Home » Posts tagged 'poets'

Tag Archives: poets

East Is East and …

Posted on by | Leave a comment

Poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

I like to write about Charles Bukowski, partly because he is completely honest about himself. The following is an excerpt from a 1985 New York Quarterly interview conducted by William Packard. He asked Buk the question “Over the last few decades California has been the residence of many of our most independent voice poets—like Jeffers, Rexroth, Patchen, even Henry Miller. Why is this? What is your attitude towards the East, towards New York?” His answer follows:

Well, there is a little more space out here, the long run up the coast, all that water, a feeling of Mexico and China and Canada, Hollywood, sunburn, starlets turned to prostitutes. I don’t know, really, I guess if your ass is freezing some of the time, it’s harder to be a “voice poet.” Being a voice poet is the big gamble because you’re putting your guts up for view and you’re going to get a lot more reaction than if you’re writing something like your mother’s soul being like a daisy field.

New York, I don’t know. I landed there with $7 and no job and no friends and no occupation except common laborer. I suppose if I had come in from the top instead of the bottom I might have laughed a little more. I stayed three months and the buildings scared the shit out of me and the people scared the shit out of me, and I had done a lot of bumming all over the country under the same conditions but New York City was the Inferno, all the way. The way Woody Allen’s intellectuals suffer in N.Y.C. is a lot different than what happens to my type of people. I never got laid in New York, in fact, the women wouldn’t even speak to me. The only way I ever got laid in New York was to come back three decades later and bring my own with me, a terrible wench, we stayed at the Chelsea, of course.

Introducing Lord Byron

Posted on by

British Poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824)

In that wonderful peak into the lives of two of England’s greatest poets we are indebted to Edward John Trelawny’s Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author for eyewitness accounts. Although Trelawny was not altogether truthful at times, what would we give to have similar accounts of Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Erasmus, however imperfect?

I forgot that great actors when off the stage are dull dogs; and that even the mighty Prospero, without his book and magic mantle, was but an ordinary mortal. At this juncture Shelley joined us; he never laid aside his book and magic mantle; he waved his wand, and Byron, after a faint show of defiance, stood mute; his quick perception of the truth of Shelley’s comments on his poem transfixed him, and Shelley’s earnestness and just criticism held him captive.

I was, however, struck with Byron’s mental vivacity and wonderful memory; he defended himself with a variety of illustrations, precedents, and apt quotations from modern authorities, disputing Shelley’s propositions, not by denying their truth as a whole, but in parts, and the subtle questions he put would have puzzled a less acute reasoner than the one he had to contend with. During this discussion I scanned the Pilgrim [Byron] closely.

In external appearance Byron realised that ideal standard with which imagination adorns genius. He was in the prime of life, thirty-four; of middle height, five feet eight and a half inches; regular features, without a stain or furrow on his pallid skin, his shoulders broad, chest open, body and limbs finely proportioned. His small highly-finished head and curly hair had an airy and graceful appearance from the massiveness and length of his throat: you saw his genius in his eyes and lips. In short, Nature could do little more than she had done for him, both in outward form and in the inward spirit she had given to animate it. But all these rare gifts to his jaundiced imagination only served to make his one personal defeat (lameness) the more apparent, as a flaw is magnified in a diamond, when polished; and he brooded over that blemish as sensitive minds will brood until they magnify a wart into a wen.

His lameness certainly helped to make him sceptical, cynical, and savage. There was no peculiarity in his dress, it was adapted to the climate: a tartan jacket braided—he said it was the Gordon pattern, and that his mother was of that race. A blue velvet cap with a gold band, and very loose nankeen trousers, strapped down so as to cover his feet; his throat was not bare, as represented in drawings.

When to Photograph a Poet

Posted on by

Polish Poet Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021)

The following poem by Adam Zagajewski hits the nail right on the head when describes the very uncinematic and unphotographic life of a poet.

Poets Photographed

Poets photographed,
but never when
they truly see,
poets photographed
against a backdrop of books,
but never in darkness,
never in silence,
at night, in uncertainty,
when they hesitate,
when joy, like phosphorus,
clings to matches.
Poets smiling,
well informed, serene,
Poets photographed
when they’re not poets.
If only we knew
what music is.
If only we understood.