Poemranker [Replying] Mon May 20 10:16:48 PDT 2024

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Off-work Sundays we walked to tide pools, shoppers at a bazaar: here sea glass, here miss, here the urchin, here a clavicle of deadwood scrubbed white, bullâs-eye seastar, here black hobnailed rocks. The ocean turning pat, obsequious, eager to make the sale, held out a short arms-length of argyle, lace, some silk handwork I was sure turning over would show newsprint, whirled stains, some fakery. We walked, bored sunstruck tourists, full as moons, until the tide all in a tantrum klar-ed its buoy-bells, counted, recounted, charged the market, curled back, counted and again swept up, to end things. We welcomed it in.

Dovina

8-Feb-06/2:08 PM

You are being instructed in the various styles of poetry as classified by FORM. I read a very short poem once and liked it because I felt a kinship with a man known for his heavy drinking and rude lifestyle. I was impressed that two humans, very different, could come together on this poem of his.

ART by Charles Bukowski
âAs the spirit wanes, the form appears.â

I remembered my own spirit waning after work, as I relaxed with a glass of wine and witnessed the appearance of âformsâ that eventually found expression on paper. It seemed that Bukowski, too, had caught the notion that the cares of life and business inhibit creativity, the very notion I was feeling, but had never written as succinctly as his brief poem.

A year or so later I listened to a recording of Bukowski. He said that he wrote the poem to express angst at a trend among the poets in his circle. As the spirit of a poet wanes and becomes like a dead thing, a poet turns to forms such as sonnets, villanelles and the like to cover his loss and to give the impression of having something to say. He wrote the poem as a slur on poets become erudite. What Bukowski meant and what I interpreted were entirely different. One thing you and Bukowski have is aversion to FORM, and perhaps it should stay that way.

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