Good thing you know better, and thanks for the nice words re. my research. I know you're not usually publicly lavish with your praise, so I guess you really meant that.
And since we're no longer trapped in "cute" territory, I might be able to offer a coherent reply. As a non-native English speaking person, that "cute" territory sometimes is simply beyond me.
-Everybody knows Martin changed
Women for the worse. Martin was the first one to acknowledge that and he righted that wrong when the second edition came out, and
alsowhen he published the Bukowski letters where B. said as much. He could have not published those letters, but he did. That should tell us something. Where are the letters where B. complained about changes to poems? I have probably read 85% of all the letters B. ever wrote and I haven't seen a single mention in that sense. Again, that should tell us something.
-You said that Martin changed
Women and then you quoted a poem to prove your point, but you're simply extrapolating your conclusions from the one fact everybody knows: Martin did fuck up
Women. Ok. So far so good. But where are the facts to support your idea that the poem was also changed by Martin? I don't need to be a native to feel those nuances you mentioned. The second version sucks big time because the rhythm is gone. Ok. But there's no evidence at all that Martin changed those lines. There's a great danger when one says that, because the underlying assumption is that Bukowski
couldn't have written such a bad line and that it had to be someone else's doing. Well, do you want me to quote here a few dozen poems with very bad lines by Bukowski? No need, right? B. wrote an awful lot of shitty poems, we all know that.
-I'm not saying that Martin didn't change that poem, I'm just saying that I don't know who did it, and that it could have been Bukowski's doing. I've learnt quite a few things while doing my research on Bukowski, but I think that the most important ones (bibliographically speaking) are NOT to extrapolate things and NOT to take anything for granted. Anyfuckingthing. Believe me.
-Bukowski complained about Martin changing
Women and
Post Office (yes, he did). He even told some people to read the stories which appeared in
Adam as they were the raw versions which Martin then "polished" for book publication. Martin never hid that, why should he hide the fact that he also changed B's poetry? It does not make sense to me. In Jules Smith book, Martin is quoted as saying that it was Bukowski himself who changed his poems for book publication. I've read quite a few unpublished letters -especially to Corrington- where he acknowledges as much: many rejected poems were reworked by Bukowski and submitted again for publication. Bukowski revised much more than what he claimed, and many early MSS confirm that.
-I guess we're never going to agree on this one -not that we
have to- but I'm sticking to my guns and, to partially quote Bukowski here, I'll give you $5 for each instance that you find where Bukowski complains about Martin changing his poetry. Get rich, babe ;)
Take a look at the poem I posted here:
It's All a Matter of Entertainment - 1975 poem with MANY revisions
And compare it with the version which you have online in
the MSS section. Who made the changes? Martin? Uncle Howard?
Bukowski crossed out a lot of lines here, and Martin (or Bukowski) could have easily "restored" them for book publication, though this poem was never published.
See below another example of a bad poem with a lot of discarded lines. I'm uploading the last page of the poem only. This was written in 1964, when Bukowski was at "his lyrical best", blah, blah, blah. The poem was originally titled "The Man with the Dirty Shirt" and then "The Death of the Poetry Writing Machine" and Bukowski used another title in his correspondence -to Corrington?- saying he had submitted it to
Evergreen Review. The poem was never published. No wonder, really. It's a bad poem. Try to read the crossed out lines as well. As with the other poem, someone could have used the discarded lines and then you would have 2 or 3 versions of the very same poem.