Screams From the Balcony

The last thing this book needs is an academic introduction—so the few comments I have to offer will
be
the last thing, relegated to an Afterword.

All that’s required here is an explanation of how the letters have been edited. Working from photocopies of letters in private and public collections available to me, I have transcribed and selected roughly 50% of their contents. My only criterion was vividness and interest of the contents, while trying to minimize repetition. Except for three or four word changes, there has been no censorship or expurgation. Letters from the seventies and later will appear in a subsequent volume, where earlier letters found too late for printing here may also be included. Headnote comments about his correspondents are quoted from notes Charles Bukowski made at my request.

A few reproductions of letters (not all of them transcribed for inclusion) will let readers glimpse what this book cannot render: the total visual effect of many Bukowski letters, often decorated with drawings, painting, or collages. Not only are such visual components regrettably sacrificed, but making a readable text has also meant imposing some regularity on Bukowski’s spacing, spelling, and the like. There is no way these things could be fully preserved in setting type, in any case. And after a few instances (some of which I’ve preserved), typos grow distracting. But to give the flavor, I have presented a couple of representative letters verbatim and uncorrected.

Other editorial changes are regularizing of dates and the omission of most salutations and signoffs. For emphasis and for titles in his letters, Bukowski often typed in ALL CAPS. In a book these are hard on the eye. Here, when they are for emphasis, we print them as
SMALL CAPS
; when they name titles, we print them in regular title format: italics for books, quotes for separate poems or stories. I have indicated editorial omissions by asterisks in square brackets. A few editorial additions are similarly bracketed. A minimum of explanatory material has been included preceding some letters. References to
Hank
are to the biography of Bukowski by Neeli Cherkovski. “Dorbin” refers to Sanford Dorbin’s
A Bibliography of Charles Bukowski
(Black Sparrow, 1969).

The title for this volume was supplied by Charles Bukowski.

 

In mid-1958, the time of the earliest letters available, Bukowski had recently begun working in the post office in a permanent position as a mail sorter, after an earlier spell of three years as a mail carrier. Not long before, he had resumed writing after a ten-year interval, and by now had a handful of little magazine publications. E. V. Griffith, editor of
Hearse
magazine, had agreed to do a chapbook. But the delay in publication was to test Bukowski’s patience to the limit. He finally received his author’s copies in October, 1960
.

Until May 1, 1964, Bukowski’s letters are dated from 1623 N. Mariposa Avenue, Los Angeles 27, California
.

(The following letter is printed in full.)

 

[To E. V. Griffith]
June 6, 1958

Dear E. V. Griffith:

Here are some more. Thanks for returning others. No title ideas yet. Post office pen no damn good. Trying to say—no title ideas yet.

Fire, Fist and Bestial Wail
? No. Thought about using title of one of my short stories—“Confessions of a Coward and Man Hater.” No.

“The Mourning, Morning Sunrise.” No.

I don’t know, E. V.

I don’t know.

Anyhow, I’m thinking about it.

Sincerely,
Charles Bukowski

 

Gil Orlovitz (1918-1973) frequently published pamphlets of verse
.

 

[To E. V. Griffith]

July 9, 1958

I still think
Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail
just about covers the nature of my work. If you object to this title I’ll send along some others.

I’m quite pleased with your selections. “The Birds,” which I had just written, I like personally but I found others would not like this type of thing because of its philosophical oddity. Poem, by the way, is factual and not fictional. All of my stuff you have is, except “59 and drinks” & “[Some Notes of Dr.] Klarstein.”

Thanks for sending
Arrows of Longing
.

As to Orlovitz, I find him at his best, very good. Certainly his delivery seems original.

Do you have my short stories about anywhere?

I suppose I mentioned I unloaded one at
Coastlines
and a couple at
Views
(Univ. of Louisville), but I think what you picked is pretty much my best stuff, and I have been honored to have been singled out by you and gathered up this way.

 

Griffith published Carl Larsen’s
Arrows of Longing
as Hearse Chapbook no. 1 in 1958. He was also the editor of
Gallows,
in the first issue of which Bukowski had two poems printed
.

 

[To E. V. Griffith]

August 10, 1959

Verification of existence substantiated.

I am alive and drinking beer. As to the literary aspect, I have appeared recently in
Nomad
#1,
Coastlines
(spring ’59),
Quicksilver
(summer ’59) and
Epos
(summer ’59). I haven’t submitted further to you because I have sensed that you are overstocked.

There are 10 or 12 other magazines that have accepted my stuff but as you know there is an immense lag in some cases between acceptance and publication. Much of this type of thing makes one feel as if he were writing into a void. But that’s the literary life, and we’re stuck with it.

I am looking forward, of course, to the eventual chapbook, and I hope it moves better for you than the Larsen thing. Of course, I don’t consider Carl Larsen a very good writer and am always surprised when anyone does. But to hell with Larsen, now where was I? Oh yes, I have never received a copy of
Gallows
and since you say I have a couple in it, I would like a copy. Could you send one down?

Well, there really isn’t much more to say…the horses are running poorly, the women are f/ruffing me up, the rent’s due, but as I said, I’m still alive and drinking beer. Glad to get your card. Don’t forget to send me to the
Gallows
. Thanx.

[To E. V. Griffith]

October 3, 1959

Dashing this off before going to the track with a couple of grifters. I hate these Saturdays—all the amateurs are out there with the greed glittering in their eyes, half-drunk on beer, pinching the women, stealing seats, screaming over nothing. [* * *]

Thanks for card and news of
Hearse
fame in
Nation
and
Poetry
(Ch.). Can’t seem to find the correct issue of
Nation
for this but am still trying. Success is wonderful if we can achieve it without whoring our concepts. Keep publishing the good live poets as in the past.

[To E. V. Griffith]

early December, 59

Are you still alive?

Everything that’s happening to me is banal or venal, and perhaps later a more flowery and poesy versification—right now drab and bare as the old-lady-in-the-shoe’s panties.

I don’t know, there’s one hell of a lot of frustration and fakery in this poetry business, the forming of groups, soul-handshaking, I’ll print you if you print me, and wouldn’t you care to read before a small select group of homosexuals?

I pick up a poetry magazine, flip the pages, count the stars, moon, and frustrations, yawn, piss out my beer and pick up the want-ads.

I am sitting in a cheap Hollywood apartment pretending to be a poet but sick and dull and the clouds are coming over the fake paper mountains and I peck away at these stupid keys, it’s 12 degrees in Moscow and it’s snowing; a boil is forming between my eyes and somewhere between Pedro and Palo Alto I lost the will to fight: the liquor store man knows me like a cousin: he cracks the paper bag and looks like a photograph of Francis Thompson.