"Poetry Readings" by Charles Bukowski (poetry reading)

Possibly the best place to find information regarding live readings by contemporary poets is www.ablemuse.com. This site is run by and for poets, so you get the dope straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Sturgeon's Law applies, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_Law
(Clicking this link didn't work this morning, but it did if I copied it into my browser
http://tinyurl.com/c2vhtx - use this one instead)

Modern poets are not all as cringe-worthy as Bukowski makes them out to be - he was just having one of his "Hell is other people" fits, I expect. That quotation is from Jean Paul Sartre who wrote a book about his feelings toward the rest of us: it's called "Nausea".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nausea_(novel)
(neither did this link work correctly - YouTube drops the final bracket
http://tinyurl.com/kvgcf7 - here's one that does)

"Poetry Reading" is by the idiosyncratic and wonderful British painter, Beryl Cook.

I got the cartoon from this site, which has some more excellent poetry cartoons:
http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/w/writing_poetry.asp

poetry readings have to be some of the saddest
damned things ever,
the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,
week after week, month after month, year
after year,
getting old together,
reading on to tiny gatherings,
still hoping their genius will be
discovered,
making tapes together, discs together,
sweating for applause
they read basically to and for
each other,
they can't find a New York publisher
or one
within miles,
but they read on and on
in the poetry holes of America,
never daunted,
never considering the possibility that
their talent might be
thin, almost invisible,
they read on and on
before their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,
their wives, their friends, the other poets
and the handful of idiots who have wandered
in
from nowhere.

I am ashamed for them,
I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,
I am ashamed for their lisping egos,
their lack of guts.

if these are our creators,
please, please give me something else:

a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,
a prelim boy in a four rounder,
a jock guiding his horse through along the
rail,
a bartender on last call,
a waitress pouring me a coffee,
a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,
a dog munching a dry bone,
an elephant's fart in a circus tent,
a 6 p.m. freeway crush,
the mailman telling a dirty joke

anything
anything
but
these.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Poetry
• Readings
• Bukowski
• poem

[louisalit]

I do not like this poem, but I like very much SpokenVerse's reading. Thank you so much!

[spurcheck]

your voice elevates all that it touches

[hax0r16]

Your analysis are great. You are doing a great job with poetry, not only Bukowski (who is my favourite, anyway). I'm starting my philological studies in about two months. I'm not an English or American, but I can admire your work. Don't stop, "Bedlam".

[rappamarfil]

the prosody/form/verse/poem will line up in obedience to what the poetatster for a poetry reading wants in exactly inverse proportion to the urgency of that wanting it to . Bukowski has the tiger eating out of his hand in this poem .

[rappamarfil]

if Bukowski had an inmate in a mental institution to rival what this " Poetry Readings " reports , then just to silence the spikenard tedium of the place that person would mark it on somewhere , somehow writing on the wall , so-to-speak , that psychoanalysis is " the analysis of the id by the odd " and then request a private room and a " do not disturb " thing with the flourish "Self-love, my docttor , is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting. "

[greatbookie]

Ginsberg said: If a poem does not entertain, it is nothing but drunken dumbshow.

Dylan Thomas: well... read In my Craft or Sullen Art.

[Idlinfarm]

I love this. I'm going to put it on facebook.

[jeremyshambles]

"lisping egos" is such a great line. Bukowski's words often remind me of oscar wilde,(henry wooton) prince of paradox. cheers from san diego

[5jeanbittersweet]

Sturgeons'law was interesting! I keep waiting to see an Audrey Hepburn lookalike in a beret, jazz walking in black at one of these events..but I'm jaded by Hollywood!

[PlayIt4MeAgainSam]

Bukowski was full of paradoxes. Nice video.