Friday, August 09, 2019

Friday Morning Poems.


It was Friday morning and I gazed out of the kitchen window at the dreary scene. It was overcast, windy and raining. “I won’t be going far today”, I thought to myself. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I was greeted by the cheery smile of the post lady. She handed me my post which included a small package.
It contained a cd called Charles Bukowski Reads His Poetry. I made myself a cup of tea and put the cd in the machine. It is a recording made in 1972 at the Telegraph Hill Neighbourhood Centre in San Francisco. This is the first recording I have ever owned of Buk reading his poems. I enjoyed hearing it. Many people might be offended by it. He is obviously drunk, and insults and picks fights with the audience at various stages and keeps belching into the microphone. Some of the subject matter of the poems would outrage a lot of people but not me. As I have said before I like his honesty and his humour. After one listen, a poem called The Shoelace I enjoyed the most. They are all good, Bukowski was never boring. I like his style of writing prose as well. The sentences are short, get straight to the point and no words are wasted. I think Hemingway was an influence on him in his early days which might account for his sparse style. I would like to write like Bukowski.

It cheered me up on this Friday morning. I felt motivated to achieve something today after listening to Buk and hopefully learned something from him as well. I must stop writing anyway, though, really and I think all the time. I have cut some of them out of this piece today. I hope my writing improves soon.




Thursday, August 08, 2019

The Wine Of Youth.


I had a couple of books by Toni Morrison in my shop. One was called A Mercy and the other was Song Of Solomon. They both sold in the last 24 hours. I wish I had read them when I had the chance, but I didn’t. It seems now that she has died everybody wants to read Toni Morrison. That is understandable I suppose. I have sold a few other books recently, by the likes of Graham Greene, Jane Austen, Caitlin Moran & John Le Carre. I have bought some nice ones as well.
Manana Means Heaven arrived the other day. That is the story of the Mexican girl in On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I also bought three books of poems by Charles Bukowski called Burning In Water Drowning In Flame, The People Look Like Flowers At Last and Come On In. I like his poetry because it often tells a story, I can understand what he is saying and also there is humour in his writing. I like the poetry of John Cooper Clarke for the same reasons. A lot of poets go over my head, I can’t understand what they are on about. I think that is because I haven’t been educated to appreciate it. I think poetry is like painting in that respect. I never appreciated Picasso at all, until one night I watched a television programme with David Hockney talking about Picasso’s genius and I started to realise how great he was. You need a teacher in order to understand art, well I do anyway. I like Robert Lowell because we studied his work at school for A Level English. I learned some of his poetry off by heart and can still recite it today almost 50 years later.

I also bought a collection of stories by John Fante called The Wine Of Youth. John Fante has become one of my favourite writers in recent years and I discovered him through Charles Bukowski. He himself found the work of Fante in Los Angeles public library when he picked up one of his books purely by chance. Bukowski said that Fante was his god. He used to visit him towards the end of Fante’s life and played a large part in getting his work which was long forgotten back into print. He was republished by the Black Sparrow Press which was founded by a man called John Martin who sold his collection of rare books in order to publish Bukowski. I think Black Sparrow and City Lights are my favourite American publishers. I even like the texture of the covers of Black Sparrow books and the feel of the paper. It has a nice quality to it.



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