Bukowski Stinks

Burning Shore Reviews, August 2007

By R.K. Wallace

The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Poems
Charles Bukowski
Ecco: New York, 299 Pages

Charles Bukowski, for those who have been living the life of Zarathustra and have only now decided to emerge from their caves, is probably one of America's most famous contemporary writers of poetry and prose. He was also among the world's more prolific writers, so much so that original works are still being published today, thirteen years after his death. The People Look Like Flowers At Last, the most recent of these publications and the last in a series of five poetry collections being released by Ecco, will be the subject of discussion here, or rather, debate.

The reason I use the term "debate" is because much of Bukowski's posthumous publications have come under scrutiny due much-suspected undo editorial influence. How much though, if any, one cannot be sure. But in this particular collection, there does lack much of the voice and energy that can be found even in Bukowski's weaker writing that emerged during his lifetime. Poems such as "pay your rent or get out" raise questions, especially with its word use. An example of this is the use of the word "fag" to describe a pack of cigarettes. Now this a very lower class British word that is seldom, if ever, used by people in the United States, which begs the question why would Bukowski use this word at all? This is only one example of many cases in this book where there is strange word usage that sticks too far out to be ignored, thus raising questions concerning the actual role of the editors. Because of this, I find it hard to conclude whether the book is poor on the basis of editorial manipulation or because of bad writing by Bukowski. I believe that the answer lies somewhere in between these two problems. My guess is that many of these poems were rejects, or at least unfinished poems, the author was tempted to rip up, but in the end were held by his editor. All of this in my mind raises another important question. Has Bukowski been over published?

Before I answer this, let's take a look at a section from the poem "the harder you try."

the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence

Here Bukowski acknowledges his own excesses, but also those of writers in general. This, however, is hardly the only example of this kind of thought found in the man's later work. In several poems from this period he frequently states in one way or another that there are simply far too many writers in the world. Also, he does not hide the fact that some of his own works that have made it into print perhaps would have been better locked away in a drawer. But then he also told the film director Barbet Schroeder that writing a poem is "like taking a shit, you smell it and then flush it away...writing is all about leaving behind as much a stink as possible." Bukowski's last novel, Pulp, generally viewed as one his weaker novels, I actually find to be quite funny and clever. "[D]edicated to bad writing," it's all about a man who can't do a job very well because he is past it. The writing does appear to be bad, bordering on the dated "cheesiness" of the noir detective novels he was obviously aping. But it's all done in good humour. His realisation and admittance of his presumed decline actually merits some admiration. He was not writing with a blind ego and assuming he was still at his peak. He knew that he was past his prime and wrote of this with much subtlety that most people could not catch what he was trying to do. He was thus written off as a man who couldn't do his job anymore, just like the character in the book.

But then why did Bukowski not choose to do a typical semi-autobiographical story to explore this situation? Why choose an almost surreal metaphor of himself? Does the character in Pulp represent not only the demise of a person's skill, but also the death of an occupation itself? Possibly. There are a few poems in The People Look Like Flowers At Last to suggest Bukowski was at least contemplating this, particularly in "our deep sleep," where he says:

our current moderns
leave me quite
unsatisfied

there has been so little to
read
for some time now.
I have been able to

read only the news paper
and the
racing form.

all those books printed,
a million books
printed
and nothing to
read.

a half of a century shot to
shit.

we deserve nothing
and that's what we have
now

However, Bukowski did not suggest that the craft of writing was dying out of lack of interest, but because, as mentioned before, "too many people are at it." The implosion of meaning comes not from any lack of the written word, but rather it's excess. Thus, in this theoretical sense, the meaning of the writer is dead due to the over abundance of his kind. In the poem, "the great debate," Bukowski tackles this topic a little more directly:

but in a world
where even
the disappearance
of the dinosaur
remains a mystery
we should accept
the mysterious fact of
the vanishing poet

and when we accept
that
we are simply
making way for
our own final
invisibility

Or to quote from the beginning of the section of the book from which this poem comes, "the wisdom to quit is all we have left."

A very much ironic statement, which comes back to the argument of whether or not Bukowski had been or still is over published. And my answer is yes, to put it simply, he has been over published - and much of his unnecessarily published work causes the wrong kind of stink.

But he was not an old fool hacking out poetry for no reason and unknowingly adding to an already saturated arena of creative writing, for as he once told an interviewer/fan, "I don't have the answers, it's all of you who come to me demanding them with your questions, get it?"

I get the feeling he knew exactly what he was doing. It's not so much the poems you have to appreciate here, only the reason why they exist in abundance will be enough enlightenment, and a little amusement for those who maybe too quick at first to judge this collection of works as mere bad poetry.

R.K. WALLACE lives between Glasgow, Scotland and Long Beach, California. He plays the guitar in the streets for a living. He writes poetry and prose and can be found in the following various publications: Strangeroad, Barfing Frog, Hagard and Hallo, Censored Poets, St Vitus, Instant Pussy, Showcase Press, decomP, Laura Hird, Lit Chaos, Underground Voices, The Beat, 400 Words, Poetic Diversity, Savage Manners.