Jammed In With The People

Yesterday, I gave you Part I, II, and III of my favorite excerpts from Charles Bukowski's The Captain Is Out To Lunch And The Sailors Have Taken Over The Ship. I've got three more marked down for today, and then I'll return to my normal blogging ways.

Hope you all are enjoying this as much as I am.

And if not, fuck off.

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Here's Part IV:

Now I'm tired of writing about poets. But I will add that they are hurting themselves by living as poets instead of as something else. I worked as a common laborer until I was 50. I was jammed in with the people. I never claimed to be a poet. Now I am not saying that working for a living is a grand thing. In most cases it is a horrible thing. And often you must fight to keep a horrible job because there are 25 guys standing behind you ready to take the same job. Of course, it's senseless, of course it flattens you out. But being in that mess, I think, taught me to lay off the bullshit when I did write. I think you have to get your face in the mud now and then, I think you have to know what a jail is, a hospital is. I think you have to know what it feels like to go without food for 4 or 5 days. I think that living with insane women is good for the backbone. I think you can write with joy and release after you've been in the vise. I only say this because all the poets I have met have been soft jellyfish, sycophants. They have nothing to write about except their selfish non-endurance.

Yes, I stay away from the POETS. Do you blame me?


More soon.

JS