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Dear Editor by Charles Bukowski
remember when you bought me that big rebuilt standard typewriter when I was living on air and beer over at that place on DeLongpre? and I tried it out and phoned you that night drunk complaining that it jumped an extra space when I hit an “e” or a “u”? well, I’ve just ordered a $700 IBM electric with my gold American Express card. it has an automatic error-eraser among its many other features. I’m going to hell so fast you’d never believe it. I might have to forget expensive German wine and go back to beer in order to find myself again. meanwhile, I await delivery.
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The Continual Condition: Poems
The Continual Condition: Poems by Charles Bukowski Published: 2009 I’ve come across some Bukowski over the years, but this is the first time I actually picked up one of his collections. The sleeve description says that it contains never-before-collected poems, which I think means they were previously published but never in one of his own collections. I usually try not to start with someone’s latest book, particularly if it’s published post-mortem, but this contains work that stretches right back to the beginning of his career and is a great introduction if you haven’t read much by him. There’s something about Bukowski’s writing that can occasionally stop you dead in your…
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Let’s Have Some Fun by Charles Bukowski
there will always be people who say, let’s go on a boat or let’s go to Argentina or let’s go to a movie or let’s go to a tennis match or let’s visit my sister or how about a picnic? and I don’t understand any of this because to me just walking across the room is like walking through flames and the first strange face I see each day adds a knot to my stomach and I don’t have the time because I haven’t paid the gas bill or checked the air in my tires and one of my teeth is aching (on the left side) and I’ve received several…
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Happy Idiot
I watch the jocks come out in the post parade. one will win the race. the others will lose. but each jock must win sometime in some race on some day, and he must do it often enough. or he is done as a jockey. it’s like the girls on the street trying to score for their pimp or each of us sitting over a typewriter tonight or tomorrow or next week or next month and doing it well enough once in a while or he is done as a writer, he’s a whore who can’t score. I think I would like a little more kindness in the structure but…