Victor Infante wrinkles his nose re Bukowski--and my poem about the latter.

http://ocvictor.livejournal.com/789438.html
[in the link above, Mr. Infante basically agrees with Tim Green of the litmag RATTLE that Bukowski wasn't the world's greatest human being and not all that great of a poet/author. Green--who has a way of making one cringe in this particular piece whether or not one agrees with him--plays the You Are Banned game with a poster in the comments section--at one point, adding the new twist of Start Your Own Blog. All in all, it's another round of the old argument "must an artist be an exemplary human as well?" superseding any detailed debate over what Bukowski actually put on paper. ]

NEVER MET BUKOWSKI

I never met Bukowski.

I didn’t even know who he was
until I saw BARFLY in 1987
when Mickey Rourke played the fictional Bukowski
with a voice blending Marlon Brando with the cartoon character Snagglepuss.

In 1993,
I went to a rare bookstore in Hollywood
and knocked on the door
and a grizzled old man answered
and barked out WE’RE CLOSED TODAY
and it was awhile later that I found out
that the grumpy old man
was someone who knew Bukowski.

Sometime around 1999,
I read one of Bukowski’s poems
onstage at the now-long-dead Poetic License reading
at the Moondog Café on Melrose
and the pretty girl who was a waitress there
paid attention to me for the first time.
I told her that it wasn’t one of my poems,
but one of Bukowski’s
and it was the last time she paid attention to me.

During this same period,
I met Frances Dean Smith aka francEyE
who, with Bukowski, created their daughter Marina.
francEyE started out liking me
until I argued with an Eminent Poet friend of hers.
I can tell you this:
I liked francEyE for who she was
and didn’t annoy her with questions
about what kind of man Bukowski was.

Bukowski, never shy about displaying his honesty,
often railed about bad poetry and bad poets.
And, if I had met Bukowski
and showed him one of my poems,
he likely would have grabbed me,
ripped me in two
and sucked the marrow out of me
like a diner eating crab legs
at a seafood restaurant.

Afterwards, he would have called me a bad poet
and said that anyone telling me otherwise
was blowing smoke up my ass.

Maybe it’s a good thing
that I never met Bukowski.