Interview by a Guggenheim Recipient

this South American up here on a Gugg

walked in with his whore

and she sat on the edge of my bed and

crossed her fine legs

and I kept looking at her legs

and he pulled at his stringy necktie

and I had a hangover

and he asked me

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE AMERICAN

POETS?

and I told him I didn’t think very much

of the American poets

and then he went on to ask some other

very dull questions

(as his whore’s legs layed along the side of

my brain) like

WELL? YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING

BUT IF YOU WERE TEACHING A CLASS AND ONE OF THE

STUDENTS ASKED YOU WHICH AMERICAN POETS

THEY SHOULD READ

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM?

she crossed her legs as I watched and I thought

I could knock him out with one punch

rape her in 4 minutes

catch a train for L.A.

get off in Arizona and walk off into the desert

and I couldn’t tell him that I would never teach

a class

that along with not liking American poetry

that I didn’t like American classes either

or the job that they would expect me to

do,

so I said

Whitman, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence’ poems about

reptiles and beasts, Auden. and then I

realized that Whitman was the only true American,

that Eliot was not an American somehow and the

others certainly not, and

he knew it too

he knew that I had fucked up

but I made no apologies

thought some more about rape

I almost loved the woman but I knew that when she walked out

that I would never see her again

and we shook hands and the Gugg said

he’d send me the article when it came out

but I knew that he didn’t have an article

and he knew it too

and then he said

I will send you some of my poems translated into

English

and I said fine

and I watched them walk out of the place

I watched her highheels clack down the tall

green steps

and then both of them were gone

but I kept remembering her dress sliding all over her

like a second skin

and I was wild with mourning and love and sadness

and being a fool unable to

communicate

anything

and I walked in and finished that beer

cracked another

put on my ragged king’s coat

and walked out into the New Orleans street

and that very night

I sat with my friends and acted vile and

the ass

much mouth and villainy

and cruelness

and they never

knew why.

Copyright Credit: "Interviewed by a Guggenheim Recipient" from The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 by Charles Bukowski. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1988 by Charles Bukowski. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Source: The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (Black Sparrow Press, 1988)