doing a little better now, though I almost died in the charity ward of the General Hospital. They sure mess up there, and if you’ve ever heard anything about the place, it’s probably true. I was there 9 days and they sent me a bill for $14.24 a day. Some charity ward. Wrote a story about it called “Beer, Wine, Vodka, Whiskey; Wine, Wine, Wine” and sent it to Accent. They sent it back: . . . “quite a bloody spate. Perhaps, some day, public taste will catch up with you.”
My God. I hope not. [ . . . ]
By the way, in your note you said you had never printed me. Do you have a copy of Story, March-April 1944?
Well, I’m 34 now. If I don’t make it by the time I’m 60, I’m just going to give myself 10 more years.
1956
The poem “A Note to Carl Sandburg” remains unpublished; A Place to Sleep the Night was abandoned after Doubleday rejected a few chapters.
[To Carol Ely Harper]
November 13, 1956
The poems you mentioned are still available—I do not keep carbons and so do not recall the poems completely but am particularly pleased with your accepting “A Note to Carl Sandburg.” This is a poem I wrote mostly to myself, not thinking anybody would have the courage to publish it.
I am 36 years old (8-16-20) and was first published (a short story) in Whit Burnett’s Story mag back in 1944. Then a few stories and poems in 3 or 4 issues of Matrix about the same time, and a story in Portfolio. As you know, these mags are now deceased. And, oh yes, a story and a couple of poems in something called Write that came out once or twice and then gave it up. Then for 7 or 8 years I wrote very, very little. It was quite a drunk. I ended up in the charity ward of the hospital with holes in my belly, heaving up blood like a waterfall. I took a 7 pint continuous transfusion—and lived. I am not the man I used to be but I’m writing again.
Received a note from Spain yesterday from Mrs. Hills informing me that one of my poems has been accepted for Quixote. And I am to have some stories and poems featured in the next edition of Harlequin, a new magazine that put out its first copy in Texas and has now moved to L.A. They have asked me to join the editorial staff which I have done. And it is quite an experience; and this is what I have learned: that there are so many, many writers writing that can’t write at all, and they keep right on writing all the clichés and bromides, and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the “i’s” small, or, or, or!!! . . . Well, you see, I can’t join the Experiment Group but I am honored that you might have asked me in. There simply—as you must know from your nervous breakdown—isn’t enough time—I have my trivial, tiring, low-paying job 44 hours a week, and I am going to night school 4 nights a week, two hours a night, plus an added hour or two home work. I am taking a course in Commercial Art for the next couple of years, if I last (this is the night school deal), and besides this, I have just started my first novel, A Place to Sleep the Night. I am being very profuse in telling you all this, so if I don’t send you a couple of one-minute plays, you’ll know why. However, if I know myself, you will get some attempts from me. I don’t think, though, that the play-form stirs me as it should. We’ll see.
1958
The four poems mentioned below were printed in the first issue of Nomad in 1959.
[To the editors of Nomad]
September 1958
I am gratified that you found 4 poems that you liked. This is quite a wholesale number and a shot in the arm for quite some time to come. Either the poetry field is opening up or I am, or we both are. Anyhow, it’s nice, and I must allow myself a feeling of niceness once in a while. [ . . . ]
About me, I must seem pretty old to be about beginning in poetry: I was 38 on this last August l6th and feel, look and act a hell of a lot older. I’ve been working with poetry the last couple of years after about a 10 year blank, self-inflicted I suppose, and rather unhappy but not without its moments. I’m not one to look back on wanton waste as complete loss—there’s music in everything, even defeat—but coming up on a death bed in a charity ward slowed me somewhat, gave me the old pause to think. I found myself writing poetry: hell of a state. I had been, in my earlier days, working with the short story, getting quite a bit of encouragement from Whit Burnett discoverer of W[illiam] Saroyan and others and founder of the then famous Story magazine. Whit finally took one—I used to send him 15 or 20 stories a month and when they came back, I would tear them up—back in 1944 when I was sweet, fiery and 24. I landed 3 or 4 stories in Matrix and one in an international review of the time called Portfolio, and then I more or less tossed everything overboard, until a couple of years back when I began writing poetry exclusively. For the first year nobody bit and then I was published (and this brings us up to date) in Quixote, Harlequin, Existaria, The Naked Ear, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Hearse, Approach, The Compass Review and Quicksilver. I have work accepted for future publication in Insert, Quixote, Semina, Olivant, Experiment, Hearse, Views, The Coercion Review, Coastlines, Gallows and The San Francisco Review. Hearse is bringing out a chapbook of my poems Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail early next year . . . I went to L.A. City College when I was a kid and took a course in journalism but the nearest I’ve gotten to a newspaper is every 2 or 3 days when I flip through one without too damned much interest. Went back to night school there about a year ago and took some art courses, commercial and otherwise but then too, they moved too slow for me and wanted too much obeisance. I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic. That’s about it—you can take the few lines you need out of here.
1959
[To Anthony Linick]
March 6, 1959
[ . . . ] I should think that many of our poets, the honest ones, will confess to having no manifesto. It is a painful confession but the art of poetry carries its own powers without having to break them down into critical listings. I do not mean that poetry should be raffish and irresponsible clown tossing off words into the void. But the very feeling of a good poem carries its own reason for being. I am aware of the New Criticism and the Newer Criticism and the Blue Guitar school of thought, the English school forwarded by Paris Leary, the strong image school of Epos and Flame, etc. etc., but all these are demands on style and manner and method rather than on content, although we have some restrictions here also. But primarily Art is its own excuse, and it’s either Art or it’s something else. It’s either a poem or a piece of cheese.
Bukowski’s “Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics” appeared in Nomad 5/6 in 1960.
[To Anthony Linick]
April 2, 1959
[ . . . ] While writing, I should mention that the “manifesto” essay I sent yesterday (I believe) is now bothering me. Although I do not have the script around, I believe I used the phrase “leave us be fair.” This has been keeping me awake upon my hot lonely pad (the whores are laying with less involved fools as of now). I believe “let us be fair” is more correct. Or is it? Any grammarians on Nomad? In my youth (ah lo, swift the years!) I received a D in English I at dear old L.A.C.C. for showing up every morning at 7:30 a.m. with a hangover. It wasn’t the hangover so much as the fact that the class began at 7:00 a.m., usually with a rendering blast from Gilbert and Sullivan, which, I am sure, would have killed me. In English II I received an A or a B because the teacher was a female who caught me constantly looking at her legs. All of which is to say, I didn’t pay a hell of a lot of attention to grammar, and when I write it is for the love of the word, the color, like tossing paint on a canvas, and using a lot of ear and having read a bit here and there, I generally come out ok, but technically I don’t know what’s happening,