On Drinking (and Not Drinking) With Bukowski

David Orr provides a review of the latest Charles Bukowski poetry compendium, On Drinking. Orr's initial summation, "[i]t’s often thought that to become a poet, it helps to be a little gonzo," guides readers swiftly to Arthur Rimbaud before proceeding a bit further to the present moment: 

As the 16-year-old Arthur Rimbaud famously put it, “The Poet makes himself a seer by a long, gigantic and rational derangement of all the senses” — a description that, but for the careful inclusion of “rational,” makes poetry seem less a craft than an extreme lifestyle choice. As for Rimbaud it frequently was; his flailing misadventures with his lover Paul Verlaine are a case study in knives, bullets, profanity, theft and dubious personal hygiene. The idea behind this outré behavior was that “deranging the senses” doesn’t simply mean sitting at your desk having especially unusual thoughts; it means actively surrendering to your own unconscious and often unconventional desires. The poet’s sense of self becomes like a medieval tapestry obscuring a secret passage; it must be torn aside so that what waits in the darkness — monster or treasure — can be discovered.

This way of thinking has two notable consequences. The first is that it puts an emphasis on who a poet is (“a seer”) rather than on what he creates (poems). The second is that it leads easily to the assumption that booze and drugs aren’t merely a poet’s occasional companions, but his indispensable partners. After all, if the goal is to transcend yourself and cross boundaries, few things will help you on your way as speedily as Old Overholt. The drunken poet, according to this view, isn’t merely drunk in the way a lawyer might be drunk, or an orthopedic surgeon, or even just a sad, anxious person. No, the poet has made a sacrifice. He is drunk for art.

Read more at NYT.