Yes, that is a good one aint it.
Little known fact ; Originally instead of "heart" it was "butt" but the publisher change, the world wasn't ready for that yet.
Read it again with the "Butt". Genius!!!!
i don't believe you. you made that up!
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Roll The Dice ~ Bukowski
if you're going to try,
go all the way.
otherwise, don't even start.
if you're going to try,
go all the way.
this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.
go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or 4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance,
of how much you really want to
do it.
and you'll do it
despite rejection and the worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.
if you're going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like that.
you will be alone with the gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.
do it, do it, do it.
do it.
all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
its the only good fight
there is.
"Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities."
-Bukowski
@Tabish,
Simplest way of putting it, refers to writers of the beat generation, they went against conventional writing and consciousness, anti-traditionalisma, anti-conformity. It's more complicated than that; the above is just a basic.
Beat writers included Bukowski, Corso, Di Prima, Waldman, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti along Burroughs and Kerouac
@Amigo,
he was in actuality considered part of the late beat movement or the beat revival of the 1960s his writing takes equally from the free form working mans style of Walt Whitman and the anti-conformist confrontational voice of Alan Ginsberg. i was introduced to him while living on the road when i was 19 by a woman i was crashing with in Nashville Tennessee who suggested since i liked William Burroughs so much i needed to check him out and boy was she right. it wasn't until college that i realized how famous he was as everyone in art school loved his writing.
@Amigo,
what an interesting comment "working class people with genuine character"
@kickycan,
his poetry is by far his most successful writing though the novels are entertaining in their own twisted way they tend to have less to say.
@ncolen,
This thread ran its course a few years ago. I am glad you revived it, because I like Bukowski's writing a great deal.
