Screams From the Balcony (2 page)

 

Jory Sherman, described by Bukowski as “an early talent,” was a poet then living in San Francisco and publishing alongside Bukowski in little magazines like
Epos,
whose editor, Evelyn Thorne, suggested the two men should correspond
(Hank,
p
. 116).

 

[To Jory Sherman]

[April 1, 1960]

Tell the staunch Felicia to hang on in: you are, to my knowledge, the best young poet working in America today. And rejections are no hazard; they are better than gold. Just think what type of miserable cancer you would be today if all your works had been accepted. The beef-eaters, the half-percepted wags who give you the pages and the print have forced you deeper in to show them the sight of light and color. [* * *]

Hell, if you want to read some of my poems, go ahead. I embrace you with luck. But I am tired of them, I am tired of my stuff, and I try very hard not to write anymore. I suppose I might sound like Patchen although I have not read much of him. Jeffers, I suppose, is my god—the only man since Shakey to write the long narrative poem that does not put one to sleep. And Pound, of course. And then Conrad Aiken is so truly a
poet
, but Jeffers is stronger, darker, more exploratatively modern and mad. Of course, Eliot’s gone down, Auden’s gone down, and William C. Williams has completely fallen apart. Do you think it’s age? And E. E. Cummings blanking out. Sherman’s coming on, though, taking them in the stretch, stride by stride, clomp, clomp, clomp, Sherman’s coming on toward the wire and the ugly crowd screams. Bukowski drinks a cheap beer.[* * *]

 

Sheri Martinelli, mentioned in this next and several subsequent letters, was an American artist for whose book Ezra Pound wrote an introduction:
La Martinelli
(Milan, 1956). Bukowski notes, “She wrote heavy letters, downgrading me. Everything was, ‘Ezra said…,’ ‘Ezra did…’ She was said to be a looker. I never met her. Lived in San Francisco
.”

 

[To Jory Sherman]

[ca. April, 1960]

[* * *] Rather like Sheri M. altho when she sent back my poems she tried to relegate me with some rather standard formula and I had to take the kinks out of her wiring. [* * *] The Cantos make fine reading, the sweep and command of the langwidge (my spell) carries it even o’r the thin spots, although I have never been able to read the whole damn thing or remember what I’ve read, but it’s going to last, I guess, just for that reason: a well of Pounding unrecognized.

[* * *] Thanks again for
Beat’d
. Anonymous poem not good because guy thinks he can compromise life. There is no compromise: if you are going to write tv rifleman crap, tv rifleman crap will show in your poems, and if he thinks he’s an old timer at 34, he’d better towel behind the ears and elsewhere too, because Bukowski, who nobody’s heard of will be 40 on August 16th., and Pound who everybody’s heard of will be almost twice that old and has never compromised with anybody, nations or gods or gawkers and has signed his name to everything he has written, not for fame but for establishment of point and stance. Let the baker compromise, the cop and the mailman, some of us must hold the hallowed ground…[* * *]

 

“S & amp; S” is
Scimitar and Song,
whose March 1960 issue prints a Bukowski poem, with a typographical error
.

 

[To Jory Sherman]

[ca. April, 1960]

[* * *] Do you double space your poems? I know that one is supposed to double space stories, articles, etc. for clarity and easy reading but thot poem due to its construction (usually much space), read easy enough singled. And I think a double-spaced poem loses its backbone, it flops in the air. I don’t know: the world is always sniping sniping so hard at the petty rules petty mistakes, I don’t get it, what doesn’t it mean? bitch, bitch, bitch. meanwhile the point going by: is the poem good or bad in your opinion? Rules are for old maids crossing the street.

Saw your poem in
S & S
. [* * *] She messed up my poem-eve instead of eye, but it was a rotter anyway. She’s a very old woman and prints the same type of poesy. Wrote me a letter about how the birds were chirping outside her window, all was peace, men like me who liked to drink and gamble, oh talented but lost. I saw a bird when I was driving home from the track the other day. It was in the mouth of a cat crouched down in the asphalt street, the clouds overhead, the sunset, love and God overhead, and it saw my car and rose, cat-rose insane, stiff back like mad love depravity, and it walked toward the curbing, and I saw the bird, a large grey, flip broken winged, wings large and out, dipped, feathers spread, still alive, cat-fanged; nobody saying anything, signals changing, my motor running, and the wings the wings in my mind and the teeth, grey bird, a large grey.
Scimitar and Song
, yes indeed. Shit. [* * *]

 

The poem “Death Wants More Death” was published in
Harlequin
in 1957. Sherman must have proposed reading it aloud to an audience
.

 

[To Jory Sherman]

[Spring 1960]

[* * *] On “D. Wants More D.,” I am afraid it would disturb an audience a bit too much. My father’s garage had windows in it full of webs, flies and spiders churning blood-death in my brain, and tho I’m told nature has its meaning, I’m still infested with horror, and all the charts and graphs of the chemists and biologists and anthropologists and naturalists and sound-thinking men are nothing to the buzzing of this death.

 

“Crews” is Judson Crews, since 1949 a prolific author of books and pamphlets from the little presses
.

 

[To E. V. Griffith]

April 25, 1960

No, I haven’t seen any of the Crews clip-out type production, and know very little of the mechanics of this sort of thing. But does this mean that a poem must have been published elsewhere in some magazine before it can be included in the chapbook? On much of my published work I only have one magazine and I would not care to tear them up for the chapbook. And you also hold much work of mine that has never been published. I don’t quite know; it is all rather puzzling. And I know that if we had to go after the missing magazines to get the clips it would take long long months, and perhaps many of them could never be acquired.

I wish you could write me a bit more on how this works, for as you can see I am mixed up. What would it cost some other way? Or do they
have
to be published pieces?

The prices seem fair enough and I could go up to the 32 pages if you have enough material to fill them. Perhaps we might add the 2 poems out of
San Francisco Review
#1, and I have some stuff coming out in the
Coastlines
and
Nomad
, due off the press any day now, I’m told. I don’t know if you’ll like it or not. And you’ve probably seen some of my other crap around. I think “Regard Me” in
Nomad
#1 was pretty good, but it’s hard for me to judge my own work and I’d rather leave that task up to you.

Right now I don’t know how many pages you can fill or just whether or not this clip-out method restricts the filling. So I guess we’ll have some more delay while you are kind enough to write me and fill in my ignorance.

Hoping to hear from you soon,

[To E. V. Griffith]

June 2, 1960

Good of you to write or even think chapbook while auto-torn. Like your lineup of poems ok, and should they run into more pages, please do let me know and I will money order you the difference. I would rather send you more than have you cut out a poem you want in there but are restricted on pages. I guess it’s pretty hard to tell how many pages the thing will run at a loose glance like that and you will probably find out from your printer. Let me know how things work out this way on the pages. [* * *]

I just hope you can move a few copies so you won’t get stung too badly on your end of the deal. I have visions of chapbooks stacked in a closet gathering dust and nobody knowing Bukowski and Griffith are alive and I begin to have horrible qualms. Maybe not. Maybe if this works out ok, sometime in the future we can go in on another half and half deal. It seems
very
reasonable since you do all the work and are promoting
another
person’s work and not your own. The money end, from my side of it, seems less than nothing, but I realize that from your end with so many things going, different mags, chapbooks, it can get very very big, mountain-like. Well, hope all is ok, and you needn’t write for a while, I realize you are in tough shape—unless you have some suggestions or et al. I feel pretty good that this thing is going thru, although it’s hard to finally realize. [* * *]

 

Norman Winski was editor of the little magazine
Breakthru.

 

[To Jory Sherman]

June 28, [1960]

[* * *] Winski, he’s been phoning and I’ve been ducking. Jesus, I can’t see any sense in it but I don’t want to hurt his feelings. He pinned me down and I told him I’d be over to his place last night, but at last minute I phoned his wife and told her something had come up, I couldn’t make it. She sounded pretty hurt and in about 10 minutes the phone started ringing, Winski I suppose and I just laid there slugging down the beer. I guess I’m insane, a mess-up. He told me to bring over some of my poems, wanted me to read something. Jesus, I can’t do that sort of thing, Jory!

[* * *] Do, if you see Sheri, tell her I said hello. She wrote me a wonderful 3 page letter bout Pound and things, almost a poem, the whole thing. Deserves answer but I can’t get untracked. [* * *]

[To Jory Sherman]

[July 9, 1960]

u in bed weigh & I am answering right off altho I do not know if I have anything to say but will let the keys roll and see what comes off. not me, I hope. No women around. One lugcow just left, sitting on couch all old out of shape red in face fat, jesus I told her I’m really going to heave a big one, one old big shitsigh when u drag it outa here. I’ll have a brew and fall on the springs and begin to dream sweet dreams, only I did not say it in exactly this manner and she laughed. old women everywhere, lord. [* * *]

Spicer stupid to ask if you have read Lorca. Everybody has read Lorca. Everybody has read anything, everything. Why ask. I hate these meetings. Have u read. oh yeah. he’s good. how about. o yeah. he’s good too. [* * *]

Stan phoned yesterday. told him I was going to races. phone me, see me that night. I didn’t hear. guess he pissed. well, what is there to see…me…old man on couch or edge of chair trying to think of something to say, and all the time everybody thinking, is
this
the guy who wrote those poems? No, it can’t be!

WHAT PEOPLE FORGET IS THAT YOU
WRITE
THE POEM, YOU DON’T
TALK
IT
.

to hell with everybody but Jory Sherman, S. Martinelli, Pound, Jeffers, T. Williams and the racing form. you are not a bastard and I do not like to hear yourself call urself one, and I am not a saint. let’s go with the poem, straight down the stretch to the wire, first. sure.

 

Hearse Chapbook no. 4 was Mason Jordan Mason’s
A Legionere
(1960). Bukowski’s book would be no. 5 in the series
.

 

[To E. V. Griffith]

August 1, 1960

Again the long silence from Eureka, although I see in
Trace
38 you are coming on with more Mason Jordan Mason as fast as Crews can write it, also a couple of more editors. Well, that’s all right. What you do is yours. I hate to bitch, but is anything happening with the
Flower and the Fist etc
. I have told a couple of more magazines, and few people and I am beginning to feel foolish because as you know, this is the second time around with the same act. Let me hear something or other. Stamped self-addressed enclosed.

Marvin Bell and a couple of others seem to think my “Death of a Roach” in
Epos
, Winter 1959, is a pretty good poem? Too late to work it in? More loot? You don’t care for poem? Anyway, I’ll be glad when it’s all over. The thing has become more than a few pages of my poems. It has been going on so long that it has become like a disease, an obsession, purgatory, Alcatraz…. how long has it been? 2 years? 3? Please, E.V., be reasonable. Let’s get this thing out of the way. Let Mason screw his lambs for a while. I am beginning to talk to myself in the mirror.

ps—I see where Witt crossed you up on “Lowdermilk,” having appeared with it in
Decade
1953. How they want their fame! over and over again! instead of writing something new. Frankly, E.V., I’m getting pretty sick of the literary world but I don’t know where else to go. Yeah. I know. I can go to hell. I dropped a hundred and fifty on the ponies Saturday. Riding back on the train drunk, all the women looking at somebody else. Bukowski old and grey and shrunk. all the rivers dry. all the pockets empty. best anyhow, damn it, they haven’t dropped the bomb yet.