Tuesday 29 January 2008

charles bukowski

is the ideal poet after a weekend's drinking. but which to choose. in the end choices always suggest themselves so the following came from a poem antonia posted, suggesting a landscape far warmer and more pleasant than the one we're currently not enjoying. typically, bukowski views the cicada differently....

cicada

writers love to use the word
'cicada' in a poem.
it makes them believe that
they are there, that they
have done it.
every time i see this word
in a poem, i think, damn
it, haven't the editors
caught on yet?
that it's a con?
a way to milk the game?

and look at me:
here i'm using it:
'cicada.'

well, that means that
this poem will surely get
published.

see?

it works.


was bukowski ever like pagnol?

"...They were no poets. This led me to conclude that I was one, that I had been stupid not to realize it earlier, and that I had to begin my work as early as the following day if I wanted to achieve glory and fortune by the age of twenty. And I imagined myself on a picture taken in a sumptuous study, surrounded by precious books, posing beneath a sculpture of my own bust crowned with a laurel wreath."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

now this is a charming combination, Pagnol, Cicadas & Bukowski. Reminds me of Neil Young, Pocahontas, Marlon Brando and me by the fire. whcih leads to the dead and marlon brando who won;t be by the fire - i saw your comment over there, but i made them all go away for a similar reason to what you have written, no matter what stories one can tell of how many one has seen dying and whether they suffer and whatnot, this still says nothing (or everythign). just wanted to say, not that you take offense or somehting.

swiss said...

yuo'd have towork veryhard to get me to take offense! lol

swiss said...

i have to say i'm liking where your head's at with your recent posts, even the ones i can't understand! keep them coming...

Marion McCready said...

funny, I've always thought that about the word 'rivet'!