Beerspit Night and Cursing

Charles Bukowski

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061873515
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Letters
• Index: Literature

Unmasks the tough, street-smart persona of Charles Bukowski—America's "Ultimate Outsider"

• Amazing letters filled with passionate, literary, and personal observation
• Insights into the author of Tales of Ordinary Madness, Notes of a Dirty Old Man, and Run with the Hunted
• Insights into Sheri Martinelli: the protege of Anais Nin, an accomplished painter, and the mistress of Ezra Pound Charels Bukowski's persona as the Dirty Old Man of American Literature is just that: a persona, a mask beneath which there was a man better read and more cultured than most people realize.

Sheri Martinelli was one of the favored few for whom Bukowski dropped the mask and engaged in serious discussion of literature and art, and for that reason the discovery and publication of his letters to her give us a more complete picture of this complicated man.

Appendix 1

Martinelli’s review of A Signature of Charles Bukowski

[This appeared in A&P #5 (January 1961) immediately following Clarence Major’s review of Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail and three other books. Major’s subsequent review, promised in the first paragraph, never appeared.]

 

Targets #4—A Signature of Charles Bukowski (arrived too late to airmail to Mr. Major so the typist must do it & she is not going to “cock” Mr. Bukowski “up with kisses.” As a matter of fact she is reviewing one poem only & the rest will be reviewed by Mr. Major next issue of the Anagogic & Paideumic Review).

Page 19: Horse on Fire wherein Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Ezra Pound saying:

“one of the greatest love poems ever written”

He did NOT say that; he said “AMONG the best love poems in the language”

Mr. Bukowski has Mr. Pound described:

“many kinds of traitors of which the political are the least.”

Mr. Pound was not guilty of any political treason. Mr. Pound’s own statement:

“W H A T I WD HAVE BEEN GUILTY OF IF I HAD NOT SPOKEN”

(Of Misprision of Treason/European ’59)

covers his conduct.

It was a grim jest to call Mr. Pound a “traitor” & it is a traitorous act to release him in the care of his wife, a British lady, however correct she may be & of high class & the best dressed lady in the world (I mean the tie dots matching the hat feather & glove stripe—that degree of knowing. Whispering in the artist’s ear: “that lipstick’s the WRONG colour for that dress”) but Ezra is an American & he ought to be free to come to us if he wants & he cannot because it needs his wife to bring him & she’s “been here” & that was enough for her.

We’d need reform ourselves overnight to be good enough for a lady who wore a black silk top-coat/ a river-mist grey knit fez-hat glittering with silver sequins/ a jewel’d ring matching the colour of her strip’d scarf & grey’d tone’d stockings of silk matching her grey’d tone’d silk gloves/ a scarf pin whose colour fit the colour of her eyes & underneath a dress of forest green to match her shoes that she’s put black narrow ribands under th arch & tied criss-cross up her ankles, ballet fashion…on the hottest day of the hottest town in the midi—the swamptown heat of Washington D.C. traveling to St. Liz on a bus full of half-naked red-skins—Mrs. Dorothy Shakespear Pound was a miracle of civilisation & all by herself; without writing any Cantos “you’ve no idea how these tawrsome paradises bowre me” she could have raised our general cultural level & uplifted our society from “it’s goddamn’d dry on these rocks” [Canto 93/643] on toward a proper civilisation.

The look of pain in Allen Ginsberg’s eyes when the typist said: “he read me Dante translating as he went along & Guido the same & Ovid’s Metamorphosis and his own Cantos starting from XX to spare me Hell”…Allen needs to have his Dante read to him. We all need him: Mr. Major needs him:

“all of us who do not know what it means to ever have had a Guru or a means to go into ourselves quietly & find the beautiful boundless area of what we call Heaven—we find Hell every time.”

What good did it do to release him from St. Liz & sign him over to our British cousins?

A recording of an artist reading his poetry is not it. That is for the mass mind & ALL they got; but any who are of the caste of artists—the muse worshippers ought to stand in the Presence of the Throne & be Knighted. There is a power; there is a living reality & you aint going to get it from any recording of a human voice—the monkey mind is forever concerned with mass production.

The typist has uncovered evidence of enough intelligence alive & at work in the U.S. to warrant saying: there are men here who are men in their own right & they shd be in the presence of the living reality of a Dante walking the earth. They are being cheated of their right to equality—what good does it do to make the grocer’s clerk equal when our best men must resort to plastic recordings of something that is theirs by right of proximity—our best red-skin poets forced down to the factory level. It is a political & ethical crime to cheat a boy of sensitivity & intelligence as Peter Orlofsky of his cultural heritage as a fellow republican & citizen of a free nation. Poor Pete, beautiful of mind & body & ignorant as a goldfish—his inborn love of arts & letters is pitiful in its poverty but persistent beauty: “Sheri, today I was at Sutro Park & I saw a ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean’” & “wheredja get th’ blues?” (forget-me-nots plucked in Sutro Park for Diana striding white in moon ray) How are we EVER going to reach the level of Europe & the Orient? Our one international success has been sold into slavery. O! Go down Moses & pull our Ezra up so’s Pete can sing: “Leafdi Diana, leove Diana, Heye Diana…” [Canto 91/632-33] & Michael Grieg can test his dry, double distill’d wit upon the master of wit & Rob’t Stock can see first-hand the out-go-er sea-farer & know its likeness to the in-go-er sea-rougher…remove the eyes of pain from Allen Ginsberg—hasn’t he had ENOUGH Hell?

O Ezra who art in Italy—tho’ scandalized be thy name—our renaissance is come & thy word got through in the United States as it did in Europe—Give us this day our daily Ezra & fo’give him his sins as we forgive those who sin’d agin’ him & o let Ezra lead us into Ovid’s temptations & deliver us into delushus evils of the flesh for Pete Orlofsky’s sake & Ez we do have a Kingdom of Kulch & Ez we do have a Power of sorts & if we are let we’ll bring glory—O National Treasure which cannot be changed on th’ market…so long’s we exist as a nation…ah! men! (wot bug jobs they are.)

Mr. Bukowski’s been told but Mr. Bukowski will persist in his un-doing—that sort of art work on cover, to a very busy person doing research up there ahead of us in the 21st onward centuries, will signify to our busy future scholar that Mr. Bukowski’s book aint worth readin’ because its Art Work’ll serve as a sign post saying: LATE LATE VICTORIAN ERA SCHOOL OF PICKARSSS-O & the ugly kind of drawing will disqualify Mr. Bukowski’s poetry from being read by those who come after us & Mr. Bukowski HAS GOT A SUBJECT MATTER: A POINT OF VIEW HOWEVER DOWNWARD IT IS CAST: A POINT OF PERCEPTION & WORDS OF MULTI-COLOR THAT HE USES TO INDICATE THE INNER SPACE WHERE THE MOON REALLY IS. IF Mr. Ezra Pound had read his Charles Bukowski he would NOT have EVER attempted to “save th’ United State of Murka.”

The printing of Targets is elegant & its only real art work. Egg-shell white with black print is the cover/ inside cover is sea-foam white & a half-page handsomely prints Mr. Bukowski’s signature so we may judge his character in his brush strokes. The half-page colour is brown-egg-shell tan & sits on the inner pages whose colour is gold diluted to its thinnest yellow & little decorations of strange nature exist on each page.

Mr. Bukowski: “Write it
        so’z a man on th’ West Coast a
        Africa could
        understand ut”;

The “man on the West Coast of Africa” looking at his English-African Dictionary trying to translate—wd want to know WHAT MEANS “DECORATIONS OF STRANGE” etc—well, the first one is a goat with eyes under his horn’s root & a tongue like a mechanical part from an automobile carburator & polka dots under his eyes & ears like Babylonian wedge marks/ his horns are like a clown’s hat & his fur has lightening crossing it & he’s big’s a U.S. 25¢ piece of silver. A silly-strange but effective decoration/ I mean when the Aztecs use this kind of fantastic animal it hath an arcane meaning but this arcane animal is meaningless in any religious or artistic sense & is a silly but effective dec.

The little horse used on page with Horse on Fire is not a serious horse & I will not take him seriously/ Mr. Bukowski is warning Mr. Pound that:

“self appraisal of poetry & love has proved more fools than rebels”

which is harsh but correct with this exception: IF WE CANNOT EVALUATE OUR OWN SELVES’ WORTH WHO IN THE HELL IS GOING TO DO IT WHILST WE WALK THIS EARTH?

DOES MR. BUKOWSKI WANT MR. POUND TO WAIT SEVERAL AGES TO HEAR SOME DRY BONE UP THERE SAY WHAT MR. HOT BLOOD RIGHT NOW KNOWS TO BE TRUE? THAT IT IS “AMONG THE BEST LOVE POEMS IN THE LANGUAGE” (CANTO 90)

MR. POUND HAS THE MAP OF LOVE POETRY INSIDE HIS HEAD & KNOWS IMMEDIATELY WHERE A LOVE POEM STANDS IN RELATION TO THE RACE OF LOVE POETRY.

Mr. Bukowski says: “and he proceeded to write the Cantos full of dead languages…”

Doesn’t Mr. Bukowski understand that “Our Man on the West Coast of Africa” hath a love of culture? Cannot Mr. Bukowski imagine him seated in the boring heat & dither calmly translating the Cantos from his various dictionaries & when he gets to the Egyptian hieroglyphics of Kati’s that the princess Ra Set got into the book—Our Man will be caused to write a letter to an European Egyptologist or mayhap an American Egyptologist & peace on earth, at least among the cultured, shall be the rule of the day. Language is important. The Hebrew language kept the Jews together as a clan more than any one MAN could ever do; men come & go but the symbol is eternal. Dr. Lovell says the “Torah” of the Jews was also the “Tara” of the Irish. Mr. E. P. Walker asks “what does the word ‘tara’ mean to a contemporary of the Irishry?”

It is a SOUND & it brings a rush of emotion; wild battle cries & hilaritas of dealing directly with one’s foes; when the Irishry cannot die fighting & wildly singing or laughing…then it is their proud disdain of the “dog’s life” that they’ll die drinking & be in their imagined world of wild strange sounds like “TARA” & I do hope that answers Mr. Walker’s question.

Mr. Bukowski wd rather Mr. Pound write about “straight things in bird-light the terror of a mouse…” I have NO idea what Our Man on the West Coast of Africa wd translate that as because we have no “bird light” far’s I know. Of course “mouse terror” is world-wide/ This is a good place as any to record: the cat plays with the mouse because he forces his captured victim to teach him more about how to catch other mice/ the female wd do her cause well to play with the male like that/ free him & see which way he runs & then she’d know better how to catch another male—of course they CAN run faster/ there’s a danger!

Mr. Bukowski says: “the terror of a mouse reaches dormitory levels”

One has no idea what that signifies here OR on the West Coast of Africa.

Mr. Bukowski records: “and reading Canto 90 he put the paper down Ez did (both their eyes were wet)”

Canto 90 when properly read hath power to wet the eye from the terrible blast of its heated force rising upward. The Cantos will be more intelligible to Our man than Mr. Bukowski’s poem on the subject.

The back drawing on the cover is the female form divine seen through a pair of eyes that wobbled & done by a pair of hands that shook. The drawing a rivoting machine wd make cd it draw. NYC hog-wash: “but don’t you think Botticelli is TOO beautiful?” No, one did NOT but one does think this set of drawings on Bukowski’s book are TOO UGLY & that is much worse than being too beautiful. Those collecting CONTEMPORARY AMERICANA are advised to snatch up this book—the price is 50¢ & one orders them from EDITORS/TARGET: Casabuelo, Sandia Park/N.M. or Bukowski: 1623 N. Mariposa Ave/Los Angeles 27/Calif.

SM

Appendix 2

Bukowski’s Co...