Bukowski: Creation is Our Gift

I can not tell you how much the careful boys rip me naked with their planned and worked-over creations. Creation is our gift and we are ill with it. It has sloshed about my bones and awakened me to stare at 5 a.m. walls.

— Bukowski

We all know Charles Bukowski’s writings from his numerous poems, short stories, and a handful of novels. But some of his most fervid and lively prose was in the letters he sent off to magazine editors who refused to accept his poems. They are gut-busting, at times absurd, and other times philosophically clever.

Bukowski was one writer who never held back on the various issues concerning society, art, and the creative act. His most passionate writings were about writing.

”Great writers are indecent people they live unfairly saving the best part for paper. Good human beings save the world so that bastards like me can keep creating art, become immortal. If you read this after I am dead it means I made it.”

Below is a letter he fired off in 1961 to an editor who stated his poetry lacked FORM. You can find this letter in the book — Charles Bukowski on Writing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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It is evident that many of our present-day editors still go by thumb of rulebook on what has preceded them. The sanctuary of the rule means nothing to the pure creator.

There is an excuse for poor creation if we are dithered by camouflage or wine come down through staring eyes, but there isn’t any excuse for a creation crippled by directives of school and fashion, or the valetudinarian prayer book that says: form, form, form!! put it in a cage!