Did Bukowski have periods?
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I'm doing some academic research on jogging. I've done enough research on masturbation.
But don't forget to give your sources in the footnotes, or it isn't academic.
If people enjoy learning about that stuff, great. But the sad truth is that the American education system has become yet another racket. University presidents issue statements declaring how their tight budgets demand increases in tuition while they pay million dollar salaries to football coaches. Higher education is now a daycare for tomorrow's service economy employees rather than a place where adults can go to learn.
/rant
So what are you doing on here then champ? (except having a pop at everyone.) It's a forum, that's what people do, come on and give their opinions. If you're such a Bukowski scholar and we're all so misguided, why don't you write us a nice long post about it. Peace out man, and give people a break.
I think he just misspelled chimp. damn auto correct...
Digney in Burnaby
donkeys live a long time
What is Linda B.'s responsibility? She is ultimately the caretaker of his legacy. Aside from cashing checks I mean. Martin is just a literary necrophiliac after all. Not the first and unfortunately not the last.
mjp
Founding member
That a widow or a surviving family has a responsibility to protect an artist's work or legacy is an odd concept. It seems a bit presumptuous to lay that on someone's doorstep when they may not be interested in the job (cashing of any checks notwithstanding). But that's the way we do it, I suppose. The survivor is supposed to dedicate their life to being the guardian and caretaker of their dear spouses wonderful legacy. I imagine it's a difficult role to escape though, if your spouse had any kind of notoriety. People are going to ask about them for the rest of your life.
That being said, I'm pretty certain she rubber stamped whatever Martin sent to her. And why shouldn't she? She had no reason not to trust him. She's not going sit down with thousands of manuscripts and magazines and cross reference the poems to make sure they're right. That's our job, apparently.
That being said, I'm pretty certain she rubber stamped whatever Martin sent to her. And why shouldn't she? She had no reason not to trust him. She's not going sit down with thousands of manuscripts and magazines and cross reference the poems to make sure they're right. That's our job, apparently.
mjp
Founding member
I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of her self-appointed "protectors" shows her that article (with the perverse intention of getting her riled up). But remember, she considers me to be some sort of INTERNET SATAN, so it doesn't matter what I say.
A lot of people are reading the article though.
A lot of people are reading the article though.
Perhaps your right. Monetizing the artist posthumously always seems to trump the aesthetic legacy. While this is understandable it still sucks for all who care about nonsense like "integrity". Read your piece and hope all interested parties do as well though I'm sure they have more "important" matters at hand.
Nice y-axis label. Could just as well be yield of cucumbers in bushels from the San Fernando valley without a label. Then again, what fool doesn't know that they don't grow cucumbers in the San Fernando valley?
But on a serious note, how many readers are we talking? I'm interested to see where this is going.
Gary Eisenberg
RIP
Inflation? Or, rather, shouldn't it be Euros or DM?
mjp
Founding member
The horizontal lines in the graph is approximately 100 views. I was getting around 40-45 a day before the Bukowski article. The day I put the article up and promoted the link on Twitter and Google+ the views went up to over 400 a day. A little more than 1800 people have clicked the link to the article so far.
1800 is not a lot of article views for a popular general interest piece, but for this article, it's a lot. Every time I tweet it to the 18,000+ people following the bukowski.net Twitter account, the views spike. No surprise there. And I'm still doing that.
We'll see what happens. The thing about blogs though, as anyone who writes one can tell you, is that the posts never die. People will continue to find it long after I stop pushing it. It's on the second page of Google results for bukowski black sparrow now, and if the views continue at the rate they are coming in, it will eventually get onto the first page. Once you're on the first page of the search result, you get pretty consistent traffic, indefinitely.
OK, this is what I was looking for. Forgive my scientific bent, but whenever a graph is posted to make a point, if the baseline (the x-axis, which is time/date in your graph) doesn't have a dependent variable (views, in this case), it destroys the point being made.
Don't let the protectionists win, is my point. Put all of the data out there in "bullet-proof" fashion.
If you know anything about Buk you would know that he would rather be skinned alive then talk about the acedemics of poetry and writing. He hated it. It drove him mental. If he were here he would email mjp and say, "take this thread out of here." I guess it is safe to say that at some point he found his voice like so many artists do. I can't say for 100% certain but I doubt he planned out much of a plan throughout his life as to what "style" he was going to write from. He wrote about his everyday experiences. He wrote from his heart, he wrote from his gut. I go on record as saying he had no style, or periods, and gave very little thought to a plan. Remember, he wrote "don't try." Its on his grave stone for God's sake. Buk was all about just letting it happen. He would sit and wait. He would wait for the poem to write it self.
I caught on the "Scarlet Period" joke right away.
mjp mentions the manuscripts.....I'm going to have to go check that out.
Danny Mac
I caught on the "Scarlet Period" joke right away.
mjp mentions the manuscripts.....I'm going to have to go check that out.
Danny Mac
PhillyDave
“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett
I find some value in the posthumous BSP collections. They are clearly not War or Dangleing or Mockingbird but enough of the poems work for me that I don't feel like a conspirator for owning them. The Ecco releases less so. While it's important to point out the disparities pre/post Betting On The Muse to those new to Buk I think there is also a point of diminishing return in denigrating JM and whomever else bears responsibility for the works dilution. For me it starts to become less a cause and more parochial.