There is enough treachery, hatred, violence,
Absurdity in the average human being
To supply any given army on any given day.
So begins one of Charles Bukowski's most iconic poems, “The Genius of the Crowd.” Even though it was first published in 1966, it seems particularly poignant in our era of outrage.
BEWARE THE PREACHERS
Beware The Knowers.
[…]
BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:
They Are Afraid Of What They Do
Not Know
Bukowski, born in 1920 in Andernach, Germany to a German-American father and German mother, moved to Los Angeles when he was two years old and would live there for the rest of his life. Although his novel Ham on Rye, an autobiographical account of his abusive childhood, is an American masterpiece, and his short story, “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town,” a sad tale about a woman who gashes her face to make herself less beautiful, is comparable to anything Hemingway or Cheever wrote, it was in poetry where Bukowski's strength really lay.
Bukowski died 25 years ago. Were he still alive, he most certainly would not meet the demands of today's “sensitivity readers,” nor those imbedded in the big publishing houses who scan a writer's work for transgressions, nor those on social media who do the same with a writer's personal life. Nor would he meet the demands of today's small press poetry magazine mission statements, which not only require a poet to be talented, but to also be a morally exemplary person.
Then again, Bukowski never was a model citizen of the poetry community, or any other community for that matter. He was a misfit and an outlaw. Unlike many contemporary poets, he never completed college and didn't take a job in academia—instead, he worked in a post office for 15 years before quitting to write full time. He also drank a lot. And he could be violent and abusive. Ardent fans who saw John Dulligan's 2003 documentary Born into This (or the original interviews Barbet Schroeder conducted with Bukowski in the early eighties, on which Dulligan draws) and were not appalled by the scene in which a belligerent Bukowski lunges at Linda Lee Beighle (whom he'd marry a few years later), calling her a “whore,” might need to reassess their cultish fandom. Of course, a great artist can be both angel and devil, both sinner and saint. A great artist is often a contradiction and many are prone to bad behavior. Ginsberg advocated pederasty. Mailer stabbed his wife. Burroughs shot his. Anne Sexton allegedly subjected her daughter to sexual abuse. Whitman was a defender of eugenics-based racism. Céline, T.S. Eliot, and Amiri Baraka were all antisemites. Often a great artist is a contradictory figure, both creative and destructive, both loving and hateful. And Bukowski was no exception.
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