Tuesday, September 11, 2007

What A Writer by Charles Bukowski

© Gottfried Helnwein


What A Writer
Charles Bukowski

what i liked about e.e. cummings
was that he cut away from
the holiness of the
word
and with charm
and gamble
gave us lines
that sliced through the
dung.

how it was needed!
how we were withering
away
in the old
tired
manner.

of course, then came all
the e.e. cummings
copyists.
they copied him then
as the others had
copied Keats, Shelly,
Swinburne, Byron, et
al.

but there was only
one
e.e. cummings.
of course.

one sun.

one moon.


E. E. Cumming and Charles Bukowski on one page. Now that´s a page for me and my husband. Usually I hear from writers/poets that others aren´t as good as themselves. It´s nice to see an appreciating Charles Bukowski too (one sun, one moon, one e. e. cummings, one charles bukowski). But then I wasn´t really surprised that Bukowski surprised me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanx for this nice piece. I like it when a real poet writes with utter respect about a colleague.

And yes - it might be a rare thing among writers and poets nowadays to show admiration for the work of others. But it seems to be a rather new development and might be due to the fact that a lot of people write and don't read and that it has become a virtue to destroy rather than to adopt or develop what others started.

On the other hand you could and can always find authors who write sincerely about their "teachers" or friends sharing the profession. And often you will find that when there is room for respect there is also the opportunity of real own genuine works.

Kerstin Klein said...

"But it seems to be a rather new development and might be due to the fact that a lot of people write and don't read and that it has become a virtue to destroy rather than to adopt or develop what others started."

I guess you are right about that.