Open Letter to India Uncut (and Admirers of Charles Bukowski)

Dear India Uncut,

Wednesday's post "Don't do it" is ridiculous! Disgusting! Infuriating!

To begin with, that's just about the worst poem I've ever clapped my eyes on. Plain prose with capitals removed and broken up randomly into uneven lines doesn't magically transform itself into poetry. What pretentiousness! Oooh, look at me, I'm a poet because I know how to use the return key!


Free verse does not free the poet from the demands of beauty. Free verse is Ash Wednesday , Gitanjali and all those wonderful pieces in Leaves of Grass.

But yes, taste is subjective. Maybe the sentiment expressed by the poem is worth something -

don't be like so many writers,

don't be like so many thousands of

people who call themselves writers,

don't be dull and boring and

pretentious, don't be consumed with self-

love.

the libraries of the world have

yawned themselves to

sleep

over your kind.

Hmm... Dull and boring.... now what does that remind me of? ... This poem.

Did you perchance take a look at Charlie's bio? It exposes him as the rankest hypocrite:

[In 1941 he] left school and moved to New York City to become a writer. His lack of publishing success at this time caused him to give up writing in 1946 and spurred a ten-year stint of heavy drinking. After he developed a bleeding ulcer, he decided to take up writing again. He worked a wide range of jobs to support his writing, including dishwasher, truck driver and loader, mail carrier, guard, gas station attendant, stock boy, warehouse worker, shipping clerk, post office clerk, parking lot attendant, Red Cross orderly, and elevator operator. He also worked in a dog biscuit factory, a slaughterhouse, a cake and cookie factory, and he hung posters in New York City subways. Bukowski ... began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five.

Many writers develop a certain bitterness towards their more successful (read: published) colleagues, and it is common enough in our circles to hear someone rail against the writing establishment that publishes unworthy crap while ignoring the railer's own genius. I cannot spit without hitting another short story, another avant-garde play, another poem in free verse that spouts black rage against the talentless hacks who insist on writing and using up all the space that should have been reserved for this. Is there any doubt that this poem, this marvellous poem urging others NOT TO WRITE, is of the same breed? What is it that really causes this poet such mortal anguish? Is he unaware that a boring book can be shut?

But the ghost of Hemingway could come down from heaven and tell me I shouldn't write "if [I] have to sit for hours/ staring at [my] computer screen/ or hunched over [my]/ typewriter/ searching for words", and I'd call him a fool. Mostly because Hemingway himself had periods when he wrote excruciatingly slowly (and unbearably well, in sharp contrast to our friend Charlie). But also because who the fuck he is to tell ME? History is rife with examples of writers who slaved, bled, wept and tortured themselves to get the words out, and we are so much the richer for their work. Who was it that said, "Writing is easy. You just put a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter and open a vein." Easy writing makes hard reading. Like that poem.

My favourite quote on writing comes from Stephen King:

You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair--the sense that you can never completely put on the page what's in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.

I'm not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I'm not asking you to be politically correct or cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn't a popularity contest, it's not the moral Olympics, and it's not church. But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner.

That's all.