Bukowski, Charles

Broadside: "An Answer to a Critic of Sorts"

Oconomowoc Lake, WI: Stooge Magazine, 1972. First Printing. Single Sheet. A broadside (measuring appx. 8.5” x 11") by Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), the great American author described by some as “the poet laureate of American Lowlife.” While Your Devoted VP-of-Operations here at Third Mind Books feels this is somewhat misleading when it comes to claims or critical contentions, it can be of use when thinking about Bukowski, however limited. Key to all readings of Bukowski is an emphasis on the life of the writer — by which we mean 'on the station of the author in modern society,’ not the biography of this particular author. Does it help to include reference to the life of the author when thinking of Bukowski? Absolutely, despite what Cleanth Brooks and the New Critics will tell you. Yet Bukowski is unique in that he discusses “the life of the writer” in his development of 'a procedural poetics’ or ‘a poetics of procedure’ (both critical assignations, or ‘terms’ are mine). While Bukowski was far from the first to make use of the explicitly mental daily trials and triumphs of life as an author — (e.g., Baudelaire himself once wrote, “Inspiration comes of working every day”) — Bukowski continually churned these concepts; confronting them, laughing with or at them, and sometimes (in a most Jeff Ross-ian manner), “roasting them.” One enormously interesting distinction, however, is that Bukowski never puts a timestamp on these pieces. The struggles and almost comic inertia here referred to are typically the province of the underdeveloped, falsely confident, or emotionally afflicted author. The resolved and focused author typically has built a lifestyle around being the kind of person such inertia “doesn’t happen to,” — save brush-ups [or direct encounters] with tragedy (or other life-based melodramas, similar). At any rate, this choice of subject matter — and Bukowski’s inimitable way of mobilizing it — are part of what makes the author of “Crucifix in a Deathhand” endure, even today. This elusive Bukowksi offering thus constitutes an enticing opportunity for the serious or aspiring collector and writer, alike. Small-format, letter-sized broadside-poster: issued in an unknown limitation (& as part of a larger set of broadsides, as described at length below) by Laura Chester & Geoffrey Young’s Wisconsin-based "Stooge Magazine.” Here, in full, are the bibliographical specifics: important because there is some confusion among scholars as to when exactly this work was published. Bukowski scholar, Abrel Debritto initially (and correctly, we might add) posited that this broadside was published as part of "Stooge #5” in 1970, but it’s not that simple. Enter Molly Young, the niece of the aforementioned co-founder of Stooge, Geoffrey Young. In a 2010 piece authored for the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, Molly wrote that Allen Schiller, — a little-known independent publisher & one-time co-editor (or editorial consultant) of Stooge, — had come up with the idea of releasing a series of broadsides that would be packaged in an empty, unused pizza box. Each ambitiously artful broadside would be hand-printed (and, where possible, hand-decorated), but it would be billed, or released as “Issue Nine" of Stooge Magazine, not “Stooge #5" (as both Debritto & the great Bukowski bibliographer, Aaron Krumhansl had elsewhere claimed). When it comes to chronologically situating the title poem, — to charting, with precision both the year it was authored as well as its cardinal appearance in-print — Young posits that 1972 is the likeliest answer on both counts. This, because the poem also appeared later that year in Charles & Linda King’s (b. 1940) co-authored chapbook, Me and Your Sometimes Love Poems, and there is titled far more cleanly (“To a Critic of Sorts”). Thus, the bibliographical “clue" (implied by the revised title) can also be read as suggesting the following: the cardinal appearance of this poem — an unheralded classic of Bukowski’s oeuvre — is likely found here. That still leaves us, however, with two unsolved riddles of bibliography; both of which relate to the following interlinked queries. The first of these asks [A] whether this broadside was published as issue "No. 5" or "No. 9" of Young & Chester’s magazine; and the second [B] asks after whether Young & Chester’s friend, Alan Schiller's “pizza box” method of publication ever materialized. The answer to each of these burning bibliographical conundrums was unearthed, recently (i.e., with the discovery of a complete set [with apocryphal pizza box!] of "Stooge #5"). This is important to the matter here investigated (& the listing here offered) for the following two reasons: [1] the find definitively establishes 1972 as this broadside’s year of release; and [2] corroborates Molly Young’s story as published by the Poetry Foundation…cracking, at last, a notorious ‘cold case’ in the poet's vast bibliographical oeuvre. Broadside in very fine condition with only minute shelf-wear, light rubbing to fine-edges & corners of recto & verso sides; otherwise bright & impressively clean. Very Fine. [Item #6996]

Price: $80.00