T
Pinterest (e.g. “love her but leave her wild”) but, even in his
Seminar Paper
Web Exclusives
HE NEW WAVE OF
CONFESSIONAL PO-
ETRY: The Mod-
ern-Age Internet
Poets and their
Forms of Self-
Expression
Ariela Herč ek
This article serves as a thematic overview of internet poetry
between 2010 and 2017, paying closer attention to the newly-
popularized poets and themes. With regard to this,
intermediality in terms of slam poetry and spoken word
albums as well as intertextuality will also be discussed.
To understand the phenomenon of the internet poetry and
even more so the mass production of it, we have to first
establish a rough timeline. Starting broadly with 2010,
internet poetry gained new grounds to dwell on, with an
emphasis on the role of social media platforms which became
widely popularized around this time. At first, these were
mostly Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, but new ones kept
appearing. Among these, Tumblr can be perceived as the
most important, since many of the poets I will later on
discuss in greater detail started out as teenage bloggers.
Gaining readership thus became easier through these
eponymous blogs. If we move on to connect these social
media platforms with the direct impact they have had on
poetry production, we see that, mostly, the internet
successfully amassed new readers who before this time did
not know anything about poetry. And going even further:
seeing that they could find financial and social gain in writing
poetry, more and more people started writing poetry and
then sharing it. For the ones who had been writing before
this new trend emerged, this presented to them an
opportunity to share their work with complete strangers,
and, consequently, to feel less pressure and fear of being
recognized and criticized. Anonymity therefore represents a
major positive side to internet poetry, with, for example,
poets only signing the bottom of their poems with their
initials. One such famous case of an anonymous poet is
Atticus, who became very popular on Instagram and
fame, still refuses to reveal who he really is, adding fuel to fire
of his adoring fans.
However, all these positive sides to the modern-age internet
poetry have also resulted in the hyperproduction of poetic
texts, where many classic writers or people who swear on the
quality of classical literary works would argue that mass
production of poetry consequently means poetry of lower
quality standards. As opposed to this, I would like to cite a
part of an article written by a poet Kenneth Goldsmith: “Web
was a distinct rupture in the way that poetry was made: after
the Web, we would never write the same way again”
(Goldsmith, 2015).
This implies that, perhaps, the time needed to write quality
poetry has shortened by a wide margin, which does not
necessarily mean that it is not quality work – our perceptions
of what “quality” in literature constitutes as are constantly
changing based on our socio-economic environment. The
question then remains how to spot real poetic talent and how
to decide what constitutes as quality poetry since poetry
production has been changing so much as a consequence of
the internet.
Today, the true critic of poetry is still the public, but online
magazines have stepped up to fill the role of the middle-link
between amateur poets and the ones who are well on their
way to becoming published. The number of such magazines
has increased drastically in the past 10 years. They are a good
source of quality poetry and a great reference for later
submissions to publishing houses. One of the most
important reasons why there are so many online magazines
is that each one has their own concept of what quality is.
Each has a smorgasbord of poetic themes they accept, and
this allows almost every emerging or established poet to find
a magazine that best fits their personal preferences.
Poetry that has surfaced on the worldwide web in the past 7
years has been as diverse as one would expect when the
opportunity to publish publicly without any fees comes in
the form of uncensored and unlimited medium such as the
internet. This has in turn produced thousands of first-time
published poets, by way of publications in online poetry
magazines.
However, this article focuses mostly on what I call the “New
Wave of Confessional Poetry”, made popular by the use of
internet. Poets who create in this way seek inspiration from
the original Confessional Poets like Sylvia Plath, Anne
Sexton, Adrienne Rich etc. The themes which both
generations of confessional poets use are closely intertwined,
but the early confessional poets were much subtler in telling
their stories. This may be the consequence of the
simplification of language used online, a direct effect of
technology and the wish to save more time. It is also possible
to connect this to the shortness of most new confessional
poems, however there are some disparities here. The change
in the poetic language will be discussed later in the article. It
is best to start with a short overview of the online poetry
community’s activity in the past 8 years.
The years from 2011 to 2013, saw the first-time published
chapbooks and poetry collections of the poets that are now
well-recognized in the online poetry community. Some of
the more recognized poets published in these years are
Meggie Royer (Unrequited, Survival Songs) and Clementine
von Radics (As Often as Miracles), as well as Nayyirah
Waheed (salt.), who is sometimes said to be the most popular
and quoted poet on social media (Henderson, 2017). These
poets were followed in 2014 by Caitlyn Siehl (What We
Buried), Ashe Vernon (Belly of the Beast), Trista Mateer
(Honeybee), Azra Tabassum (Shaking the Trees), and many
others. The years 2014 and 2015 bore the most fruit, with the
poetic activity spiking, as well as the ascent to internet fame
of newly-emerging poets by means of social media platforms.
However, these poets did not just write their poetry for the
world to read – they made sure other poets, newly-emerging
as well as already established ones would have a safe space to
publish their work. As mentioned earlier, online poetry
magazines have played an important part in spreading
quality poetry. Some of these poetry magazines double as
online and printed, whereas others are available strictly
online. I would like to emphasize two online poetry
magazines that were the direct result of these new, young
poets from the start of the decade. Some of these magazines
also double as independent publishing companies, like
Words Dance, founded in 2013 by Amanda Oaks. The poetry
they publish is mostly by marginalized voices. The other
publishing company is Where Are You Press, also founded in
2013 by Clementine von Radics. Where Are You Press focuses
on the voices of young women, people of color, and other
marginalized voices. Many of their authors have found their
own audiences through blogs or spoken word. Another
interesting poetry magazine was founded in 2015 by Meggie
Royer: Persephone’s Daughters. It is dedicated to
empowering women who have experienced various forms of
abuse and degradation. These are some of the most
important online magazines, not only because the editors are
young poets (mostly aged between 20 and 30), but also
because they give marginalized voices opportunity to express
themselves in a safe space. In order to offer a clear
presentation of why these poetry magazines are important,
not just for the poetry community but for women as well, the
submit-page entry for Words Dance Publishing is attached
below.
“At Words Dance, we want visceral & trenchant
writing. We like Poems that sneak up on you. Poems
that make out with you. Poems that bloody your
mouth just to kiss it clean. Poems that bite the
inside of your cheek so you spend all day tonguing
the wound. Poems that vandalize your heart. Poems
that act like a tin can phone connecting you to your
childhood. Fire Alarm Poems. Glitterbomb Poems.
Jailbreak Poems. Poems that could marry the land
or the sea; that are both the hero & the villain.
Poems that are the matches when there is a city-
wide power outage. Poems that throw you
overboard just to dive in & save your ass. Poems
that push you down on the stoop in front of history’s
door screaming at you to knock. Poems that are soft
enough to fall asleep on. Poems that will still be
clinging to the walls inside of your bones on your
90th birthday. We like poems. Submit yours.”
(Words Dance Publishing, n.d.)
An advice to authors considering to publish in Words Dance
doubles as a poem – in all its juxtapositions, hungry rhythms
of everyday life, and metaphors of nature as human body or
human body as nature, this submit page specifies what kind
of poems they search for by writing a poem about it. This
serves as a new way of appealing to publishing authors to
send their work that reminisces of the submit page entry – a
very clever way of doing business when time is considered
sacrosanct and so few of the poets actually read through past
issues of magazines in order to find out what the magazine
expects of their submissions.
However, the importance of these newly constructed online
poetry magazines and publishing houses is not only in the
way they present themselves, but also in what kind of poems
they publish and what kind of authors they most want to
represent. Take for example this part of Where Are You Press
submit page entry:
As is often pointed out, when a white man writes of
his own life, he is describing the human condition,
when anyone else does it, it is “genre-work” or seen
as indulgent. We are seeking to change that.
(Where Are You Press, n.d.)
These words are a telling representation of how feminism has
been central in the poetic community in the last decade,
striving to give voice to the previously voiceless, to bring
ostracized communities to the forefront – to, in a way, utter
what has been unutterable for centuries under societal
oppression and injustices. From this perspective, online
poetry magazines that work under a rule of publishing
anyone who needs to tell a story are a stark contrast to older
poetry magazines which publish mostly already-published
authors and require a submission fee, as well as rarely publish
new or emerging authors.
To link this to some of the themes I mentioned earlier, there
is a definite pattern among these new confessional poets.
They write uncensored about their personal human
experience, leaving no place for beautifying their stories with
unneeded metaphors. This is a change from the confessional
poets of the 20th Century. It is quite clear that the society
now allows, cherishes and encourages such writing, whereas
it was quite promiscuous of a woman in the 20th Century to
write about sexuality, abuse, and mental illness. For the poets
of the 21st Century, however, these themes are at the center
of human existence and should be present in everyday
literary and non-literary discourse. Most prominently the
themes in the New Wave of Confessional Poetry copy those
that were brought into focus by the Confessional poets:
depression/mental illness, love, death, self-harm, abuse,
feminism, and sexuality and gender identity, the last being a
new theme brought into focus by recent social changes that
allow more freedom of self-identification. The retelling of
these old themes however, is much more “brutal” in this new
wave. To illustrate this in context of sexuality and sexual
liberation, these examples of Trista Mateer’s verses provides
a good example:
 “I stop masturbating because it
makes me cry.
I make bad art and keep it to
myself. I make bad art and
share it with the internet.” (Quote Catalog, n.d.)
“And this wasn’t supposed to be
a fucked up poem but it’s turning into a fucked up
poem
because I haven’t been able to
cum in three years
without thinking of his hips
sliding into mine: like first
base,
like second base, like third
base,
like home.” (Quote Catalog, n.d.)
30 years ago, such verses would be deemed inappropriate. It
is therefore clearly visible that some of the social changes
that have taken place throughout the 20th Century and until
now have changed how people perceive self-expression; not
just in literature but also in everyday language and situations.
The society’s attitude towards mental illness is changing too,
and new confessional poets have been very expressive about
the deromanticizing of mental illness and addictions. Ashe
Vernon’s poem Vincent is a befitting example of the poetry
community's opposition to romanticizing mental illness and
self-harm. Attached below are a few examples from this
poem that highlight this issue.
"when they talk about the tortured genius,
somebody always brings up van gogh—
how he swallowed yellow paint because
he wanted to put the sunshine inside himself.
/…/
look at all the poets who killed themselves
what would their work have been without their depression?
it’s it beautiful, isn’t it sad?
as if depression is a parlor trick—
pull it out at parties, impress all your friends.
/…/
it is the least beautiful thing i’ve ever seen
and we call it the mark of an artist
to stand in the center of an ocean
and see nothing but desert.
to be seated at a feast, but still
swallowing sand.
depression is the yellow paint, the yellow paint,
the yellow paint, the yellow paint, the
yellow paint, the yellow paint, the yellow
paint, the yellow paint, the yellow paint—
/…/
and they say, “without his illness, we
never would have gotten all—this.”
because they value his art more than his sanity
because god forbid you lead a happy life
and leave nothing to remember you by." (Vernon, 2018)
From Molly King’s honors thesis Diagnosis and Treatment of
Sylvia Plath and Virginia Wolf, the author states on page 13
that “It is often romanticized that one must be mad in order
to be a creative prodigy.” When we look at Vernon’s poem
Vincent, we see that her verses run in parallel with this
societal perception of a “tortured genius”, to borrow Vernon’s
words. We also see that Vernon’s Vincent works fluently to
oppose the perception of not only contemporary poetry of
the 21st century, but also the works of the original
confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, who has often been
romanticized for being mentally ill and committing suicide.
However, Plath also idealized mental illness to the point
where it allowed further romanticization. “Plath articulated
multiple accounts of suicide ideation in her fiction and her
journals, as well as suicide attempts. Plath perceived death as
an act of courage and an escape from her depression.” (King,
2018) Consequently, some of these dark thoughts translated
into her poetry, whereas modern-age internet poets try to
starkly protest this kind of writing in order to create a safe
poetry community.
Furthermore, another change that has surfaced with the new
wave of confessional poets is the difference in how they use
language – it has become condensed, simplified, a sort of
telling-it-like-it-is method behind it. What stayed even from
the poets of the second half of the 20th century is the
sometimes unusual metaphors. They remind us of the style
of Allen Ginsberg – the clashing juxtapositions and the
seemingly disconnected concepts gaining exquisite meaning,
especially because the style with the new wave of
confessional poets is so personal that anybody can find a
little bit of their own story in it, as Salma Deera eloquently
described,
“the centre of every poem is this:
i have loved you. i have had to deal with that.”
(Deera, 2015)
Another prominent feature of this poetic style is the length.
Poems of the 20th Century were usually longer, as opposed
to the shortening of the modern poems into a length
befitting a text message or a Twitter post. This is a fascinating
cause-and-effect sample: because we are the generation that
grew up with technology, we learned to shorten and simplify
our messages. And because of this, we have transferred this
mode of writing onto our poetry. We only need to say exactly
what we mean. No embellishments, because there is simply
no time for them. Perhaps the best example of this mode of
writing is Rupi Kaur’s poetry. Her two poetry collections milk
& honey and the sun and her flowers are a wonderful
representation of how powerful poetry can be even if there
are only short sentences and even if the poem is simple. An
interesting idea to mull over is that maybe the shortness of
her poems allows for wider audiences, in which case we could
say that poetic taste of the younger generations has adapted
with regard to how they interact with the internet – it has
often been said that internet and social media in general have
shortened the attention span and cognitive functions in
teens, which makes it possible for us to attribute the
popularity of short poems to this psychological
phenomenon. Alas, shorter attention span might not be the
only reason for the shortening of poetic texts. Most of
contemporary internet poets use platforms like Instagram to
share their poetry with the world. Instagram only allows for
small square photos, and if a poet wishes to publish their
verses, they have to make them shorter in order for them to
be visible.
Although using Instagram to publish poetry is one of the
most logical explanations, there are other forms of poetry
that have surfaced because of the internet, and they allow us
to overview new forms that have emerged based on
intermediality. In 2014 there was a collection of short love
poems called Literary Sexts by Amanda Oaks and Caitlyn
Siehl. The poems are in the form of short text messages using
poetic language and metaphors in order to express sexuality
and romance. To continue, intermediality is also present in
the form of slam poetry videos, shared widely over the web
by the use of YouTube, with poets such as Andrea Gibson and
Neil Hilborn reaching worldwide fame. There are also
younger poets who are frequent participants in slam poetry
events, for example Alex Dang and Blythe Baird. Some of the
most recognized slam poetry videos on the internet
nowadays are Neil Hilborn’s OCD, and Andrea Gibson’s
Honey, which is also a curious mix of not only poetry and
video platform, but the additional inclusion of live
background music, which further illustrates the importance
of intermediality in contemporary poetry.
A similar form of slam or spoken-word poetry that has gained
popularity lately is spoken-word songs or albums, like
Dandelion Hands’s How to Never Stop Feeling Sad or
flatsound’s album Sleep. This type of spoken word has
musical background, which enables a thorough emotional
connection with the reader, especially because the music is
often melancholy.
Another trend in online poetry of the past few years has been
dictionary poetry, for example Keaton St. James, who became
popular via Tumblr. The following dictionary prose poem is
from his collection Growing, self-published on Issuu.
milk tooth
noun
plural: milk teeth
1. we suck summer air into our lungs. empty glass
bottles on the porch steps, orange ladybugs curled
in the windowsills, strawberry stains on our hands
and mouths, our laughter so golden-sweet. love
looks like dandelions in bloom or the sweat
sticking to our shoulder blades.
2. say deciduous. say bloodstains on our pillowcases
and scabbed shins. say waking in the dark to a coin
under the tongue. say soft limbs. say tug and strain
of growing. say growing. say molting. say this pain
will pass.
(St. James, 2016)
Keaton St. James’s poetry speaks about growing up, about
love and childhood and how vulnerable we can be if we allow
ourselves to express our feelings. A modern approach to his
theme of love is an openly homosexual love – his poems often
express that the subject of his affection is a boy, in addition
to Keaton describing himself as a gay trans poet man on his
Tumblr page, which is also extremely important for the
contemporary discussion on gender identity and gender
pronouns. In the age of political correctness at its highest
until now, people have started to preemptively take care that
others know which pronouns to refer to them by – Keaton St
James therefore wants others to use ‘he/him’, but there are
many cases in which the preferred pronoun is ‘they’. Gender
identity has become a prevalent theme in this new-age
poetry and, together with sexual orientation and liberation,
takes a stand against the societal values of patriarchy – a
topic which is intrinsically present in modern feminist
ideologies.
Feminism works as a dominant theme in today’s poetry,
especially by women authors. It is the undercurrent to poetic
discussion of sex, gender, race, and expression of love. Most
notable examples of this can be found in Rupi Kaur’s poetry,
which deals with the topics of rape, negative body image,
societal expectations for women, and other prominent issues
of feminism.
“the rape will
tear you
in half
but it
will not
break you”
(Kaur 2015, 26)
“you tell me to quiet down cause
my opinions make me less beautiful
but i was not made with a fire in my belly
so i could be put out
i was not made with a lightness on my tongue
so i could be easy to swallow
i was made heavy
half blade and half silk
difficult to forget and not easy
for the mind to follow.”
(Kaur 2015, 30)
The reading of Rupi Kaur’s collection milk and honey
reminisces of reading poetry by Meggie Royer, author of
Survival Songs and The No You Never Listened to. Royer
frequently uses her poems to express conflicting emotions
about her experience of rape and sexual abuse. Her poetry is
honest, full of insecurity and distrust, but, on the other hand,
imbued with hope and salvation, like in the poem language
is the antithesis of feeling:
“On the first day of creative writing class,
our professor asks us to elaborate on the connection between
language and feeling; we go around the room one at a time.
The red-haired girl in the lacy dress raises her arm high
enough
so that we can all see her scars, the white skin of her wrist
like the cool porcelain of a bathtub, sliced into with an X-acto
knife.
Language is the antithesis of feeling, she says,
her voice like a deer that’s been run over by a semi
and knows it’s not going to make it,
and the professor nods, spreads his arms wide in front of the REFERENCES
blackboard,
Deera, Salma. 2015. “Salma Deera: Quotes.” Goodreads. Accessed
a pterodactyl opening its wings, the sound of a heart being
March 9, 2019. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8162749-the-
cracked open with a hammer, a body falling from a high
centre-of-every-poem-is-this-i-have-loved
window
into frozen meadows below. Another boy responds. Goldsmith, Kenneth. 2015. “Post-Internet Poetry Comes of Age”. The
New Yorker. Accessed March 3, 2019.
No, he says. Language is a synonym for feeling.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/post-internet-
He pulls up his sleeves too.”
poetry-comes-of-age
(Royer, 2013)
Henderson, Melissa. 2017. “The Best Poems from Instagram’s Favorite
Royer mostly writes about rape, alcoholism, miscarriage, Nayyirah Waheed”. Jet Magazine. Accessed March 8, 2019.
depression and anxiety, as well as suicide, self-harm and https://www.jetmag.com/life/best-poems-instagrams-favorite-
other mental disorders; a plethora of essential feminist nayyirah-waheed/

discourse that sheds light on the inner workings of families, Kaur, Rupi. 2015. milk and honey. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel
relationships, and how it is to be a woman in today’s society Publishing.
in general.
King, Molly, "Diagnosis and Treatment of Sylvia Plath and Virginia
Woolf " (2018). Honors Theses. 539.
Feminist rhetoric is also present in poems that have strong
https://encompass.eku.edu/honors_theses/539/
intertextual ties to Greek mythology, particularly visible in
poems that deal with the myths of Persephone, Medusa and Michalleni, Daniella. n.d. “Persephone Speaks.” Tumblr. Accessed
other women of Greek mythology that have suffered from March 9, 2019.
https://66.media.tumblr.com/ec9973cd44bb117252a7d1c45cbc23d5/t
patriarchal society and sexual abuse. In the poem Persephone
umblr_p5psfjBnFI1x5ps99o1_500.png
Speaks by Daniella Michalleni, the character of Persephone
fights against false whispers “that [she]’d been dragged” Quote Catalog. n. d. “Trista Mateer: I stop…” Accessed March 9, 2019.
(Michalleni, 2013) to oppose the thinking that women do not https://quotecatalog.com/quote/trista-mateer-i-stop-masturba-
baVzPNa/
act of their own free will, that they are soft and susceptible to
a man. Persephone in Michalleni’s poem makes clear that she Quote Catalog. n.d. “Trista Mateer: And this wasn’t…” Accessed
“asked [Hades] for it” (Michalleni, 2013), assigning great March 9, 2019. https://quotecatalog.com/quote/trista-mateer-and-
weight to her ability to decide for herself, an argument this-wasn-G7P6Eoa/
strongly present in feminism, especially regarding bodily Royer, Meggie. 2013. “language is the antithesis of feeling.” Tumblr.
autonomy (e. g. abortions and body image). Accessed March 9, 2019.
http://writingsforwinter.tumblr.com/post/44192144416/language-is-
Feminism therefore plays an important part in the modern- the-antithesis-of-feeling
age internet poetry, as it has throughout the last 100 years.
St. James, Keaton. 2016. “Growing (Dictionary Poems, Vol. 1).” Issuu.
The major distinction between older and contemporary
pp. 4. Accessed March 9, 2019.
feminist poetry is a more direct approach to writing – the https://issuu.com/keatonstjames/docs/zine1
resurfacing and re-establishment of taboo themes as
something logically present in confessional-style poetic texts Vernon, Ashe. 2018. “Vincent.” Tumblr. Accessed March 9,
2019.http://latenightcornerstore.com/post/159217548597/when-they-
have allowed for a raw and open discourse on womanhood,
talk-about-the-tortured-genius
mental illness, gender identity, sexuality, immigration and
other significant topics. Using social media to spread poetry Where Are You Press. n.d. “About Us.” Accessed March 8, 2019.
has become an irreplaceable way of amassing readership and, http://whereareyoupress.tumblr.com/aboutus

in turn, encourage further discussion about the above- Words Dance Publishing. n.d. “Submit.” Accessed March 8, 2019.
mentioned paramount themes. Internet platforms have also http://wordsdance.com/submit/
contributed to a change in language, which has become
condensed and simplified, leading to shorter texts and
intermediality of styles and publishing options, considerably
visible in slam poetry videos and spoken word, as well as text
message poetry. Intertextuality is still present in a number of
internet-age poetry, ranging from tortured artists such as
Van Gogh and Plath to Greek mythology in order to dispute
the romanticization of mental illness and suicide. All in all,
the modern-age internet poetry is widely popular, urging
readers to express themselves through poetic language, to
read and learn. It is a way to resist the patriarchal society and
a force to be reckoned with.
 C
Seminar Paper
Web Exclusives
harles Bukowski:
Notes of a Dirty
Old Man
Karin Petko
This paper deals with the collected columns that were
written by Charles Bukowski and published weekly in the
underground newspaper Open City. A few of the columns
were later chosen and published in a book entitled Notes of
a dirty old man . Since the work consists of columns, it is
impossible to summarise it properly. This paper therefore
rather discusses the relationship between the Notes and
reality. To see how Bukowski's life influenced his writing, it
is first imperative to be familiar with his biography. Knowing
his complete work is then of lesser importance.
NOTE: It is Bukowski's novels that are the most well-known
and explored, while the columns are not. Therefore, the
created scheme of autobiographical elements in his columns
is strictly based on other sources about the author and on
reading the collection of columns.
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
Henry Charles Bukowski was born as Heinrich Karl Bukowski
on 16 August 1920 in Germany. His mother Katharina Fett
was German and his father was an American soldier. Still,
even his father's side of the family had German roots. When
Charles was two years and eight months old, he and his
parents moved to America, to Los Angeles – the city that he
not only mentions in his work but it’s also where most of his
stories take place. His father believed in a strict upbringing
and often beat his son for the slightest offences. His father’s
cruelty and violence had a strong impact on Charles’
character, his writing and the content of his work. On top of
that Charles was hugely affected by pimples that appeared
when he was thirteen. He had to undergo an intensive
treatment which prevented him from going to school for an
entire semester. Because of that, his pale complexion,
snobbish parents and German accent, his peers made fun of
him and he never had (m)any friends. Thus he spent a lot of
time in the library reading – he loved Chekhov, Dostoevsky,
Turgenjev, Hemingway …
It is rather obvious that Charles could never really grow to
like school. He enrolled in Los Angeles High solely for the
purpose of meeting his father's expectations and demands.
In 1939 he enrolled in Los Angeles City College with the
intention of becoming a journalist. As a scholarship student
he chose to study journalism, English, economy, and public
relations. He did not take his studies seriously and that
almost cost him his scholarship. At the beginning of WWII
he gave up his studies and started looking for a job. Searching
for work, writing and more or less successful publishing
became the story of his life.
After the incident with his father, Bukowski left home. It was
about his father having discovered that Charles was using the
typewriter not only for his studies but also to write. His father
threw the machine out through the window together with
everything the young man had written so far. After the
argument Charles moved to the centre and worked at the
railway for 6 months. Afterwards he decided to travel in
order “to be able to write about the real world of boarding
houses, factory jobs and pubs” (Žabkar 10).
All the while he kept writing and sending his articles, short
stories and other works to various newspapers, but was
rejected time and time again. When one of his articles was
finally published, he travelled to New York to look at it in the
printed version, but was severely disappointed to see his
story on one of the last pages, among the (unimportant)
novelties.
New York was followed by Charles’ stay in the peaceful
Philadelphia and this by his return to Los Angeles in 1947.
There he went to work and tried living up to his parents’
expectations. He stayed in Los Angeles for the rest of his life
and kept it vividly alive in most of his work (Žabkar 9–11).
ALCOHOL, WOMEN, DEATH
In addition to his relationship with his father, his many jobs
and writing, there were two other very important things in
the life of Bukowski: women and alcohol.
He first encountered alcohol when he was thirteen. One of
his (very few) friends offered him wine in his father's
basement – Bukowski later spoke of the event as 'magic'
(Poetry). Bukowski wrote this about drinking alcohol: “This
is going to help me for a very long time” (Wikipedia).
Alcohol helped him to deal with his life, just as his father's
uncalled-for beating taught him to accept and understand
the undeserved pain. Both themes found their way into his
work.
Henry Bukowski is at least partly the person to thank for
another topic that seems to pop up on almost every page of
Bukowski's work: women. Not only did the father beat his
wife, he also cheated on her and partied with his lovers on
the other side of the city. Like father like son. Bukowski too
had many affairs – together with alcohol they seemed to
present the meaning of life to him, and were also his
inspiration. Given his dissolute lifestyle it might come as a
surprise that there was actually one special woman who had
a strong influence on him. Jane Cooney Baker and Bukowski,
who was twenty-seven at the time, met in one of the pubs
where Bukowski tried to “drown his sadness one night”
(Žabkar 11). Jane was ten years older than him and had two
children. Like himself, she liked to drink, and she was his first
serious girlfriend. It is certain that Jane affected Bukowski’s
writing, because she appears in some of his best work. Her
death in 1962 devastated the author (Žabkar 55–57).
Another woman that was important to Bukowski was
Barbara Frye, the editor of a magazine which was very fond
of publishing new authors. What started out as an innocent
correspondence in letters in the 1950s, soon turned into
something more and their platonic relationship ended in
bed. In 1955 they even got married, but divorced two years
later, because Barbara couldn’t understand and accept
Bukowski’s drinking and instability. Later she married once
again and even travelled to India, where she died. Bukowski,
however, carried on with his relationships.
He had numerous relationships with women he met at bars
or in similarly bad circumstances. After 1955, when his
writing career started to bloom, he also met women at
literary evenings and public readings. One of those gave birth
to Bukowski’s only child, daughter Marina, who Bukowski
loved very deeply (Žabkar, 57). Bukowski never married the
girl’s mother, Frances Elizabeth Dean, because she declined
his proposal. However, the two soon split up anyway,
because of Charles’ inability to combine writing and work
with family life. Regardless of the break-up, Charles
remained a good father to Marina till the end (Maršič 10).
Following in the footsteps of Frances Elizabeth there were
many other young ladies. Despite the fact that Bukowski
disliked meeting women this way, it was precisely such a
circumstance that brought him his second wife Linda Lee
Beighle. She was very different from the rest of his lovers,
because she practised sexual abstinence. Furthermore, she
wasn't just a sexual object to Bukowski, but was also his
friend (Žabkar 57–58).
The couple got married in 1958. Three years later Bukowski
fell ill with tuberculosis, which resulted in a year-long
abstinence from alcohol. Regardless of this, Bukowski's life
soon reverted to drinking. In 1993 he was diagnosed with
leukaemia, which killed him a year later. He died in San
Pedro in California, aged 73 (Maršič 10).
NOTES OF A DIRTY OLD MAN – CONTENT AND FORM
Notes of a Dirty Old Man was at first published as a weekly
column in an underground newspaper called Open City.
Later, some columns from the first fourteen months of
publishing were collected into a book that was published by
the Essex House in 1969.
The collection starts with the author's preface form 1969, in
which he explains how the book and the notes of the dirty
old man came to be. Notes used to be the weekly column in
Open City. The father of this newspaper was John Bryan,
whom Bukowski describes as the “crazy idealist and
romantic” (Bukowski 5) and his newspaper as the “liveliest
rag in the U.S.” (Bukowski 5). It was Bryan who offered
Charles the writing of a weekly column. At first Bukowski did
not relish the idea, but then, as he himself put it, he “sat
down and wrote the heading […] opened a beer, and the
writing got done by itself. […] Just sit by the window, lift the
beer and let it come” (Bukowski 6) It is obvious that writing
the column brought the author quite a lot of pleasure –
however, if we are being honest, it is hard to imagine him
doing anything that would require more that casualness and
idleness. The columns did not bring him only joy, but also
recognisability and fans.
The preface ends with the year and author’s name and
surname. The entire thing is followed by the Notes. One of
their notable characteristics is that there are no capitals at
the beginnings of sentences. The capital letters are used only
for names. Different columns are separated by short lines.
There are no titles nor are there any dates or anything which
would help the reader place the columns. Theme-wise the
columns are very diverse, but at the same time connected by
the fact that the basis for each one are (auto)biographical
facts. Another thing that columns have in common are the
motives of sex, women, alcohol and work or rather laziness.
Bukowski stresses some words by capitalising all the letters
in them. Typical of his writing are also vulgar expressions and
swear words.
As in other Bukowski’s works the Notes are narrated by the
first-person narrator, who is substituted by the all-knowing
narrator on a couple of occasions. The first-person narrative
is mostly given by Henry Chinaski, whom Bukowski uses as
his alter-ego in most of his works. Occasionally the Notes
also provide the name Hank or Hank Radowski.
FICTION AND REALITY OR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL
ELEMENTS IN THE NOTES
Bukowski's life had an immense impact on his work. Charles
himself once said that “the great majority of what he wrote
about actually did happen in his life. […] 93 % of his work is
autobiographical, while the other 7 % Bukowski once
labelled as a corrected version of biography” (Žabkar 8). The
author included current events from around the world,
happenings from the lives of his friends and acquaintances
and of course stories from his own life. Bukowski uses four
different techniques for conveying reality to literature:
mentions, mixing of the genres, descriptions and parallels.
There are a couple of examples provided for each group.
MENTION OF CURRENT THEMES AND PEOPLE
Not only is Bukowski (or rather his alter egos Henry Chinaski
and Hank Radowski) his own protagonist in the columns, he
also introduces many of his contemporaries – they can either
get an important role in a column or can only be mentioned
briefly. Some of those who are often mentioned are Jack
Kerouac, John Bryan, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg…
while Neal Cassady gets an entire column.
Bukowski writes about typical everyday themes which add to
the feeling of reality in his fiction: drinking, dirty pubs, fights,
cruel deaths, gambling, bets, horse races … It is all about the
simple life, the lower strata of society and a simple, often
vulgar diction. All of that combined quickly transforms
fiction into reality, what it actually is – if we are to believe
Bukowski.
The following examples are given without wider context or
explanation – their sole purpose is to show Bukowski's reality
as mentioned in his fiction. They are given in the order as
they appear in the Notes.
“You liked him even though you didn’t want to
because Kerouac had set him up for the sucker
punch and Neal had bit, kept biting” (24).
“Jack knows Ginsberg, Creely, Lamantia, on and on,
and now he knew Bukowski” (27).
“Bird peels off a g.d. twenty. his movement is
smooth, without worry” (30).
“I read the next day, Saturday, there were around
45,000 people at the track, which was about
normal” (45).
MIXING OF THE GENRES
Bukowski occasionally lists dates and places and that
partially seems like a diary. Diaries are very different from
fiction and therefore their use as part of fiction gives it a
stronger sense of factuality. There are two examples of such
use: “March 23. 8 p.m., Los Angeles the same damn sadness
and no place to go” (45). And “Santa Anita, March 22, 1968,
3:10 p.m. I can’t catch Quillo’s Babe the even-money shot
with Alpen Dance” (40).
In some instances, Bukowski inserts letters from his fans and
his replies. It is impossible to claim whether those are real or
not, but style-wise the answers seem pretty real. The
documentary quality of the letters gives the columns another
sense of reality. Assuming the letters are real, they are
another proof of Bukowski's fiction actually being his factual
life.
'Dear Mr Bukowski:
You say you began writing at 35. What were you
doing before then?
E. R.'
'Dear E. R.
Not writing.' (154)
DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS
Bukowski does not stop at mentioning current events and his
contemporaries, but further uses some of them as themes for
entire columns. In such cases he embellishes or changes
nothing. Instead he introduces happenings and people with
their names and from his point of view.
NEAL CASSADY’S DEATH
Bukowski does not only mention it several times, but actually
devotes an entire column to Neal Cassady and his death. To
clearly see the connections between reality and literature, we
need to know what actually happened. Here is a short recap
of how Neal Cassady died.
On the 3 February 1968 Cassady went to a wedding in Mexico.
Afterwards he left to walk towards the nearby town on his
own. He was wearing only a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He
made his way along the railway track and it was there that he
fainted. It was a cold and rainy night. Neal was found in the
morning and immediately taken to the closest Post Office
and from there to the hospital, where he died a few days later,
just a couple of days before his 42nd birthday.
It is this exact situation that Bukowski talks about in the
column which opens with the author’s mentioning of how he
and Neal had met: “I met Kerouac’s boy Neal C. shortly before
he went down to lay along those Mexican railroad tracks to
die” (23). He describes their talking, drinking and driving.
Different sources often claim that Neal was a fast and
dangerous driver. Bukowski confirms the fact:
When we got outside a very light rain was just
beginning to fall. the kind that really fucks up the
streets I still didn't know. I thought Bryan was going
to drive. but Neal got in and took the wheel. I had
the back seat anyhow. B. got up in front with Neal.
and the ride began. straight along those slippery
streets and it would seem we were past the corner
and then Neal would decide to take a right or a left.
past parked cars, the dividing line just a hair away.
it can only be described as hairline. a tick the other
way and we were all finished (25).
At the very end of this column Bukowski describes the
moment when he was told about Neal’s death by Bryan:
it was a few days later that Bryan phoned me:
'Neal is dead, Neal died.'
'oh shit, no.'
then Bryan told me something about it. hung up.
that was it (26).
This is followed by the author's reflection, his inner reaction
to Neal's death, accompanied by the revelation of another
fact from Neal's life: prison.
all those rides, all those pages of Kerouac, all that
jail, to die alone under a frozen Mexican moon,
alone, you understand? […] Mexico is simply a bad
place. can't you see the desert animals watching?
[…] reptiles, flicks of things, looking across this guy
in the sand in the white t-shirt. Neal, he'd found his
movement, hurt nobody. the tough young jail kid
laying it down alongside a Mexican railroad track
(26).
Once again we can see that Bukowski's literature stands
strongly on the legs of reality.
THE FIRST WIFE
There seems to be only one woman whom Bukowski never
mentions in his work and it is his daughter's mother. All the
other 'ladies' always made it into his work. One of his
columns is dedicated entirely to his first wife, Barbara Frye.
And he did not even change her name.
Their relationship began through letters. At first they were
connected to literature, but gradually they became more and
more intimate: “meanwhile, the letters. I answered them. after
telling me how great my poems were she would enclose a few
of her own (not too bad) …” (121)
Barbara had a bodily defect. She had a strong desire for a
husband, but was convinced that she'll never find a man who
would want to marry her: “and then came the same thing: ‘no
man will ever marry me. it’s my neck. I can’t turn it.’ I kept
hearing this: ‘no man will ever marry me, no man will ever
marry me, no man will ever marry me.’ so I did it while drunk
one night: ‘for Christ’s sake I’ll marry you! relax.’ I mailed the
letter and forgot about it, but she didn’t” (121–122).
Before meeting Barbara, Bukowski saw her photos and
decided that she did not look so terrible: “she had been
sending photos that looked very good, then after I told her the
thing, came some horrible looking photos. I looked at these
photos and I REALLY got drunk on them. I’d get down on my
knees in the centre of the rug, I was terrified …” (122). In the
end he found her very pretty, certainly pretty enough to sleep
with her. Even in the column he admits to her good looks:
“and here comes this cute sexy blonde on high heels, all ass and
bounce and young, young, 23, and the neck wasn’t bad at all.”
(122)
Barbara and Bukowski got married. The column describes
this wedding very briefly: “we got on in and I drank some more
but she said she wouldn’t go to bed with me until we got
married. so we got some sleep and drove all the way to Vegas
and back, we were married” (122).
Their marriage wasn’t ideal and after being married for only
two years, the couple got divorced: “I wasn’t too surprised
when one morning a couple of days later somebody knocked
on my door, her door, and served me with a divorce summons.”
(128)
At the end of the column the reader is presented with the fact
that after her divorce from Bukowski Barbara remarried, just
like she did in reality: “later she went to Alaska and married
an Eskimo, a Japanese fisherman …” (129)
PARALLELS
Parallels slightly differ from the previously mentioned
groups in one instance: people have different names than in
reality (but it is still very obvious who they are). The line
between reality and fiction is not so direct here.
ALTER-EGO AND DAUGHTER
I have already stated that it is typical of Bukowski to write
about himself under the name Henry Chinaski. Notes are no
different: the name can be found more than just a couple of
times. In most cases the parallels between the story and
Charles’ life are obvious, but occasionally things get
complicated, especially when Bukowski plays with names.
Alongside Henry Chinaski another name appears: Hank
Radowski. The column is narrated by the first-person
narrator, the narrator is just as lustful as Bukowski and the
name sounds suspiciously like the author’s. In this column
Hank meets a woman in a bookshop, invites her for a drink
and then impulsively marries her. The lady goes mad and
Hank gets entangled in a relationship with the cleaner, who
turns out to be his wife’s sister. It is a crazy enough story for
the reader to connect with the author, but the problem seems
to be the different alter-ego’s name and the fact that Hank
Radowski goes to work (and does not complain about it):
“but the next day, coming from work, the landlord met me in
the driveway: ‘Mr. Radowski! Mr. Radowski, your wife, your
WIFE has been picking quarrels and fights with the
neighbours” (201). Except for the name and the style of
writing there is nothing that would directly connect this
story with Bukowski’s life.
If in the given example the reader is confused by the first-
person narrator, who very likely is not the author himself,
then we get even more confused when reading the columns
where Bukowski tries to confuse us with the use of the third-
person narration, while clearly telling the story from his life.
One of such columns begins like this: “when Henry’s mother
died it wasn’t bad. Nice Catholic funeral. […] the coffin
remained closed. […] when his father died it was more
complicated. they left the coffin open and he had the last look”
(112). In the continuation the author explains how the father’s
lover threw herself onto the coffin and afterwards ended up
in bed with Henry. The column ends with the following
sentences: “my name is Henry. Charles is my middle name.
when my mother died it wasn’t bad. nice Catholic funeral.
smocking sticks. closed coffin. when my father died it was
complicated. they left the coffin open and the old man’s
girlfriend …” (115). It is a story from the author’s life. I am
unable to find the reason why Bukowski chose to hide
himself momentarily, while in other instances he loudly
declares his presence and the fact that the story is his reality,
I cannot seem to figure out. However, with Bukowski there is
always a possibility that he is playing mind games with the
reader.
In some of the columns the first-person narrator’s name is
Freddie – here we cannot be sure whether he is the author
himself, or whether it is just a simple first-person narrative
without any connection to Bukowski. However, Freddie’s
stories are very close to Bukowski’s reality, which is clear
from the column about Freddie and his daughter.
It is known that Bukowski only had one child: the illegitimate
daughter Marina, who he truly cared about. In two of the
columns Bukowski writes about the man who plays and talks
with his daughter, whom he clearly loves, but is also very
clumsy in his behaviour towards her. The man’s name is
Freddie McCuller, but the girl’s name is never given.
Bukowski describes how the two play, how the daughter tells
her father weird things about her mother, how she brings her
father a beer and how he kills the girl’s mother’s lover. But
this is all irrelevant when trying to find the autobiographical
elements. This column gives the reader no certain proof that
would connect the content to Bukowski’s life. The only clue
is the sense of love Freddie feels for her daughter, just like
Bukowski loved his Marina. Knowing Bukowski and his habit
of only writing about familiar things, we have to conclude
that he could not have written about such scenes had he not
experienced them. This is another parallel.
CONCLUSION The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. »Charles Bukowski«. Splet.
2.12.2018. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charles-Bukowski
Charles Bukowski is definitely a master of putting his life into
Žabkar, Dijana. Seks in ženske v delih Charlesa Bukowskega in
literature, of transforming facts into fiction – the different
Henrryja Millerja. Diplomsko delo. Maribor: Filozofksa fakulteta
ways he uses to achieve that can be organised into a scheme:
univerze v Mariboru, 2015.
mention of people and themes, mixing of genres,
descriptions of events, and parallels. Each group has its own Wikipedia. »Neal Cassady«. Spet. 6.12.2018.
characteristics but their common feature is the description https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Cassady
of the low life.
Wikipedija. »Kolumna«. Splet. 6.12.2018.
https://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolumna >.
When reading Bukowski, a question pops up – is it canonised
or trivial literature we're dealing with? There is a very thin
line between the two when it comes to Bukowski, but he
somehow manages to stay on the side of literary canon. His
prose is easy to read and can be read very fast. This could
qualify him as a trivial writer. However, his work does not
embellish reality and therefore cannot be described as
relaxing (like trivial literature should be). Bukowski
describes rough reality with rough and realistic descriptions.
He does not confirm to norms which would transform a
description of a murder into whodunnit or a love-making
scene into romance. Instead he hurries ahead, mentions
events, but does not explain them… Given the fact that his
literature is very strongly based on reality (not only real life,
but also real-world events), it is occasionally hard for a reader
to understand the columns right away. Bukowski’s work
demands sophisticated readers. It is possible to understand
the works without comprehending all the clues, but this
makes it impossible for one to grasp Bukowski’s true
greatness. Even though the author’s themes are low and
might be considered too low for literary canon, it is
Bukowski’s style of writing and the way he introduces such
themes to literature that is so masterful that there can be no
arguing in his belonging to the literary canon.

REFERENCES

Bukowski, Charles. Notes of a dirty old man. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 1969.

Bukowski, Charles. Zapiski starega pokvarjenca. Prev. Tone Škrjanec.

Ljubljana: ZAMIK, 2007.

Encke, Jeffrey. »Run-of-the-Mill Lunacy«. Journal of American Studies

37.1 (2003): 47-58. JSTOR. Splet. 21.11.2018.

Fox, Hugh. »The Living Underground: Charles Bukowski«. The North

American Review 254.3 (1969): 57-58. JSTOR. Splet. 21.11.2018.

Fran. »Kolumna«. Splet. 6.12.2018. <

https://fran.si/iskanje?View=1&Query=kolumna >.

Jovanovič, Tanja. Charles Bukwski and/or Henry Chinaski. Diplomsko

delo. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta Univerze v Ljubljani, 2011.

Marinšek, Kaja. Literarni minimalizem in novi realizem v delih

Charlesa Bukowskega in Raymonda Carverja. Diplomsko delo.
Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta Univerze v Ljubljani, 2015.

Maršič, Jana. Attitude to work and alcoholism in the works of Charles

Bukowski. Diplomsko delo. Ljubljana: Filozofska fakulteta Univerze v
Ljubljani, 2006.

Poetry Foundation. »Charles Bukowski.« Splet. 2.12.2018.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-bukowski