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Chapters (26)
  1. Cover
  2. CHARLES BUKOWSKI
  3. SCREAMS FROM THE BALCONY
  4. EDITED BYSEAMUS COONEY
  5. Contents
  6. EDITOR’S NOTE
  7. • 1958 •
  8. • 1959 •
  9. • 1960 •
  10. • 1961 •
  11. • 1962 •
  12. • 1963 •
  13. • 1964 •
  14. • 1965 •
  15. • 1966 •
  16. • 1967 •
  17. • 1968 •
  18. • 1969 •
  19. AFTERWORD
  20. SEARCHABLE TERMS
  21. Acknowledgments
  22. About the Author
  23. BY CHARLES BUKOWSKIAVAILABLE FROM ECCO
  24. Copyright
  25. About the Publisher
  26. About the Publisher

• 1966 •

[To Walter Lowenfels]

January 9, 1966

o Walter: thanks word on Confessions. no, nothing else like that have I written, and prob. won’t. prose bit to shape up shit a bit and wonder where I’ve been. so that’s that.

I understand Jon and Lou Webb have come across hard times-broken press and the like. I’d like to see them get into #4. a Patchen issue, but things are not working right.

well then. we all move on. flowers in the air. gaslight. drunken birds. paradise is a cold wet stocking dripping on the back unexpectedly. I get sicker and sicker. little men outside sharpening their spades. to hell with them: I have 5 bottles of beer left and a bottle of india ink that sits here and says on its side: TINTA CHINA A LA PERLA.

the world is very good. I am sure of it: I keep gaining weight.

[To Douglas Blazek]

January 9, 1966

[* * *] word in from Norse, damn fine letter, and perhaps he has more style and touch than any of us, young snip. anyhow, he has been laid up in some Greek hospital unable to stop shitting, which is a hell of a way to go, what? anyhow he is getting better and jumped out of bed in Hydra and escaped to Athens, where he is feebly typing up a batch of poems for me to look over to see if I think he can write or not write. for Norse—Ole issue. maybe I am being cruel? but I can’t say anything about a man on 2 or 3 poems. the few things I have seen of his are clearly very good but I would like to see more for my own good and for his. I do not judge poems as a critic out of learning but as a human being out of my own experience which must nec. be limited but which nevertheless contains truths and instincts and flowers and spiders and snakes and dreams and stinks which may apply to any man living anywhere, anytime. and sometimes the way the “learned critics” talk about poetry and/or Art, I sometimes think I have even read MORE BOOKS and junked them down better. lot of ego to say this, yes, but you know as a man walks down a sidewalk or takes a piss or breaks an egg into a pan, strange thoughts enter the head and walk around, one of them being that the critics are my Aunt Sarah. [* * *]

[To Steven Richmond]

January 27, 1966