Screams From the Balcony

by Charles Bukowski

  * * *

  Neeli Cherkovsky, then known as Neeli Cherry, recounts an incident of Bukowski’s reacting to Cherry’s writing a poem about him by throwing the MS in the fire. Cherry retrieved it, Bukowski praised it, but added “I hope you don’t devote a career to writing about me” (Hank). Cherry published the poem in his magazine, Black Cat Review, no. 1, June 1962.

  [To Neeli Cherry]

  Sunday [early 1962]

  without too much reverence

  Thank you for the poem. Are you going to devote a career writing about me? Better chose yr subjects more carefully.

  Your poetic style is good. I mean that it is loose enough to allow truth to enter or anything you want to say enter

  without worry about preconceptions

  or the poetic line

  which thoughts

  choke up most of them

  before they begin

  I mean, before they begin

  they have ended.

  they are done.

  a good style is important. style is what makes you different from the run. it lets yr voice be heard. Some good men have learned this.

  to wit: Shakespeare, Hem, Sherwood Anderson, D. H. Lawrence, Gertie Stein, Faulkner, Picasso, Van Gogh, Stravinsky.

  Stein had more style than genius. Her style was her genius. Faulk was next. He put very little fire into a forge of style that fooled almost everybody. Hem had style and genius that went with it, for a little while, then he tottered, rotted, but was man enough, finally, and had style enough, finally. Lawrence was a cock-freak who never had nerve enough to face the world as a man and so faced the world behind a nerve-soothing soul-soothing whirl of sex proteins, but who ever and nevertheless wrote some penetrating lines. Sherwood A. was just a good old fuck who suffered without too much pretense but who was aware of style, of cutting words into paper so you could see them, like blood or paint. This is important. It is a painting. Writing is painting and the sooner people realize this the less dull crap will dull the market and I will have to get drunk that much less. Picasso does with paint what I would like to do with words, only some day may try to do with paint, only not, fuck of course like P. but like B., and style only means opening into light simply and cleanly. Van Gogh, of course, was never insane. He simply realized the world was elsewhere. And his style, the purest of styles.

  A good style comes primarily from a lack of pretentiousness, and what is pretentious changes from year to year from day to day from minute to minute. We must be ever more careful. A man does not get old because he nears death; a man gets old because he can no longer see the false from the good.

  Enough of speech-making. [* * *]

  * * *

  Ann Bauman was and is a poet living in Sacramento, publishing in some of the same little magazines Bukowski appeared in. (On her marriage, she became Ann Menebroker.) Evidently their correspondence began with her note of appreciation for a poem of his which appears in Signet, May 1962. Bukowski notes: “Fair poet. I believe we bucked each other up for a while, perhaps she helped me more than I helped her. There was an off-hand, rather ho hum attitude from her, more toward life than toward me.”

  [To Ann Bauman]

  May 10, 1962

  got yr note on “Dead Stay Alive Too Long” and etc., and it filled a hole in the mailbox where a rejected poem usually sits. Am sitting here having a beer and staring out the same window, 3 floors up, miles out into the nowhere of Hollywood. If you saw something in the poem (or poems) good. Yet a little praise is a bad thing, and a lot of it is worse. We cannot be too careful. It is better for the artist to work out of a vacuum, going from creation to creation, each a new beginning, until it is all over, until he is dead in the sense that he can no longer create or he can no longer create because he is dead (physically). The latter, of course, is preferable.

  Jory is another case entirely, and it would do little good to discuss him here.

  Joyce Odam wrote a poem for me about the death of a lady, for which I wrote her my thanks.

  I recall seeing a large group of your work somewhere (Signet?). Well, keep going. But we have to, don’t we?

  * * *

  [To Ann Bauman]

  [May 19, 1962]

  rec. yr letter but I am a bastard and usually do not bother with these correspondii? or haven’t you heard? this has nothing to do with fathead or fat in the frying pan or limping dogs.

  all my elements are hung up like a shirt on a hanger and there is not much I can do with them.

  Yes, everything I do is “breathlessly new”—for this same reason people continue to make love. I am not interested in history or theory—or argument. The best argument is a new poem.

  It is may the 19th somebody has just told me. Fine.

  what does one do at poetry festivals? surely, dear, there must be a better way.

  I sent yr Friedman at SIGNET a poem but have not heard and she is pretty quick usually. I told her it was a bad poem and this might have her confused. It’s called “Keats and Marlowe.” I told her it was bad and then I rewrote it. It might still be prob. bad.

  God, I am running out of beer! this is madness…

  ah, hahah ahha ha ha ha ha!

  * * *

  [To Ann Bauman]

  May 21, 1962

  Getting this off while drinking a beer and listening to a little Sibelius before going to work. I am sorry you do not believe I do not like to argue. I believe you are bothered with too many concepts.

  You should avoid these poetry festivals etc. as they are nothing but a melting pot of watered-down talents, high-class lonely heart club for those with typewriters. [* * *]

  Study yr keeds. Kids. There are a lot of poems there. But don’t write about yr kids. Write about the human, what’s left of him, where he’s going, what he dropped on the floor.

  Don’t tell me about insanity. I wrote a short story about a man who murdered a blanket that fell in love with him and appeared to look at him and follow him around. “Very believable,” wrote back the first mag, “but this man appears too bizarre.” Or this is the condensation of it. I do not believe in writing a short story unless it crawls out of the walls. I watch the walls daily but very little happens.

  * * *

  The review mentioned in the next letter was among the very earliest published recognitions of Bukowski’s work. R. R. Cuscaden’s “Charles Bukowski: Poet In a Ruined Landscape” appeared in Satis, no. 5. Cuscaden, editor and publisher of Midwest magazine, brought out Bukowski’s Run With the Hunted (1962).

  [To Ann Bauman]

  June [20?], 1962

  Yes, Sibelius later went into hiding and shaved his head; I’m told he was a handsome and vain man, and age bothered him, but for it all

  he wrote the long-striding line

  stepped around the mountains

  and died.

  It is 26 minutes before 9 a.m. and I am out of beer. [* * *]

  I include herein Satis an English magazine that has printed a couple of poems that fall into the non-uplifting category. You can get the other kind anywhere. Also, a review of my 3 books by Cuscaden. It is a good damned thing I do not wear a hat or I could not get it around my head after reading these reviews.

  Darling, this is the trap: BELIEVE YOU ARE GOOD WHEN THEY TELL YOU YOU ARE GOOD AND YOU ARE THEREBY DEAD, DEAD, DEAD. dead forever. Art is a day by day game of living and dying and if you live a little more than you die you are going to continue to create some pretty fair stuff, but if you die a little more than you live, you know the answer.

  Creation, the carving of the thing, the good creation is a sign that the god that runs you there inside still has his eyes open. Creation is not the end-all but it is a pretty big part. End of lecture #3784. [* * *]

  Corrington, a poet then teaching at Louisiana State University, was to write the introduction to Bukowski’s first Loujon Press book, It Catches My Heart in Its Hands, which would finally appear in the fall of 1963. Bukowski notes, “An early booster of my work.” He adds that their
long correspondence “stopped after he wrote his novel and went to Hollywood.”

  [To John William Corrington]

  June 24, 1962

  IN KIND OF A NUMB STATE LATELY? I mean, me. THE END OF THE SOUL. mebee. Anyhow, just crawling out of the sack and looking around, that’s about where I am at. They’ve machine gunned me down to this nub. good. cigarettes, cigars, candy?

  Jon’s hard at the book, I know. How about yours? I heard that your San Francisco Review has folded or will change hands. Weren’t they going to bring out a new collection of your poems? Check your tires for air.

  Just off a four day drunk. Bloody ass. Glass on floor. Broke. Coffeepot now going in front of me: GLUGGLE, GLUGGLE, GLUKE GLUKE!! I think a new piece of ass would fix me fine. This old stuff gets so hard to handle. That their eyes spray me with love is not enough. It is the sagging of the tit, the worn-flesh? If I could only once have a drink of clear spring water. Everything has mud in it and sticks and discarded socks. Well, I am not so much myself. Crows don’t sleep with peacocks. I’ve got to realize this. [* * *]

  * * *

  Wormwood Review published the following letter as Bukowski’s response to the editor’s explanation that the payment for publication was four copies “which we will mail to anywhere, anybody or anything….” (M.S. is presumably a slightly disguised reference to Sheri Martinelli and C. W. to John William Corrington.)

  [To Marvin Malone]

  [August 1962]

  well, ya better mail one to M.S. or she’ll prob. put her pisser in the oven, she thinks she is a goddess, and maybe she is, I sure as hell wd’t know

  like some of the boys tell me,

  then there is C. W. who does not answer his mail but is very busy teaching young boys how to write and I know he is going places, and since he is, ya better mail ’m one…

  then there’s my old aunt in Palm Springs nothing but money and I have everything but money…talent, a good singing voice, a left hook deep to the gut…send her a copy, she hung up on me, last time I phoned her drunk, giving evidence of need, she hung up on me…

  then there’s this girl in Sacramento who writes me these little letters…very depressed bitch, mixed like quite some waffle flower, making gentle intellectual overtures which I ignore, but send her a magazine

  in lieu of a hot poker.

  that makes 4?

  I hope to send you some more poems anytime because I got to figure that people who run my poems are a little mad, but that’s all right. I am also that way. anyhow,—

  I hope meanwhile you do not fold up before I do.

  * * *

  A note by the recipient identifies this as accompanied by the gift of a bobby pin. The “her” in question is presumably Jane Cooney Baker, who had died early in 1962. For Bukowski’s relationship with her, see Hank, chapters 4 and 5.

  [To Ann Bauman]

  [September 1962]

  Death does not take everything, god damn it.

  I hope you can use this in your hair to keep alive a something that I should have died in front of. o my god my god yes I am drinking. and who cares? I love her. simple swine words. use it, in your hair. Thank you, Sacramento fog, fountains, odd voice, grief of wretched breathing, phantom love, oh child, wear it in your hair, honor me, her, the mountains, the hot great tongue and flash of God.

  Thank you.

  * * *

  [To Ann Bauman]

  September 4, 1962

  Disregard my last letter. Strings became undone. A little sawdust spilled out. Beer. Wine. German gloom. These things can fetch anyone. A waterglass looks like a skull. Horses run into the rail. Insomnia. Job trouble. Toothache. The body bleeds. Retching. Flat tire. Traffic ticket. Lack of love. Sleep, then nightmare. Paper everywhere. Trivial bits of paper. Nothing ever done. Flooded sink. People in the hall with cardboard faces. Sure, sure, sure.

  Today I will walk in the sun. I will simply walk in the sun. [* * *]

  * * *

  [To Jon Webb]

  September 4, 1962

  Regarding the death of my woman last Jan. 22, there is not much to say except I will never be the same again. I might attempt to write it sometimes but it is still too close, may always be too close. But that time in the charity ward years ago a little Mexican girl who changed the sheets told me that she was going to shack up with me as soon as I got well, and I began feeling better right away. I had one visitor: a drunken woman, red and puffy-faced, a bedmate of the past who reeled against the bed a few times, said nothing and walked out. Six days later I was driving a truck, lifting 50-lb packages and wondering if the blood would come again. A couple of days later I had the first drink, the one they said would kill me. A week or so later I got a typewriter, and after a ten-year blank, after selling to Story & others, I found my fingers making the poem. Or rather the bar-talk. The non-lyrical, non-singing thing. The rejects came quickly enough. But they made no indentation, for I felt in each line as if I were talking the thing out. Not for them, but for myself. Now I can read very little other poetry or very little other anything. Anyway, the drunk lady who reeled against my bed, I buried her last Jan. 22. And I never did see my little Mexican girl. I saw others, but somehow she would have been right. Today, I am alone, almost outside all of them: the buttocks, the breasts, the clean live dresses like unused and new dishtowels on the rack. But don’t get me wrong—I’m still 6 feet tall with 200 lbs. of ableness, but I was able best with the one that’s gone.

  * * *

  Bukowski’s “WW 2” appeared in Mica 7 (November 1962). Previously, three poems were published in Mica 5 (Winter 1962). The magazine was edited by Helmut Bonheim and Raymond Federman from Santa Barbara.

  [To Helmut Bonheim]

  September 28, [1962]

  Thanks the stamps, and good you like “WW 2” which is more factual than inventive, but what the fuck, you’ve got to give me credit for putting it down anyhow because it’s what to know what to leave out that makes me different from the garage mechanic, if we are too much different. There is another story I have written—about a man who murders a blanket. Sent it to Evergreen, 6 months now, no response. Wrote stamped, self-add. thing. No response. I don’t keep carbons. I suppose I’ll see it in print some day under the name of Francios Marcios or Francis Francis or F. Villon. I keep getting reamed this way. But it is good for me. It reminds me that the world is pretty shitty. and this keeps me deftly abdulah and stasher of cannons. Anyhow, on “WW 2,” change and shift lines at your will…to fit page or to help readability;—although I personally garbled it a little, voices and ideas running together—to throw nails.

  I’ll send you more poems since you ask for them, but haven’t written any, and they don’t come back. I don’t mean they are accepted; I mean the swine simply do not return them; they sit on them like pillows, friend. aye.

  This is garbage talk.

  I have come through a green and red war these last 2 month. My side lost but I am still more alive than ever, in a sense. We have to pass through these things, again, again—arguing with a knife blade, a bottle, weeping like a frigging cunt in menopause, afraid to step out a door…afraid of birds, fleas, mice…encircled by a clock, a typewriter, a half-open closet door full of ghouls, killers, horrors like sea-bottoms. And then it ends. You are calm again. As calm as…a garage mechanic. I think of a D. H. Lawrence title: Look We Have Come Through.

  Anyhow, I’ll try you with some poems, although I don’t know if they can be like the Mica things. They will just have to be what they are…If you read somewhere that I cursed editors and other critters, you prob. read correctly. I deal pretty much alone and don’t care for ties. Tits, yes. Ties, no. I never wear ties. Creation and flow are the factors. Survival is not too important to me, either in any sense of immortality or in any sense of today—paying the rent, eating a sandwich, dreaming of a good fuck etc. etc. Although I get pretty scared sometimes when the world tries to kill me. Not the death-part, for as Socrates explained, this cannot be too bad. It is the getting th
ere. The eyes. The flies. the ties. rubber tires. dead fish. fat landladies. buttons falling off shirt. dirty laundry. garage mechanics….

  savannah and eggplant

  * * *

  The Webbs were preparing the third issue of their magazine, The Outsider, which would be devoted mainly to Bukowski, whom Webb proclaimed recipient of a special award as “Outsider of the Year.” The issue would include tributes to Bukowski as well as photographs of him and poems and letters by him. It was to be followed by the publication of a “Loujon Press Award Book” collecting Bukowski’s poetry.

  [To Jon Webb]

  September 28, [1962]

  [* * *] I have been doing some thinking. I would like to write you another letter of acceptance re the OUTSIDER OF YEAR 62 thing, and I will anyhow, and it should be arriving in a day or 2 [* * *]

  As per writing more letters, as you know, this can’t be done just like that any more than a poem can; in fact, a letter is tougher because the letter mood seems to fall less upon me than the poem thing. Yet I think the letter is an important form. You can touch about everything as you run around. It lets you out of the straightjacket of pure Art, and you’ve got to get out once in a while. Of course, I don’t restrict myself as much in the poem as most do, but I have made this my business, this freedom with the word and idea, because…to be perfectly corny…I know I’ll only be around once and I want to make it easy on myself. [* * *]