Nobody's PERFECT!

mjp

mjp

Founding member
cirerita said:
the body of GOOD unpublished/uncollected poems amounts to another 3-4 books. sadly, the body of BAD unpublished/uncollected poems amounts to another 3-4 books :D
Click to expand...
Ecco exists (as a subsidiary of HarperColins) to publish steady, if slow, selling literary works. That being their mission, Bukowski seems a natural choice for more future releases. But the release in April is the last one called for under the existing contract.

What would be really interesting would be something like the release Deutsche Grammophon did of all of Mozart's compositions. It was something like 150 CD's, completely comprehensive. I'm sure the same has been done for "famous" authors, but it would be cool to see for Bukowski, since the older stuff is prohibitively expensive and hard to find.

The collection could end with the volumes of uncollected/unpublished poems (what's 5 or six more books in a set like that? ha) and that would give you everything in one bite.

I know there are 100 real world obstacles to a release like that, I'm just blue-skying here.
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
cirerita said:
the body of GOOD unpublished/uncollected poems amounts to another 3-4 books. sadly, the body of BAD unpublished/uncollected poems amounts to another 3-4 books :D
Click to expand...

Cirerita: I haven't been through all the manuscripts, library collections of little magazinezs, etc., like you have, but I have a feeling there are enough stray/lost/forgotten poems out there for more than three BAD unpublished/uncollected books. My guess would be maybe five to ten collections. As you know, Buk wrote a lot of stuff and mailed it out to a lot of magazines. Many of them very small circulation mags that have all but been forgotten. Once all that stuff gets located, it could amount to -- what -- 500? a thousand poems? And then there are all the short stories, essays, letters to the editor. I think we'll be seeing new Bukowski books for many years. Or am I being too much the optimist? Something in me says it can't end...there'll always be more. The guy wrote a hell of a lot of stuff.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
Rekrab said:
Once all that stuff gets located, it could amount to -- what -- 500? a thousand poems?
Click to expand...
I think that's a high estimate. The new database shows 4150 distinct works (poems and short stories), and I think cirerita has said he copied about 5000 pages during his research. It's unusual to come across things that aren't yet in the database. I know there's a lot out there still to be logged, but I'm thinking maybe 200 or 300 at the most. That would make the total number somewhere around 4500.

An impressive number, but some of the myths would have you believe he wrote ten thousand poems or something along those lines, and it's just not the case. The closet full of manuscripts that Martin and others have described as "towering stacks" - I don't buy that.

Especially early on, his output was nowhere near what it became after he quit the post office. You can see that he published the early stuff in many different places. He stretched them out.
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
mjp,

the list of UNPUBLISHED poems from UCSB only amounts to well over 1000 poems, not counting the uncollected stuff. I think 90% of those poems are NOT in your database. How do I know that? Well, when I started researching my only tools were Dorbin's, Fogel's, Krumanhsl and, of course, your database. Once I was granted access to the staff catalogues -way better and more complete than the ones available for students & professors when they log in to the library's public database- I typed all the stuff in my own database to start copying unpublished/uncollected stuff only. Thanks to the cheklists and your database I was able to list those 1000 unpublished poems which were not listed elsewhere. Sadly, I didn't copy all of them, just the ones which seemed useful to my dissertation.

Then we have the unpublished poems from Tucson, UCS, Berkeley, Suny, etc. Maybe we're talking about 1500-2000 unpublished poems which are not in your database.

Then we have a huge collection of uncollected stuff which is not either in your database nor in any of the checklists. Maybe another 500-1000 poems, who knows? At Long Beach they have a lot of uncollected poems from the 80's and 90's which are not listed anywhere... mags such as Whoreson Dog, Rhododendron, Misnomer, Big Hammer, etc, all of them with uncollected poems. Of course, you might be typing these entries -or similar ones- as I write this and then the final amount of uncollected poems NOT listed in your database will be smaller. I just have no idea.

it's sort of dizzying...
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
mjp & cirerita:

Obviously, you guys know a whole lot more than I do about the uncollected manuscripts. I have heard something I can't disclose that tells me there are a bunch more that are possibly in addition to all those you ennumerated. But I'm sworn to secrecy on this one.
 
mjp

mjp

Founding member
cirerita said:
the list of UNPUBLISHED poems from UCSB only amounts to well over 1000 poems, not counting the uncollected stuff.

Then we have the unpublished poems from Tucson, UCS, Berkeley, Suny, etc. Maybe we're talking about 1500-2000 unpublished poems which are not in your database.

Then we have a huge collection of uncollected stuff which is not either in your database nor in any of the checklists. Maybe another 500-1000 poems, who knows? At Long Beach they have a lot of uncollected poems from the 80's and 90's which are not listed anywhere...
Click to expand...
I stand corrected (see my previous post where I reserve the right to be wrong 60% of the time ;)).
 
poptop

poptop

Trumpets sounding...

I view all of Bukowski's writings, except for Pulp, as being on an equal plane whether in his real time or posthumous editions. Like he said himself in the Schroeder Tapes, he wrote the same thing over and over again, and the only difference was 'range'; he was present in all of it.

In the later editions, one never knows when the reader will come across another gem. In Shifting Through the Madness..., 'so you want to be a writer' is as good as anything else that was released in his lifetime. The copyright is 2002. By the time I was finished with this collection, I'd bookmarked 30 poems. That's a hell of a lot of keepers for anyone. So I'm not one who considers his later writings in any way inferior to his earlier ones, because he's talking about his life as an old man or revisiting his earlier life and restating it better or sometimes more succinctly than before. All writers have favorite themes they like to revisit as they get older and I like the 'autumn of the life' feel to them. They'll come in handy if I live that long myself.

With regard to Pulp, I feel that his writing reflected his weakened and enfeebled condition because of the leukemia toward the end of his life and I would have preferred that he not attempt this feeble satire and be unable to carry it through with the same grace as in his other works -- the only writings of Bukowski where he was not at his full powers. Nevertheless, it took balls for him to go for it anyway and take that kind of creative risk.

So I think readers have a better shot at finding these gems if they stay on the alert for them, no matter in what work, no matter in what edition, and not be overly sweeping in their assessement of his earlier or posthumous publications. If he thought it worth puting down on paper, I want to have the chance of making up my mind myself about it's worth, and I've rarely been disappointed.

Poptop
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
yep, poptop, you're dead right, but the issue here is not that B wrote good poems all his life -and crappy ones, as he admitted more than once- but Martin's editing.

during B's lifetime, Martin used to edit and publish what B was writing at the time plus a few oldies, but 95% of the material was REALLY new material -which I think was great 'cos it showed where B was at during a given period of his life. B hardly ever told Martin to publish a given poem -he used to mark the ones he considered to be stronger- though he asked him a few time NOT to publish certain poems he had already sent him. When B passed away, Martin could no longer publish/edit new material, so he had to resort to the HUGE backlog of unpublished/uncollected stuff, but that can't be considered "new" material any more. Of course there are gems in that backlog, but since Martin does all the editing we all depend on his artistic vision to get those gems. When I interviewed him, he said to me "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder", so I guess beauty lies in his eye now.
 
Rekrab

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
Yes, fine first post, poptop. Pulled off with moxie, to use a favorite word around here. All this forum needed was one more person who's more articulate than I am. Welcome.

cirerita: I agree that we have been getting Martin's vision of what is the best in Bukowski. After Martin's no longer controling what is released, we may see a rawer, wilder (and sloppier) bunch of stuff that Martin held back, and I -- for one -- am looking forward to that. And I do think that it is a lot of stuff.
 
poptop

poptop

Gentlemen and Ladies,

Hello to all and I'm glad to be here. We are of kindred spirit and we had some luck finding this immortal Bukowski during our lifetime. We've had our eyes opened and I'm grateful for what he lived through and his openness in sharing it even beyond the grave. I probably would have been out of here at my first beating by this sadistic jake of a father. But somehow Bukowski found the inner light not only to survive it, but to mine it for gold. It just came to me now that he's like a literary Christ to have taken all the punishment he did and pass on the grace and wisdom that only deepened with age. It was a match between his creative instinct on one hand and the cruelest of circumstances on the other, and he not only ran the gauntlet of these indignities but did it with consummate style and flashes of humor. Well, shoot, don't get me started!

Poptop
 
poptop

poptop

Cirerita,

A pleasure.

This issue about Martin's editing is new to me...you're way ahead of me...and I've read what you have to say with interest.

It's hard for me to grouse about Martin too much because I wish *I* had been the one to discover the literary find of the century. As just about everyone knows by now, Martin had eyes wide open and was there when Bukowski was dying at the post office (before writing it) and needed some kind of divine intervention so he could go at it full time.

What one of us wouldn't have wanted to be Martin, or in Martin's position, as the planets lined up so perfectly?

So considering M's track record and his penchant for discovering these alternative writers to the conventional mainstream press, I'm willing to grant him some literary license... I'm willing to give him some leeway in his choice of B's material, and his artistic vision, because of his near perfect record.

My sense of it, is that just about everything Bukowski did will eventually come out. And I think in the past that B did sometimes defer to his editors' requests. On Hostage he talks of an editor (not Martin) changing the colloquial "had drank" to the grammatically correct "had drunk" and he went along with it (though I think B hints at regretting the change). On the Run With the Hunted reading, my understanding is that Martin chose those poems, stories and excerpts for B to read, and perhaps they were merely Martin's personal favorites.

Maybe I'm stuck on gratitude here and all I can say is that Martin was at the right place and the right time when B needed him and M was one of the luckiest s.o.b.s of all time for seeing who was there. And I'm sure the satisfaction of his discovery will probably carry him through the next dozen lifetimes with a smile on his face.

I think overall for me, and to M's credit, I've never felt Martin's presence standing between me and the words; only the support to give B his chance to be heard. B's work still stands up overall magnificently, and a few small editing changes in keeping with the king's English, or a less than perfect choice on the writings, isn't going to shift the planets out of alignment. His legacy is already secure and will only grow stronger as the gap between the haves and have-nots widens in this age of political lunacy. That's why I'm for the silent hero in some dark room somehow holding the humanity of this world together through their personal magic. B's right at the top of my list for accepting, if not embracing it all. And as far as editors go, I would find it hard to top Martin. What one editor has made a greater difference in one writer's life than Martin? (Maybe Anais Nin did when editing Miller's Tropic of Cancer.)

As I've come to these posthumous editions only of late, I'm for flooding the marketplace with the whole of it where I can pick and choose. Even B at his "worst" is better than what most other writers could ever hope to produce in their lifetime. But I think I can understand your concern about the best of B getting out there and some of Martin's choices.

Wordy today.

Poptop
 
cirerita

cirerita

Founding member
Poptop,

maybe I wasn't clear enough when I said it all depends on Martin's editing. It's not just that Martin corrected B's typos and grammatical mistakes, Martin also chose which poems would be published in a given book, even during B's lifetime. And Martin was VERY WISE there. I mean, B would send him a thousand poems during 1-2 years, and Martin had to chose which ones to publish. B never gave him a list with the poems to be published, not even in cases such as The Roominghouse Madrigals. I think Martin had a very good eye for choosing the best ones while B was alive. I'm not that sure about the posthumous books, though.

On the other hand, B was always complaining that Martin didn't publish all his poems -or most of them, anyway. Martin would always say: "Hank, we don't want to flood the market", and B would be furious for a while because he wanted to see all his poems printed. That's why he kept sending hundreds and hundreds of poems to the "littles" even in the 70's and the 80's. He needed that.

Overall, I would say Martin did a great job... though there are a few MINOR things I find improvable. But what do I know...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top