Recent content by Paul Sempschi

not the best cover, but still an exciting release.

I must say the 3rd "alternate" cover is my favorite, it's got that blurry-lost-outtake feel that I get off this collection, while remaining hard-as-nails and true to the tone of his cannon. The actual cover truly is a shame, IMHO, though dont hold up production over it or anything!

So did Buk recover those mss.?

I really dont see what was wrong with the German "Ham on Rye", it makes sense. It's a strange painting, any idea who did it?

I would have liked to see an introduction, just to read some unheard anecdotes about Buk. I dont care too much about some editor's literary analysis of the author's poems and his impact on culture but am more curious about how the work came to be, the author's state and the editor's choices. For...

So I finished "Notes...", "Post Office" and hammered through "The Most Beautiful Woman in Town"- which was incredible. The man may be the greatest short story writer since Ring Lardner, at least as unjustly underrated as Mr. Lardner. Each of those stories was such a gem that I would read one and...

Layton was a blowhard, not much there, very boring. Much Leonard Cohen is the Canadian Jim Morrison. Though I like Purdy, Nowlan is where it's at (in Canadian letters). In Canada, no one's gotten as close to the bone as Nowlan (IMHO). Buk was right, the Beats had their moment and the English...

Yeah, I know he played with surrealism but this one really does come out of left field. Were his early stories anything close to being that wild?

I'd chalk it up to the poet's aesthetic. Either he felt that 'drinking' wrecked the rhythm (although it gave it a rhythm), didnt feel the word worked in that stanza or just got tired of looking at the letters D-R-I-N-K-I-N-G. Perhaps he found the word 'drinking' to be too glib or cliched for him...

It's a wonderful, wonderful book. A book of epiphanies, probably the best book ever written. The problem with it is that it rewards rereading. Not just one reading but multiple. It's a book that I myself have been engrossened into for six years now, there's always so much to learn from the...

A high IQ doesnt make you knowledgeable, it just helps you figure things out and comprehend more. Of course the greatness of Western knowledge is how simplistic we can pair down high-brow concepts: Einstein's Special Relativity can be explained using simple division. Knowing how terrible I am...

I dont suppose there's any Tolkien readers out there? He gets a bad rap because he gets thrown into fantasy and science fiction. Given the depth and complexity of his work though, in that it displays an eclectic sense of philology and classic archetypes) I'd deem him more of a neo-classicist, an...

Well there is a Bukowski reference in the underrated cartoon "Mission Hill" where the newly unemployed lead goes out to have a barf-movie marathon. He rented a bunch of films with famous barf scenes and a new one that sounds promising: BARFLY I always chuckle about that one now and then...

No, he was the modern day Hemingway :D Seriously, if you're inspired by Buk to write, you will use his style as a crutch till you grow your own stylistic legs. That's how things work with writers, with good writers, Kerouac ripped off Wolfe and Beckett ripped off Joyce. It's obscene to the...

The whole thing was abuse but it was nothing 'traumatic'. I actually founded it comically pathetic; here's a bloated old man clumsily trying to kick her (really not kicking her that hard = feeble) and bitching that he's going to sick his Jewish lawyer on her, it's just over the top farce. Sure...