{"id":10099,"date":"2011-12-06T17:00:58","date_gmt":"2011-12-06T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/06\/bukowskis-juvenilia-and-mine\/"},"modified":"2011-12-06T17:00:58","modified_gmt":"2011-12-06T17:00:58","slug":"bukowskis-juvenilia-and-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/12\/06\/bukowskis-juvenilia-and-mine\/","title":{"rendered":"Bukowski’s Juvenilia and Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here are the first few lines of Charles Bukowski's one-page late poem "Zero" (You Get So Alone At Times it Just Makes Sense<\/em>, Ecco 2002, p. 104, originally publ. 1986 by Black Sparrow Press):<\/span><\/p>\n

sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go<\/span>
    around and<\/span>
around . . .<\/span>
this will hardly be a night to remember<\/span>
sitting here searching for blackheads on the back of my neck<\/span>
as other men enter the sheets with dolls of flame<\/span>
I look into myself and find perfect emptiness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is an adolescent effort of mine when I was literally an adolescent:<\/span><\/p>\n

tiredly picking my nose <\/span>
listening to the grinding sounds of<\/span>
clocks, air conditioners and refrigerators<\/span>
i can hear it all this night<\/span>
snarfing a fart now and then, tiredly<\/span>
checking beef pies cooking in the oven<\/span>
picking at a jammed-up typewriter<\/span>
in confusion<\/span>
dancing around on featherweight fright flights<\/span>
and tiredly picking<\/span>
picking my nose & my acne<\/span>
and eating it<\/span>
is this any way to run an airline?<\/span><\/p>\n

I'll grant that Bukowski's poem, published when he was around 66, especially if you read the whole of it, is better than mine, which is not saying much.  But there are plenty of common elements: self-indulgence, self-absorption, diasaffection, alienation and disconnectedness.  My excuse is that my adolescent rubbish was written when I was 16.  At 66 that particular excuse lapses.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are the first few lines of Charles Bukowski's one-page late poem "Zero" (You Get So Alone At Times it Just Makes Sense, Ecco 2002, p. 104, originally publ. 1986 by Black Sparrow Press): sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go    around andaround . . .this will hardly be a night to remembersitting … Continue reading “Bukowski’s Juvenilia and Mine”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bukowski","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10099\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}