breathing bukowski
by dirk velvet
he used the smallest words
he could find
to
tell his
tales
he knew that
the large ones
could get
stuck
going in
and
never
come
out
he knew
what we all
needed
to live
to
breathe
in
and
out
SOURCE: “breathing bukowski” by dirk velvet appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology, available at Amazon.com.
IMAGE: “Charles Bukowski” by Christopher R. Adams, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
OLD MAN IN THE RAIN
by Michael O’Brien
Got a copy of Bukowski
from the library.
Nice, hard
cover edition; nicer than any of the ones
I’d ever shelled out cash
for.
Just noticed that the red dye
from the binding
has bled out a bit
onto the inside
of the dust jacket.
Makes me imagine that somebody
along the line
was reading in the rain.
Not bad, old
man,
not bad.
Still there for us
when we got no place
to hide.
SOURCE: “Old Man in the Rain” by Michael O’Brien appears in appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology – a collection of poetry, short stories, essays, interviews, photography, and art from authors and artists around the world — available at Amazon.com.
ART: “Charles Bukowski portrait, 1994″ by RinaldoZoontjes
THE OLD MASTER
by Adrian Manning
I sit at my old typer, at a desk
in my room.
above me is a shelf full of books
by a writer called Bukowski.
I read the titles and think to myself
if I could only come up with one line
like one of those titles
I could really have something.
there are many books and magazines,
I have not counted them,
and there are possibly more poems in them
than an army of men could produce
and they are mostly very good and
if not very good they are good.
I wish the words were like bees
humming around my head in a storm
of vibrant movement. I could possibly
catch some of them and nail them down
with a Bukowski book.
he sits in a photo, on one shelf,
in his later years, the hard work behind him,
one arm resting on his chair, the other
raised to the temple of his head
and he looks thoroughly unimpressed.
he’s telling me, work it boy, gotta keep going,
you’re nowhere near yet.
I look up at the photo
and tell him you’re right,
you son of a bitch,
you were always right.
SOURCE: “The Old Master” and other poetry about Charles Bukowski by Adrian Manning appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology – a collection of poetry, short stories, essays, interviews, photography, and art from authors and artists around the world — available at Amazon.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adrian Manning writes from Leicester, England. His poetry and articles have appeared in numerous chapbooks, magazines and on-line sites around the world. He is also the editor of Concrete Meat Press and a massive fan and collector of works by Charles Bukowski.
Cover art: Mark Erickson and Birgit Zartl
Noir fiction master Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago on July 23, 1888 and spent much of his childhood living in his divorced mother’s native England. He moved to Los Angeles in 1913 — and remained forever identified with the city, thanks to his short stories and novels where Los Angeles plays a central role.
Chandler was 51 years old when his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. He had spent many years as an executive in the oil business and, when he lost his job in the early 1930s (during the Depression, no less), decided to reinvent himself as a crime fiction writer.
After figuring out the formula to the pulp detective stories, Chandler submitted his twist on the genre to the popular magazines of the day — most notably Black Mask, where his first published work appeared in 1933. Of this experience, he later wrote: “I spent five months on an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.”
During the 1940s, Chandler worked for a brief period as a Hollywood screenwriter — his most notable contribution as cowriter with Billy Wilder on the film noir masterwork Double Indemnity (1944), which earned the two men Academy Award nominations.
He spent his final years in La Jolla, California, just north of San Diego, and passed away in 1959.
BOTTOM LINE: Chandler turned something commonplace (pulp fiction) into something extraordinary — bringing style, originality, and unforgettable prose to crime sagas and turning them into high art.
Illustration by Scott Laumann, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Used by permission). Visit Scott’s website here. I love Scott’s illustration because it sets Chandler in his free-ranging Southern California milieu, yet the formally attired writer remains detached, distanced — as if tilting his head to get a perspective on the bleached out, gritty place he called home for most of his life.
Noir fiction master Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago on July 23, 1888 and spent much of his childhood living in his divorced mother’s native England. He moved to Los Angeles in 1913 — and remained forever identified with the city, thanks to his short stories and novels where Los Angeles plays a central role.
Chandler was 51 years old when his first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. He had spent many years as an executive in the oil business and, when he lost his job in the early 1930s (during the Depression, no less), decided to reinvent himself as a crime fiction writer.
After figuring out the formula to the pulp detective stories, Chandler submitted his twist on the genre to the popular magazines of the day — most notably Black Mask, where his first published work appeared in 1933. Of this experience, he later wrote: “I spent five months on an 18,000 word novelette and sold it for $180. After that I never looked back, although I had a good many uneasy periods looking forward.”
During the 1940s, Chandler worked for a brief period as a Hollywood screenwriter — his most notable contribution as cowriter with Billy Wilder on the film noir masterwork Double Indemnity (1944), which earned the two men Academy Award nominations.
He spent his final years in La Jolla, California, just north of San Diego, and passed away in 1959.
BOTTOM LINE: Chandler turned something commonplace (pulp fiction) into something extraordinary — bringing style, originality, and unforgettable prose to crime sagas and turning them into high art.
Illustration by Scott Laumann, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED (Used by permission). Visit Scott’s website here. I love Scott’s illustration because it sets Chandler in his free-ranging Southern California milieu, yet the formally attired writer remains detached, distanced — as if tilting his head to get a perspective on the bleached out, gritty place he called home for most of his life.
LOS ANGELES NOTEBOOK (Excerpt)
Essay by Joan Didion
It is three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon and 105 degrees and the air so thick with smog that the dusty palm trees loom up with a sudden and rather attractive mystery. I have been playing in the sprinklers with the baby and I get in the car and go to Ralphs Market on the corner of Sunset and Fuller wearing an old bikini bathing suit. This is not a very good thing to wear to the market but neither is it, at Ralphs on the corner of Sunset and Fuller, an unusual costume. Nonetheless a large woman in a cotton muumuu jams her cart into mine at the butcher counter. “What a thing to wear to the market,” she says in a loud but strangled voice. Everyone looks the other way and I study a plastic package of rib lamb chops and she repeats it. She follows me all over the store, to the Junior Foods, to the Dairy Products, to the Mexican Delicacies, jamming my cart whenever she can. Her husband plucks at her sleeve. As I leave the checkout counter, she raises her voice one last time: “What a thing to wear to Ralphs,” she says.
“Los Angeles Notebook” by Joan Didion is found in her collection of essays Slouching Toward Bethlehem, available at Amazon.com.
contemporary literature, one (excerpt)
by Charles Bukowski
…I saw some newspapers
on the floor
I was out of writing
paper
had long ago hocked
my typewriter
I noticed that
each page of the
newspaper had a wide white
margin around the
edge
I had a pencil
stub
I picked up a
newspaper and with
the pencil stub
I began to write words
on the edge
sitting in the doorway
freezing in the moonlight
so that I could
see
I wrote in pencil
on all the edges
of all the newspapers
in that shack…
Illustration: “Charles Bukowski” by Jeremy Hara (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED). If you aren’t familiar with Jeremy Hara’s ouevre, he draws on U.S. currency — and has created clever portraits of iconic figures in American arts and letters, including Andy Warhol, R. Crumb, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mark Twain. For more about Jeremy Hara, visit his blog.
Note: Find “contemporary literature, one” in Charles Bukowski‘s Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981), a collection of poetry he dedicated to his writing idol John Fante.
DEFINING THE MAGIC
Poem by Charles Bukowski
a good poem is like a cold beer
when you need it,
a good poem is a hot turkey
sandwich when you’re hungry,
a good poem is a gun when
the mob corners you,
a good poem is something that
allows you to walk through the streets of
death,
a good poem can make death melt like
hot butter,
a good poem can frame agony and
hang it on a wall,
a good poem can let your feet touch
China,
a good poem can make a broken mind
fly,
a good poem can let you shake hands
with Mozart,
a good poem can let you shoot craps
with the devil
and win,
a good poem can do almost anything,
and most important
a good poem knows when to
stop.
Painting: “Hollyhock Pink with Pedernal,” 1937 by Georgia O’Keeffe, Milwaukee Museum of Art
Note: “Defining the Magic” is included in Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories by Charles Bukowski, available at Amazon.com.
breathing bukowski
by dirk velvet
he used the smallest words
he could find
to
tell his
tales
he knew that
the large ones
could get
stuck
going in
and
never
come
out
he knew
what we all
needed
to live
to
breathe
in
and
out
…”breathing bukowski” by dirk velvet appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology, available at Amazon.com.
Portrait of Charles Bukowski by Christopher R. Adams, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, is featured in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology.
THE OLD MASTER
by Adrian Manning
I sit at my old typer, at a desk
in my room.
above me is a shelf full of books
by a writer called Bukowski.
I read the titles and think to myself
if I could only come up with one line
like one of those titles
I could really have something.
there are many books and magazines,
I have not counted them,
and there are possibly more poems in them
than an army of men could produce
and they are mostly very good and
if not very good they are good.
I wish the words were like bees
humming around my head in a storm
of vibrant movement. I could possibly
catch some of them and nail them down
with a Bukowski book.
he sits in a photo, on one shelf,
in his later years, the hard work behind him,
one arm resting on his chair, the other
raised to the temple of his head
and he looks thoroughly unimpressed.
he’s telling me, work it boy, gotta keep going,
you’re nowhere near yet.
I look up at the photo
and tell him you’re right,
you son of a bitch,
you were always right.
“The Old Master” and other poetry about Charles Bukowski by Adrian Manning appears in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology – a collection of poetry, short stories, essays, interviews, photography, and art from authors and artists around the world — available at Amazon.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adrian Manning writes from Leicester, England. His poetry and articles have appeared in numerous chapbooks, magazines and on-line sites around the world. He is also the editor of Concrete Meat Press and a massive fan and collector of works by Charles Bukowski.
Cover art: Mark Erickson and Birgit Zartl
Silver Birch Press 