Jim Harrison, writing about Charles Bukowski in yesterday's New York Times Book Review:
Thank you, Jim Harrison!
Poets whose "extreme" fans are also nitwits:
Robert Frost
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Shakespeare
I define "extreme" here as being obsessed with an author (poet), acting like they're "yours" when really they are the worst kept literary secret in the history of modern lit., and not making an effort to read beyond "your poet".
I swear, every time I have ever heard someone begin to expound on the virtues of Shakespeare, etc., I have wanted to put my head right through the wall. And, for the record, I like Sylvia Plath. But that's where it ends.
Feel free to add to the list!
Only one cup of coffee into the day = Angela is SNARKY!
Our perceptions of Bukowski, like our perceptions of Kerouac, are muddied by the fact that many of his most ardent fans are nitwits who love him to the exclusion of any of his contemporaries. I would suggest you can appreciate Bukowski with the same brain that loves Wallace Stegner and Gary Snyder.
Thank you, Jim Harrison!
Poets whose "extreme" fans are also nitwits:
Robert Frost
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Shakespeare
I define "extreme" here as being obsessed with an author (poet), acting like they're "yours" when really they are the worst kept literary secret in the history of modern lit., and not making an effort to read beyond "your poet".
I swear, every time I have ever heard someone begin to expound on the virtues of Shakespeare, etc., I have wanted to put my head right through the wall. And, for the record, I like Sylvia Plath. But that's where it ends.
Feel free to add to the list!
Only one cup of coffee into the day = Angela is SNARKY!
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2 comments:
Come on, now. Who is an "extreme" fan of Robert Frost? A lot of people like Frost, and a lot of people don't, but you could say the same thing about Eliot or Pound.
There's a Ginsberg-prophetic mode that certainly inspires fierce devotion: William Blake, Walt Whitman, Arthur Rimbaud. And a tough-guy schtick that doesn't always extend to poets: Bukowski, Hemingway, Henry Miller, Raymond Carver, Chuck Palahniuk.
Note: I like all of these people. Except maybe Palahniuk, not so much.
Hey Tim--
Check out my "expansion" over at Myspace. Perhaps I've clarified it.
What i really mean is discovering one of these poets and then stopping there--never getting past a very misguided and surface understanding of Bukowski, Plath, Frost, Ginsberg.
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