I live too near the slaughterhouse - Odyssey, 1959 [RARE]

[cirerita]

well, everything's rare in this particular forum, but this poem is not listed in Dorbin!!

Cuscaden, R. R. and Ronald Offen, eds., Odyssey. Chicago, v. 2, n? 1, 1959.

Reprinted in ATOM MIND, Vol.4, No.14, but that's also a hard-to-find mag, though way cheaper than Odyssey.

Uncollected as of 2006.

 

[zoom man]

[Removed broken image links - mjp]

How much does this go for now?....
I didn't pay much at all, like 11 years ago
(~20 bucks)

 

[cirerita]

you can get it on Abe for $30, but the Atom mag goes for $5-10. So there's a difference :D

19 only? that's a deal!

 

[mjp]

well, everything's rare in this particular forum, but this poem is not listed in Dorbin!!

This just sold on eBay for $13!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120007164964

Wow.

 

[cirerita]

and Bill originally got it for less than that a few weeks ago!!!

 

[bospress.net]

Hi Abel,
I don't remember how much I got it for, but something tells me that after e-bay fees, I probably lost a few dollars.

urghh.....

I just got an e-mail from e-bay saying that they are increasing their fees on store listings. I don't use those, but it is interesting that they just keep upping their fees in a time when they are showing massive profits. It is driving many people out of the business, I think. Maybe that is the plan. Make as much money with less sellers. Not a bad business plan, but I don't have to like it. As I said before, I'm all but out of selling on ebay. Just a little here and there....

Bill

 

[Danny Mac]

The energy of greed is out of control in this country the past few years. It only seems to be getting worse. My own life has been slowly gutted. The EVIL corporate overlords are oppressing everybody and keeping every dime of profit for themselves. The pendulem is going to swing back the other way, soon I hope. I'm fifty now so I'm sure I'll be here to see it and I am going to be filled with such joy to see the evil greedy constructs of those rat bastards grumble into the ground. The tide is going to turn and the kind good people of Earth are going to reap the rewards of good honest intentions.

 

[mjp]

And a seven year old unrelated thread is the perfect place to make that proclamation I suppose.

 

[5:28am]

Nothing like reading forums at 3:43am and finding a Taxi Driver-esque rant in a poetry thread.

 

[Gary Eisenberg]

I am with Danny Mac one hundred percent. And, actually, his rant is related in a certain way. The eBay people are doing their corporate greed thing - which of course had to happen sooner or later - and the "little people" are being squeezed once again. There is a thread that runs through Bukowski's work (poetry and prose alike) which rants against exactly this sort of thing. No, he doesn't come up with any solutions - that's part of the beauty in his work - but from the beginning to the end, his was a voice in the wilderness, complaining about being squeezed - and noticing that lots of people around him were being squeezed as well - by a certain type of greed-head. And speaking of taxi drivers...I direct your attention to Page 168 of Factotum:

"'...now, when is the only time a man can lose control of his cab and won't be able to help it'? 'When I get a hard-on?" said some cracker.' Mendoza, if you can't drive with a hard-on we can't use you. Some of our best men drive with hard-ons all day long and all night too."

Nothing wrong with a bit of taxi driver rant, as far as I can tell...

I think I need a beer.

Cheers,

GE

 

[mjp]

Yeah, I missed it as a reference to what Bill said about eBay. I was just scanning, because the man has ruined my attention span.

 

[Gary Eisenberg]

That kind of thing happens to me all the time, alas.

 

[zobraks]

Collected (as Too Near the Slaughterhouse, "I Live" symbolically chopped off) in The People Look Like Flowers at Last.
The usual petty changes, made in obvious effort to simplify and "explain" Bukowski's thoughts, go without saying.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Adding "When Hugo Wolf Went Mad --", the opening essay by Roland Offen (reminiscent of James Boyer May's essay in Beloit Winter 57-58) and the Contributors page that mentions Bukowski as the recent co-editor of Harlequin.