Brief note on my 48-hour revisitation of Bukowski, which has included a mess of poems from the Run with the Hunted anthology and a piece-by-piece viewing of Born Into This, the documentary from a few years ago.
There are definitely great things in here. Like “I Taste the Ashes of Your Death,” and “Spring Swan.” Real beauty and economy and imagery, all done with his realness and hardness that makes Bukowski stand out. And some of it is, of course, really funny or just a guilty pleasure of nostalgia for the gritty black-and-white of the 20th Century. Bukowksi is the 20th Century, in a lot of ways.
But I’d never before seen, to my memory, this short poem by Buk called “Art”: “As the spirit wanes, the form appears.”
What a perfect anachronism. In seven short words, the definition of post-modern America in the 20th Century – not just in art, but in everything: The black-and-white of causeless rebels that pervades to this day. If you’re formal, you’re soulless and bad. If you’re chaotic, you’re free and good.
Can I still enjoy this stuff, knowing that its author was such a slave to his own misconceptions? Probably. But I’d prefer it if someone could lead me to a Bukowski sonnet.
I interpreted ‘Art’ totally differently–especially because of the name.
To me (and considering Bukowski’s bouts with alcoholism and self-loathing), it’s that your art only truly manifests itself, on truly takes on its own form, when you’re at your lowest–when your spirit wanes, so to speak.