Database updated

mjp

mjp

Founding member
They are. The Jeffers manuscript is #869, the latest one I added is #997. That means Jeffers has been in there for some time.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
I thought it was him, in an alternate universe or something. I just liked that the poem shot the poet through the head with a Luger, then threw his typewriter into the ocean ("there goes the inheritance"). It's absurd, and I like those.
 
hank solo

hank solo

Just practicin' steps and keepin' outta the fights
Moderator
Founding member
I thought it was a fictional Chinaski poem too, but then I wondered. Is there any hint of Steve Richmond in there? He lived near the sea right? Had some sort of inheritance? Okay, I don't know anything about him. Anyone else?
 
marina del rey

marina del rey

I assumed it was Richmond - lived in near the ocean, had an inheritance, shacked up with a steady stream of women, wrote a lot of poems about a limited subject matter.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Who are you, capt. co? You seem to be a human cross-reference machine. Which is a good thing in my book.

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The problem with cross-referencing these things as I add them is I look for what I think is a unique word or phrase in the manuscript and search the text of all the poetry books to see if it pops up. The problem is, since Mr. Martin felt compelled to RAPE so much of the work in the posthumous volumes, I'm always afraid that I'll miss some, and this is a good example of that.

In this case, looking at the manuscript, if you search for something that seems unique - like "5 decades" - you come up with no match, because the poem was changed in the collection to read "6 decades."

So there may be a few more that are "uncollected" in the database, but were actually collected in the posthumous books. But then the posthumous books are such heavily altered shit that I hardly consider them to be Bukowski books at this point.

You know, not that I feel strongly about it or anything.
 
capt.co

capt.co

regarding the manuscipt section:
1985:
'you must remember that each day...' was collected as 'remember this' in sifting...
'the albums' was collected as 'albums' in the night torn mad..'.
'loll' was collected as 'please' in the flash of...
1986:
'the other day I saw a man reading...' was collected as 'Democracy' also in flash...

they have all been "modified", of course, especially the last one was so much better in it's original form.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
All updated, my captain. And as you point out, all modified.

As the carnage continues to mount.
 
capt.co

capt.co

71:
'I met this woman' was collected as 'an unusual woman' in open all night.
75:
'46 and 9/10's' was collected as '$1.25 a gallon' in the flash of...
90:
'defect' was collected as 'have we come to this?' in come on in!

btw, what happened to all the poems that used to be in the 'undated' section?
have they been moved to whatever year they were written? and in that case, how did you find out when they weren't dated?
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
They were moved to specific years based mainly on typewriter comparisons, or using information about when they were originally submitted to publishers.

They won't all be correct, but I'd wager that none are more than a year off one way or another.

typewriters.png
 
capt.co

capt.co

1975's 'the big score' was collected as 'on the continent'
in love is a dog from hell.
for once the rewrite is better, maybe because the writer
was still very much alive.
 
capt.co

capt.co

1975 manuscripts:
'a goodbye' was collected as 'goodbye, my love'
in the people look like flowers at last

'in this place now' was collected as 'in this city now'
in what matters most...

btw, isn't it a little confusing that the manuscripts collected under a different title also have a 'red dot'?
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
capt.co said:
btw, isn't it a little confusing that the manuscripts collected under a different title also have a 'red dot'?
Click to expand...
They shouldn't be. But that other site, the one with the manuscripts, that list doesn't automatically update when the database is updated. So a lot of those could be corrected in the database, but not reflected on that list.

Also, I might miss some. When you say, "'a goodbye' was collected as 'goodbye, my love' in the people look like flowers at last" it sounds very simple to fix, but the reality is I have to add entries to four different database tables, insert into another, and then update the the table with the original work title to indicate that it is indeed collected. It's the last part I might miss sometimes.

A smart man would take some time to write a script to do all that, but I'm not that smart.

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For you database nerds out there, there are 11 tables used in the site database, consisting of 55 columns. For comparison, the old database had one table with about 10 columns. So while things are more complex now, they are much (much) better and the results are more reliable and infinitely flexible.

bukdb.png
 
capt.co

capt.co

I see. I thought that you would just update information to a certain poem in one place, and then it would automatically apply to all the data about that poem.

are you gonna update the post-1989 poems at some point? I have some manuscripts from 1990-93 (from the net) that are not in the manuscript section, but maybe you already have them.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
capt.co said:
I see. I thought that you would just update information to a certain poem in one place, and then it would automatically apply to all the data about that poem.
Click to expand...
I have dreams of such a system, yes. But if you think about the relationships between the work itself and the multitude of other things that can be attached to that work (books, magazines, manuscripts, broadsides, forum links, etc.), and the other works it can be directly related to (alternate titles, versions, etc.)...you can see that multiple points of reference are needed.

It all boils down to a WorkID, which is a number assigned to a unique title. But after that you fall down a rabbit hole of related data, most of which isn't easily altered or updated.

The database is unique and I dare say that no one could replicate it - at least not live on a web site - so we kind of have to live with its shortcomings (myself being shortcoming #1).

Though I am always open to improvements. Most of the improvements have been spawned by things people asked for here in the forum.

If you send me the title of the 90-93 manuscripts I can check to see if I have them.
 
capt.co

capt.co

completely forgot about this. will try to remember to send them soon.

1978:
'crazy' was collected as 'insanity'
in what matters most is how well you walk...

I had also made some notes that
'game day' from 1974 was collected as 'the fight game'
in night torn mad
and that 'new york in hell' was collected as 'bewitched in new york'
but now I can't find these poems in the manuscript section?!

were they moved/deleted? or am I going crazy? (probably)
 
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