Don't Try: Charles Bukowski's Advice to Creators

Being a blogger has got to be the best thing ever - one of my favorite poets is featured on one of my favorite websites - and I get to share it with you, loyal followers...

"German-American poet, novelist and short story writer Charles Bukowski consciously absorbed the world around him as he inhabited the bars and rooming houses in the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. It was here that the “Laureate of American Lowlife” gathered material for much of his writing career - telling the story of drunks, gamblers and down-and-outs, of which he was all three."

For Amy Harrison's full article on LateralAction, click here.

"After achieving fame, his advice to other writers seeking literary success was so simple and pithy that it rattles in the space on his headstone where it is engraved: DON'T TRY"

"Don’t Try" is not about embarking on a hedonistic lifestyle like Bukowski’s for the sake of it. It’s about taking time to let your creativity speak to you. It may arrive through activities and environments that make you elated, or angry, or through putting yourself in situations that are new, perhaps even uncomfortable. Or it may arrive from just sitting still and taking a break."

Charles Bukowski is mentioned in an earlier RoadKill post with some links and a poem. Here's another:

making it
ignore all possible concepts and possibilities--
ignore Beethoven, the spider, the damnation of Faust--
just make it, babe, make it:
a house - a car - a belly full of beans
pay your taxes
fuck
and if you can't fuck
copulate.
make money but don't work too
hard -- make somebody else pay to
make it -- and
don't smoke too much but drink enough to
relax, and
stay off the streets
wipe your ass real good
use a lot of toilet paper
it's bad manners to let people know you shit or
could smell like it
if you weren't
careful.

~~~~