Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Crap passing off as Poetry

Jean Genet said Charles Bukowski was the best poet in America. That doesn't say much for the rest of them! I just picked up 'Come On In!' New Poems (Canongate, 2008) by Buk, from the Bassendean library, a collection of poems unpublished at the time of his death. & they should have stayed that way. They are threadbare of any literary value and are just plain bloody awful. I've liked the occasional Buk poem before, and enjoyed the quick sprint through a couple of his easy-to-read novels, but this stuff shows no technique and little thought worth reading. So it is simply there as profit-making product. I see the shelves at my favourite bookshop, Planet Books in Mt Lawley, are full of Buk's books. Maybe the profit from the sale of that shit pays for the slow movers - like Herbert and Lorca, etc. Buk sells well, which goes to prove our education system teachers people to read but not enough to discriminate.
The wild man image still works in rock'n'roll (and has taken many lives) but the wild (wo)man poet image is passe at best.

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