[New-Poetry] so you want to be a writer? by Charles Bukowski
TheOldMole
Opus40-01 at opus40.org
Thu Jun 7 11:13:00 EDT 2007
Or, as Berryman told Merwin:
*Berryman*
I will tell you what he told me
in the years just after the war
as we then called
the second world war
don't lose your arrogance yet he said
you can do that when you're older
lose it too soon and you may
merely replace it with vanity
just one time he suggested
changing the usual order
of the same words in a line of verse
why point out a thing twice
he suggested I pray to the Muse
get down on my knees and pray
right there in the corner and he
said he meant it literally
it was in the days before the beard
and the drink but he was deep
in tides of his own through which he sailed
chin sideways and head tilted like a tacking sloop
he was far older than the dates allowed for
much older than I was he was in his thirties
he snapped down his nose with an accent
I think he had affected in England
as for publishing he advised me
to paper my wall with rejection slips
his lips and the bones of his long fingers trembled
with the vehemence of his views about poetry
he said the great presence
that permitted everything and transmuted it
in poetry was passion
passion was genius and he praised movement and invention
I had hardly begun to read
I asked how can you ever be sure
that what you write is really
any good at all and he said you can't
you can't you can never be sure
you die without knowing
whether anything you wrote was any good
if you have to be sure don't write
Chris Stroffolino wrote:
> or maybe the last three lines...
>
> On May 14, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Suzanne Baran wrote:
>
>> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS!
>>
>> On 5/14/07, *Linda Sue Grimes* <suelin7184 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:suelin7184 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> the first three lines are all that is necessary...the rest is
>> mere repetition...
>>
>> respectfully
>> lsg
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> *From:* Anny Ballardini <mailto:anny.ballardini at tin.it>
>> *To:* New Poetry <mailto:new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
>> *Sent:* Monday, May 14, 2007 12:05 PM
>> *Subject:* [New-Poetry] so you want to be a writer? by
>> Charles Bukowski
>>
>> Sent to me by Anna Guterl:
>>
>> *so you want to be a writer?*
>> by *Charles Bukowski*
>>
>>
>> if it doesn't come bursting out of you
>>
>> in spite of everything,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> unless it comes unasked out of your
>>
>> heart and your mind and your mouth
>>
>> and your gut,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if you have to sit for hours
>>
>> staring at your computer screen
>>
>> or hunched over your
>>
>> typewriter
>>
>> searching for words,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if you're doing it for money or
>>
>> fame,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if you're doing it because you want
>>
>> women in your bed,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if you have to sit there and
>>
>> rewrite it again and again,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> if you're trying to write like somebody
>>
>> else,
>>
>> forget about it.
>>
>>
>>
>> if you have to wait for it to roar out of
>>
>> you,
>>
>> then wait patiently.
>>
>> if it never does roar out of you,
>>
>> do something else.
>>
>>
>> if you first have to read it to your wife
>>
>> or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
>>
>> or your parents or to anybody at all,
>>
>> you're not ready.
>>
>>
>> don't be like so many writers,
>>
>> don't be like so many thousands of
>>
>> people who call themselves writers,
>>
>> don't be dull and boring and
>>
>> pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
>>
>> love.
>>
>> the libraries of the world have
>>
>> yawned themselves to
>>
>> sleep
>>
>> over your kind.
>>
>> don't add to that.
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> unless it comes out of
>>
>> your soul like a rocket,
>>
>> unless being still would
>>
>> drive you to madness or
>>
>> suicide or murder,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>> unless the sun inside you is
>>
>> burning your gut,
>>
>> don't do it.
>>
>>
>> when it is truly time,
>>
>> and if you have been chosen,
>>
>> it will do it by
>>
>> itself and it will keep on doing it
>>
>> until you die or it dies in you.
>>
>>
>> there is no other way.
>>
>>
>> and there never was.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Anny Ballardini
>> http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/
>> <http://annyballardini.blogspot.com/>
>> http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=poetshome
>> http://www.moriapoetry.com/ebooks.html
>> I Tell You: One must still have chaos in one to give birth to
>> a dancing star!
>> Friedrich Nietzsche
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> "To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for
>> a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to
>> an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with
>> words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and
>> unconditionally, by Mind at Large— this is an experience of
>> inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual." -
>> Aldous Huxley
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--
Tad Richards
http://www.opus40.org/tadrichards/
http://opusforty.blogspot.com/
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