Bukowski: Issa's Sunday Service, #59 (and #60)

Charles Bukowski is something of an anomaly; whether you hate him or you love him, it would be fair to say he was a major poetic voice of the last 50 years, particularly in the populist sense. This ambivalence is exemplified, I believe, in this week's Issa's Sunday Service cut, "Bukowski" by Modest Mouse.

There's no denying it, Buk was no picnic to be around. There is also no denying that beneath the crustiness, irascibility, and drunkenness, there was a tenderness that shone through the brutal honesty on more occasions than his detractors would allow. Here's a little number where he sidles up to his subject, drifts back, and brings it home:




me and Faulkner
sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it, but
most repeat the same theme over and over again, it's
as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange
and off and important to them, it's done by everybody
because everybody is of a different stripe and form
and each must work out what is before them
over and over again because
that is their personal tiny miracle
their bit of luck

like now as like before and before I have been slowly
drinking this fine red wine and listening to symphony after
symphony from this black radio to my left

some symphonies remind me of certain cities and certain rooms,
make me realize that certain people now long dead were able to
transgress graveyards

and traps and cages and bones and limbs

people who broke through with joy and madness and with
insurmountable force

in tiny rented rooms I was struck by miracles

and even now after decades of listening I still am able to hear
a new work never heard before that is totally
bright, a fresh-blazing sun

there are countless sub-stratas of rising surprise from the
human firmament

music has an expansive and endless flow of ungodly
exploration

writers are confined to the limit of sight and feeling upon the
page while musicians leap into unrestricted immensity

right now it's just old Tchaikowsky moaning and groaning his
way through symphony #5
but it's just as good as when I first heard it

I haven't heard one of my favorites, Eric Coates, for some time
but I know that if I keep drinking the good red and listening
that he will be along

there are others, many others

and so
this is just another poem about drinking and listening to
music

repeat, right?

but look at Faulkner, he not only said the same thing over and
over but he said the same
place

so, please, let me boost these giants of our lives
once more: the classical composers of our time and
of times past

it has kept the rope from my throat

maybe it will loosen
yours

Originally published in "Third Lung Review"

Though not known as a poet of double meaning or ambivalence, those last two lines give one pause, eh?


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This week's featured poem from the Lilliput archive has the unique attribute of meaning something different then when it was originally published in #90, back 13 years ago this month. The difference isn't in the meaning - it means exactly what it meant back then. The difference is to whom it means.

Let's call it a generational thing.

Let's form a circle, old and slightly less old, and belt out a few choruses of something that isn't "We Won't Get Fooled Again," but very much like it.

Something perhaps by Brecht.

With more spittle and less, well, synthesizer.

You know what, it's Bastille Day coming up this week, my nomination for campfire song for the disaffected follows the poem and makes this week's Litrock a two-fer.

First, Mr. Solarczyk's bit of prescient nostalgia:

Post-Politics

Dreaming we'd dreamt
a new dream
we slunk off at dawn
ashamed we'd been
dreaming at all.

Bart Solarczyk

#60 on the Class War Hit Parade:

evening--
he wipes horse shit off his hand
with a chrysanthemum

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS

there are countless sub-stratas of rising surprise from the
human firmament ...

Muddy Waters and Kurt Weill

You know you may have lived a good life when there is room for Muddy Waters (born 4/4/1913) and Kurt Weill (died 4/3/1950). I have been very fortunate, indeed.

Muddy, born McKinley Morganfield, has been a part of my musical experience for over 40 years, discovered in high school, along with Willie Dixon, while studying the record sleeves of, among others, the Rolling Stones. Muddy was the key that opened the door; with Muddy came Willie, and James Cotton, Buddy Guy, Otis Spann, Jimmie Rogers, Pinetop Perkins, Lafayette Leake, Little Walter and back, back to Lightnin' Hopkins and Robert Johnson, and Son House.

It's safe to say that the world would have been a bleaker, more hostile place for me, without these amazing musicians who could touch the soul with a single, aching, sustained note.

Kurt Weill came later, though Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife" had captured the popular imagination early on. I'm sure that I was really first captivated with his music via Judy Collins' recording of "Pirate Jenny" on her seminal In My Life album. His collaborations with Bertolt Brecht are the stuff of legend and certainly what catapulted him into the public eye. The music, however, sustains those lyrics and has been hugely influential, even with someone as seemingly removed as the composer Tom Waits. There have been anthologies of popular interpretations of Weill's music over the years, which can give someone without a classical background an easy way in (it did me). I highly recommend both collections.

So, on this musical Friday, first here's Muddy, with "Crawlin' King Snake" followed by audio of the classic "Got My Mojo Workin':"












Here are three songs by Weill/Brecht sung by Lotte Lenya from a 1962 (or 1958 - I found conflicting dates) episode of the television series "Monitor" filmed by Ken Russell, followed by the scathing contemporary interpretation of "What Keeps Man Alive" by Tom Waits:

making a duet
with my flute...
cry of a deer

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don