent is, as stated earlier, to
critique what Bukowski must have considered separatist and
less excellent tendencies in the cultural reception of
poetry.
Bukowski’s negative view of group-sensitive, identity
criticism was and is still more widely shared than is openly
acknowledged. But it is not an unassailable perspective. As
noted earlier, the poetry universe allows for these kinds of
innovations, inventions and re-inventions, for different –
possibly national or other group – forms, types, styles and
identities. It is not the case that such differences or
deviations from established types are essentially inferior
or mediocre. You can usually measure performance or cultural
value by placing like against like. It is also possible to
measure the relative importance of a stated or known,
possibly widely accepted, cultural position or purpose with
regard to new practice, or at any stage contest accepted
cultural hegemonies and monopolies by seeking to privilege
or de-centre their practices, beliefs, forms or identities.
This is what the Black Arts Movement and gender criticism
were about. It was about mapping and establishing
difference, giving voice to the different. But the
celebration of all-comers, the failure to respect that
selectivity which honours excellence, separating the crop
from the chaff, was never going to be an acceptable part of
such racial(read as ‘national’), gendered or other unique
cultural interpretations and representations of poetic form.
If that was Bukowski’s difficulty, he was right in his
criticism, but it is not clear from the poem that this was
his difficulty. Even in that reductive, Caucasian and
patriarchal exclusivity of Harold Bloom’s “Western canon”,
and its seeming homogeneity, there was difference. A melting
pot of contributory influences and identities can be located
in the development of its considered canonical texts.
Bukowski and those who share his perspective may have failed
to identify and interpret culturally conscious poetry from
African-Americans as a distinct form with its subjective
configuration of otherwise common aesthetic referentials –
the same failure of critical imagination which wholesale
dismissals of his own work may also be guilty of. Without
informed regard to their founding orientations and stated
objectives, there could easily be this same dismissive and
simplistic critical response to the more innovative work in
the centred schools of American poetry. I think, for
example, of the Black Mountain School, particularly the
projective verse of Charles Olson. For, it was not just that
Bukowski dismissed the work of one African American poet, or
a specific group; it was the representative nationalism of
work like that and its related aesthetic choices he would
not validate or even consider. He was not a critic of
national influence in American literature because of his own
weak position as a marginalised writer but he did have his
many admirers so what he said was important. In ‘The Black
Poets’, he would unfortunately further colour his critique
by reverting to stereotypes and caricatures at the beginning
and towards the end of the poem.
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