{"id":2145,"date":"2008-01-11T14:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-11T14:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2145"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:28:14","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:28:14","slug":"poetry-friday-hades-hath-frozen-over-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2145","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Hades Hath Frozen Over: I like a Bukowski poem."},"content":{"rendered":"

“fame,”<\/b> by Charles Bukowski<\/a>. From Open All Night<\/i>: New Poems (Black Sparrow Press).<\/p>\n

some want it, I don’t want it, I
want to do whatever it is I do
and just do it.
I don’t want to look into the
adulating eye,
shake the sweating
palm.
I think that whatever I do
is my business.
I do it because if I don’t
I’m finished.
I’m selfish:
I do it for myself
to save what is left of
myself.
and when I am
approached as
hero or
half-god or
guru
I refuse to accept
that.
I don’t want their
congratulations,
their worship,
their companionship.<\/p>\n

I may have half-a-
million readers,
a million,
two million.
I don’t care.
I write the word
how I have to
write it.<\/p>\n

and, in the
beginning,
when there were no
readers
I wrote the word
as I needed to write the
word
and if all
the half-million,
the million,
the two million,
disappear
I will continue to
write the
word
as I always have.<\/p>\n

the reader is an
afterthought,
the placenta,
an accident,
and any writer who
believes otherwise
is a bigger fool than
his
following.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I had to read Bukowski in grad school. His violence, aggressive language and sexually charged fiction wasn’t my favorite by a long shot, but with this one poem, I agree. Fame isn’t anything all that desirable to me. I’m not sure if it’s possible to make a living from writing without achieving some measure of fame, but I’d like to think I would still write every day if I won the lottery… so it must mean more than money to me. (Good thing, huh?!) If fame means having every facet of my life scrutinized and more attention paid to my couture choices than my writing, then I’m definitely not interested.<\/p>\n

I wonder what the perks and drawbacks are for people who are ‘famous’ in YA circles… other than JK Rowling, of course, who is just having fun being a celebrity. If you don’t flash your cash or own a castle like Rowling does but can make a living from your writing, are you still considered famous? What really makes fame? I wonder.<\/p>\n

Someone posted the Naomi Shihab Nye poem on fame last week, which really got me thinking. I love her concluding stanza:<\/p>\n

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do<\/i><\/p>\n

Is that fame enough for you and me? I wonder…<\/p>\n

(I also wonder why all the “kids” from Fame<\/i> look about thirty five. Anyway!) More poetry people have gathered at The Book Mine Set<\/a>, get thee thence!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“fame,” by Charles Bukowski. From Open All Night: New Poems (Black Sparrow Press). some want it, I don’t want it, Iwant to do whatever…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,10],"class_list":["post-2145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry-friday","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4645,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2145\/revisions\/4645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}