now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?
By: Charles Bukowski
I'd tell them to have an unhappy love affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth and to drink cheap wine, avoid opera and golf and chess, to keep switching the head of their bed from wall to wall and then I'd tell them to have another unhappy love affair and never to use a silk typewriter ribbon, avoid family picnics or being photographed in a rose garden; read Hemingway only once, skip Faulkner ignore Gogol stare at photographs of Gertrude Stein and read Sherwood Anderson in bed while eating Ritz crackers, realize that people who keep talking about sexual liberation are more frightened than you are. listen to E. Power Biggs work the organ on your radio while you're rolling Bull Durham in the dark in a strange town with one day left on the rent after having given up friends, relatives, and jobs. never consider yourself superior and / or fair and never try to be. have another unhappy love affair. watch a fly on a summer curtain never try to succeed. don't shoot pool. be righteously angry when you find your car has a flat tire. take vitamins but don't lift weights or jog. then after all this reverse the procedure. have a good love affair. and the thing you might learn is that nobody knows anything -- not the State, nor the mice the garden hose or the North Star. and if you ever catch me teaching a creative writing class and you read this back to me I'll give you a straight A right up the pickle barrel.
You can find this poem in Bukowski’s — Love is a Dog From Hell.
Check out the Poetic Outlaws Store.
I would tell them,
if they have not lived,
then do that.
I would tell them,
if they think they can learn to write
by reading a book,
or attending a creative writing class,
they missed the entire point.
I would tell them,
if they are Americans,
yes, read Hemingway,
read Faulkner,
read Melville,
and Poe,
then forget them,
because they are dead
and cannot be resurrected,
nor replicated.
Then read John Grisham,
to see how getting religion
can mess up good thing.
Then,
read James Lee Burke,,
read Tom Robbins-
but if you have not lived,
if you have not been shredded by life,
if you have not lost everything
and gotten up and kept going,
if you think wanting to be a writer
makes you a writer,
if you think reading Bukowski
will make you a writer,
you missed the entire point,
but reading other writers
might arouse something in you,
it might help you in some ways
to craft your own style,
or it might help you become
a robot, a clone-
the only way to really write
is to be demolished,
mutilated,
pulverized,
destroyed,
obliterated,
by life,
and not kill yourself,
and stone cold sober,
standing before a mirror,
staring into the depths
of your very own soul,
staring at you,
your life,
naked,
bare,
no secrets,
no fig leaves,
no shame,
your reputation ruined,
by you,
now you are free,
now you are unchained,
now you can write,
if you dare,
if you care,
if you wish,
if you don’t give a shit
what anyone else thinks,
or wants,
or cares
I’d say walk the dog to corner store. Pay attention to your surroundings and post them in your mind while returning with a bottle of cheap wine to write your heart out what you remember while wine is drained and your pencil leads the way to the next word.