Charles Bukowski

par **kenavo** Dim 18 Aoû - 7:04

Henry Charles Bukowski, né Heinrich Karl Bukowski le 16 août 1920 à Andernach en Allemagne et mort le 9 mars 1994 à Los Angeles en Californie aux États-Unis, est un écrivain américain d'origine allemande, auteur de romans, de nouvelles et de poésie.

source et suite

par **kenavo** Dim 18 Aoû - 7:04

non, je ne suis pas trop grande fan de cet écrivain, mais j’ai toujours bien aimé ses poèmes et ce n’est que hier que je suis tombée sur cette vidéo (2014) et je voulais la partager avec vous.

Je n’ai pas trouvé le texte français

The man with the beautiful eyes

when we were kids
there was a strange house
all the shades were
always
drawn
and we never heard voices
in there
and the yard was full of
bamboo
and we liked to play in
the bamboo
pretend we were
Tarzan
(although there was no
Jane).
and there was a
fish pond
a large one
full of the
fattest goldfish
you ever saw
and they were
tame.
they came to the
surface of the water
and took pieces of
bread
from our hands.

our parents had
told us:
“never go near that
house.”
so, of course,
we went.
we wondered if anybody
lived there.
weeks went by and we
never saw
anybody.

then one day
we heard
a voice
from the house
“YOU GOD DAMNED
WHORE!”

it was a man’s
voice.

then the screen
door
of the house was
flung open
and the man
walked
out.

he was holding a
fifth of whiskey
in his right
hand.
he was about
30.
he had a cigar
in his
mouth,
needed a shave.
his hair was
wild and
and uncombed
and he was
barefoot
in undershirt
and pants.
but his eyes
were
bright.
they blazed
with
brightness
and he said,
“hey, little
gentlemen,
having a good
time, I
hope?”

then he gave a
little laugh
and walked
back into the
house.

we left,
went back to my
parents’ yard
and thought
about it.

our parents,
we decided,
had wanted us
to stay away
from there
because they
never wanted us
to see a man
like
that,
a strong natural
man
with
beautiful
eyes.

our parents
were ashamed
that they were
not
like that
man,
that’s why they
wanted us
to stay
away.

but
we went back
to that house
and the bamboo
and the tame
goldfish.
we went back
many times
for many weeks
but we never
saw
or heard
the man
again.

the shades were
down
as always
and it was
quiet.

then one day
as we came back from
school
we saw the
house.

it had burned
down,
there was nothing
left,
just a smoldering
twisted black
foundation
and we went to
the fish pond
and there was
no water
in it
and the fat
orange goldfish
were dead
there,
drying out.

we went back to
my parents’ yard
and talked about
it
and decided that
our parents had
burned their
house down,
had killed
them
had killed the
goldfish
because it was
all too
beautiful,
even the bamboo
forest had
burned.

they had been
afraid of
the man with the
beautiful
eyes.

and
we were afraid
then
that
all throughout our lives
things like that
would
happen,
that nobody
wanted
anybody
to be
strong and
beautiful
like that,
that
others would never
allow it,
and that
many people
would have to
die.

par **Queenie** Dim 18 Aoû - 7:15

Ah oui, j'ai été surprise de voir que tu créais un fil pour cet auteur !

par **kenavo** Mar 20 Aoû - 7:17

une autre animation pour un de ses poèmes...

Il s'agit d'un court-métrage de Minka Umba qui est une adaptation muette de Bue Bird

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him
I say, stay in there
I'm not going to let anybody see you
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I pur whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks
never know that he's in there
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him
I say
stay down, do you want to mess me up?
you want to screw up the works?
you want to blow my book sales in Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep
I say, I know that you're there
so don't be sad
then I put him back
but he's singing a little in there, I haven't quite let him die
and we sleep together like that with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to make a man
weep
but I don't weep
do you?

par **kenavo** Dim 25 Aoû - 7:50

j'ai trouvé un autre clip pour Bluebird
la voix qu'on utilise pour réciter le poème me donne des frissons...
je suis en train de devenir la plus grande fan de ses poèmes Cool

par **kenavo** Sam 5 Oct - 7:23

The Genius of the Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

par **kenavo** Mar 12 Nov - 5:51

The Crunch

Too much
too little
or not enough
too fat
too thin
or nobody
laughter or
tears
or immaculate
haters
lovers
non-concern
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe
many old guys in cheap rooms without
any photographs at all

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movements of
the hands of a clock
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it blinking in neon signs
in Vegas, in Baltimore, in Munich
there are people so tired
so strafed
that buying a bargain can of tuna
in a supermarket
is their greatest moment
their greatest victory
we don't need new governments
new revolutions
we don't need new men
new women
we don't need new ways
good Columbian
coke
dildoes
watches that give you the date
people are not good to each other
one on one.
Marx be damned
the sin is not the totality of certain systems.
Christianity be damned
the sin is not the killing of a God.
people are just not good to each other.
we are afraid
we think that hatred means strength

what we need is less brilliance
what we need is less instruction
what we need are less poets
what we need are less Bukowskies

what we need is more
beer
a typist
more finches

we don't think about the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant
being without a telephone that will never
ring
because there isn't one.
more haters than lovers
slices of doom like taffeta
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
and the beads swing and the clouds cloud
and the dogs piss upon the roses
and the killer beheads the child like taking a bite
out of an ice cream cone
and the ocean comes in and out
in and out
under the direction of a senseless moon
and people are not good to each other.

par **kenavo** Dim 17 Nov - 7:58

The Strongest of the Strange

you won’t see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
those odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.
and from the
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.
they are
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work.
sometimes I think
I see
them– say
a certain old
man
sitting on a
certain bench
in a certain
way
or
a quick face
going the other
way
in a passing
automobile
or
there’s a certain motion
of the hands
of a bag—boy or a bag—
girl
while packing
supermarket
groceries.
sometimes
it is even somebody
you have been
living with
for some
time—
you will notice
a
lightning quick
glance
never seen
from them
before.
sometimes
you will only note
their
existance
suddenly
in
vivid
recall
some months
some years
after they are
gone.
I remember
such a
one—
he was about
20 years old
drunk at
10 a.m.
staring into
a cracked
New Orleans
mirror
facing dreaming
against the
walls of
the world
where
did I
go?

par **kenavo** Mer 8 Jan - 7:31

We Will Defeat Death

you know and I know and thee know
that as the yellow shade rips
as the cat leaps wild-eyed
as the old bartender leans on the wood
as the hummingbird sleeps
you know and I know and thee know
as the tanks practice on false battlefields
as your tires work the freeway
as the midget drunk on cheap bourbon cries alone at night
as the bulls are carefully bred for the matadors
as the grass watches you
and the trees watch you
as the sea holds creatures vast and true
you know and I know and thee know
the sadness and the glory of two slippers under a bed
the ballet of your heart dancing with your blood
young girls of love who will someday hate their mirrors
overtime in hell
lunch with sick salad
you know and I know and thee know
the end as we know it now it seems such a lousy trick
after the lousy agony but
you know and I know and thee know
the joy that sometimes comes along out of nowhere
rising like a falcon moon across the impossibility
you know and I know and thee know
the cross-eyed craziness of total elation
we know that we finally have not been cheated
you know and I know and thee know
as we look at our hands our feet our lives our way
the sleeping hummingbird
the murdered dead of armies
the sun that eats you as you face it
you know and I know and thee know
we will defeat death.

par **kenavo** Dim 15 Mar - 4:05

Susan Orlean mentionne dans son livre ce poème de Charles Bukowski...

the burning of the dream
the old L.A. Public Library burned
down
that library downtown
and with it went
a large part of my
youth.

I sat on one of those stone
benches there with my friend
Baldy when he
asked,
“you gonna join the
Abraham Lincoln
Brigade?”

“sure,” I told
him.

but realizing that I wasn’t
an intellectual or a political
idealist
I backed off on that
one.
later
I was a reader
then
going from room to
room: literature, philosophy
religion, even medicine
and geology.

early on
I decided to be a writer,
I thought it might be the easy
way
out
and the big boy novelists didn’t look
too tough to
me.
I had more trouble with
Hegel and Kant.

the thing that bothered
me
about everybody
is that they took so long
to finally say
something lively and/
or
interesting.
I thought I had it
over everybody
then.

I was to discover two
things:
a) most publishers thought that anything
boring had something to do with things
profound.
b) that it would take decades of
living and writing
before I would be able to
put down
a sentence that was
anywhere near
what I wanted it to
be.

meanwhile
while other young men chased the
ladies
I chased the old
books.
I was a bibliophile, albiet a
disenchanted
one
and this
and the world
shaped me.

I lived in a plywood hut
behind a roominghouse
for $3.50 a
week
feeling like
Chatterton
stuffed inside of some
Thomas
Wolfe.

my greatest problem was
stamps, envelopes, paper
and
wine,
with the world on the edge
of World War II.
I hadn’t yet been
confused by the
female, I was a virgin
and I wrote from 3 to
5 short stories a week
and they all came
back
from The New Yorker, Harper’s
The Atlantic Monthly.
I had read where
Ford Madox Ford used to paper
his bathroom with his
rejection slips
but I didn’t have a
bathroom so I stuck them
into a drawer
and when it got so stuffed with them
I could barely
open it
I took all the rejects out
and threw them
away along with the
stories.

still
the old L.A. Public Library remained
my home
and the home of many other
bums.
we discreetly used the
restrooms
and the only ones of
us
to be evicted were those
who fell asleep at the
library
tables–nobody snores like a
bum
unless it’s somebody you’re married
to.

well, I wasn’t quite a
bum. I had a library card
and I checked books in and
out
large
stacks of them
always taking the
limit
allowed:
Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence,
E.E. Cummings, Conrad Aiken, Fydor
Dos, Dos Possos, Turgenev, Gorky,
H.D., Freddie Nietzsche, Art
Schopenhauer, John
Steinbeck
Hemingway… and so
forth…

I always expected the librarian
to say, “you have good taste, young
man…”

but the old fried and wasted
bitch didn’t even know who she
was
let alone
me.

but those shelves held
tremendous grace: they allowed
me to discover
the early Chinese poets
like Tu Fu and Li
Po
who could say more in one
line than most could say in
thirty or
a hundred.
Sherwood Anderson must have
read
these
too.

I also carried the Cantos
in and out
and Ezra helped me
strengthen my arms if not
my brain.

that wondrous place
the L.A. Public Library
it was a home for a person who had
a
home of
hell
BROOKS TOO BROAD FOR LEAPING
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
POINT COUNTER POINT
THE HEART IS THE LONELY HUNTER

James Thurber
John Fante
Rabelais
de Maupassant

some didn’t work for
me: Shakespeare, G.B. Shaw,
Tolstoy, Robert Frost, F. Scott
Fitzgerald

Upton Sinclair worked better for
me
than Sinclair Lewis
and I considered Gogol and
Drieser complete

but such judgments come more
from a man’s
forced manner of living than from
his
reason.

the old L.A. Public
most probably kept me from
becoming a
suicide
a bank
robber
a
wife-
beater
a butcher or a
motorcycle policeman
and even though some of these
might be fine
it is
thanks
to my luck
and my way
that this library was
there when I was
young and looking to
hold onto
something
when there seemed very
little
about.

and when I opened the
newspaper
and read of the fire
which
destroyed the
library and most of
its
contents

I said to my
wife: “I used to spend my
time
there…”

THE PRUSSIAN OFFICER
THE DARING YOUNG MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN.

par **kenavo** Sam 13 Nov - 1:14

/

Factotum

Présentation de l’éditeur
Les péripéties rocambolesques d'Hank, alter ego de Bukowski.
Hank Chinaski, un marginal solitaire et alcoolique chronique, raconte sa vie d'errance, de La Nouvelle-Orléans à Los Angeles, de New York à Philadelphie, passant d'un petit boulot à l'autre, d'une femme à l'autre, d'une bouteille à l'autre.
Et Bukowski, via les pérégrinations de son alter-ego, bâtit sa légende. Cette litanie de boulots minables, de chambres sordides, d'étreintes glauques, de saouleries mornes, de bagarres d'ivrognes, de vexations, de rigolades, sera la matière inépuisable d'une œuvre qui, avec sa vitalité consolante, sa folle énergie, ira jusqu'à brancher Hollywood.

Oui, je sais, je suis vraiment un public trop facile Cool

Quand j’ai vu cette pub de chez 10/18, j’avais envie de tenter un de ses romans… même si je m’étais dit de ne pas franchir le pas vers ses écrits à part ses poèmes.

Au revoir les promesses et bienvenue la curiosité.

Malheureusement je ne peux pas utiliser l’excuse « je ne le savais pas »… mais je ne suis vraiment pas une lectrice pour ses romans.

Je veux bien croire qu’un tel livre a fait le buzz dans une Amérique tellement pudique. Publié en 1975, c’est à peine qu’ils avaient survécu au mouvement Love&Peace des Hippies fin ‘60.

Tout le côté sexe ne m’a même pas troublé, c’est surtout cette recherche de quelque chose à boire (et pas de l’eau!). Moi qui ne boit déjà pas, j’ai eu vraiment un soucis de suivre ce personnage dans sa quête du prochain drink…

Je vais garder ses poèmes mais ses romans ne sont pas ma tasse de thé.

par Aeriale Sam 13 Nov - 10:48

Je te comprends tout à fait, Kenavo!

Même si je bois plus de vin ou de champ’s que toi ( c’est pas difficile:-) j’avoue que suivre les dérives alcoolisées de certains auteurs m’a souvent lassée.

Le dernier en date était Shuggie Bain de Douglas Stuart ( sur son enfance et le problème d’addiction de sa mère) et j’ai dû passer un cap pour apprécier l’ensemble. C’est pas toujours évident. Avec Bukowski, je n’ai pas essayé

par **kenavo** Dim 14 Nov - 5:47

Aeriale a écrit:Même si je bois plus de vin ou de champ’s que toi ( c’est pas difficile:-) j’avoue que suivre les dérives alcoolisées de certains auteurs m’a souvent lassée.

tout à fait... -lasser- est le bon mot... je n'ai vraiment rien contre le fait que quelqu'un boit un verre contrairement à ce que les personnages de roman fument, je n'aime plus du tout Cool

mais quand cela devient l'essentiel de l'action, non, merci...

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