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No matter how you feel about the writing of Charles Bukowski, there's no denying he's become a much-emulated and lauded author of mid- to late-century American literature and poetry. This volume of Bukowski's letters to friends and colleagues reveals his thoughts on the process of creation in an intimate and open way. Books mentioned in [...]

Candid conversations between counterculture icon Charles Bukowski, his wife, and his producer that took place in Bukowski’s home during the recording session for his classic "Run With the Hunted" in 1993.

Happy National Poetry Month! All throughout April, we will interview poets about working in this digital age. Recently, we spoke with author David Lehman.

Lehman (pictured, via) has published several volumes of poetry throughout his career. He initiated The Best American Poetry series in 1988 and has continued to serve as the series editor. Check out the highlights from our interview below…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Twitter user Dylan Smith has started a new Twitter account called Novel First Lines, on which he will tweet the first line of a novel every day for a year.

The Twitter handle got started on March 1st and will tweet through February 28, 2015. So far tweets have included the first sentences of Post Office by Charles Bukowski, The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley, and Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins.

We’ve embedded the tweets below. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

My endless interrogation of myself continues... What keeps you awake at night? Everything that can wait until tomorrow. When were you happiest? When I realized that a congenial monotony is the best anyone can hope for. I'm not sure how old I was or what I was doing — perhaps I was 13 and hiking [...]

After a day plagued with Gmail problems, most readers are probably ready for a drink.

The late writer Charles Bukowski stars in a new ad for Dewars “White Label” Scotch. We’ve embedded the video above–what do you think about authors in ads? Open Culture has more about the video:

Bukowski liked to drink. He also liked to talk about his memorable hangovers. Dead or alive, Bukowski has the creds to sell Scotch. As the Dewars ad rolls (above), you’ll hear lines from Bukowski’s poem “so you want to be a writer?” (below). And if you’re familiar with the poem, you’ll notice that the narration in the commercial is abridged. They’ve removed various lines referring to the writing life, making it so that the narration speaks to a broader audience. Rock climbers. Motorcycle mechanics. Musicians. Journalists. People who aspire — or need to be inspired — to “live true.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.

unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.

if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.

if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.

if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.

if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.

if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.

if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.

if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.

don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.

the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.

unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.

unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.
and there never was.

~ Charles Bukowski

Have you ever written a scary story? In honor of the Halloween season, we are interviewing horror writers to learn about the craft of scaring readers. Recently, we spoke with author Jonathan Maberry.

Throughout Maberry’s career, he has won multiple Stoker Awards for his horror work. Last month, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers released the third installment of the Rot & Ruin series, Flesh & Bone.

He has written for Marvel Comics and published multiple novels for both adults and young-adults. As a nonfiction writer, Maberry has examined topics ranging from martial arts to zombie pop culture. Check out the highlights from our interview below…

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I basically took the summer off from blogging, so feel a little wobbly about it, my palms sweating on the handlebars, not sure I remember how to do this. I don’t know what happened, exactly, just somehow tired of the “James Preller” corporate thing. Ha. Mostly, I wanted to concentrate on other writings, as I’ve been deep in a new series that I’m writing for Feiwel & Friends. It won’t launch until The Fabled Summer of ‘13, but I’ve nearly finished the third book in the series.

NOTE: I just reread this and had a chuckle about that “nearly finished” line. It only signifies that I’m an old pro when it comes to deadlines and editors: a manuscript that has not yet been handed in is always “nearly finished.” Any writer who says otherwise is a fool and a boob.

As for my new series, it feels like I’m that kid behind the snow fort, busily stacking up a supply of snowballs. Can’t wait to fire ‘em out there. More on that topic another time.

I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time guy, but I’m now reading three very different but equally remarkable books concurrently: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem, and Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor.

Normally I don’t do that to myself, the three-books-at-once bafflement, but the mixture of long novel, short nonfiction, and poetry seem to complement each other nicely.

I have a long and sordid relationship with poetry, and I’m especially happy to find this sweet collection by Keillor, based on poems featured on “The Writer’s Almanac.”

Writes Keillor in the introduction:

Oblivion is the writer’s greatest fear, and as with the fear of death, one finds evidence to support it. You fear that your work, that work of your lifetime, on which you labored so unspeakably hard and for which you stood on so many rocky shores and thought, My life has been wasted utterly — your work will have its brief shining moment, the band plays, some confetti is tossed, you are photographed with your family, drinks are served, people squeeze your hand and say that you seem to have lost weight, and then the work languishes in the bookstore and dies and is remaindered and finally entombed on a shelf — nobody ever looks at it again! Nobody! This happens often, actually. Life is intense and the printed page is so faint.

Keillor, as curator, has a point of view. He likes poems that tell a story, poems that are direct and clear, that don’t sound too “written.” Poems that communicate. He quotes Charles Bukowski, “There is nothing wrong with poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”

And I put a big star in the margin when Keillor described his former English major self — a tender self I identified with, all those lessons that have taken me so long to unlearn, the bad habits of academic thought, “back when I was busy writing poems that were lacerating, opaque, complexly layered, unreadable.”

I have a file drawer jammed full with opaque and unreadable poems.

Now I see that as my writer’s quest, this effort to write clearly (and yet, even so, to write interestingly, to achieve moments of “lift off”), to overcome my own big stupid fumbling ego, those temptations to craft “look at me!” sentences that dazzle and bore readers. Perhaps that’s the great gift of writing for children of all ages. They don’t go for the bullshit. You can deliver any kind of content — really,  there’s nothing you can’t say in a children’s book — but please don’t overcook it.

One last phrase from Keillor, in praise of Maxine Kumin and Anne Sexton and, for that matter, all Good Poems:

“They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar.”

So that’s how I’ve vowed to begin my days, by reading a few poems each morning. To sit in the chair, coffee at hand, and try on the silence. My favorite from today was Charles Simic’s “Summer Morning.”

You might enjoy it, too.

As a final treat, here’s Tom Waits reading “The Laughing Heart,” a poem by Charles Bukowski. Full text below.

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

@Charles Bukowski

Neil Strauss‘ The Game, law enforcement guides and Tintin comics made the list among Quora users who have been discussing the question, “What are the most frequently shoplifted books?”

The poster who posed the question wrote, “Neil Strauss’ ‘The Game’ is kept behind the counter at my local Barnes & Noble because people frequently walk out the door with it, a salesperson told me. What else do stores stash back there?”

Quora user Tamara Troup wrote: “At our library some of the most frequently stolen books are the Law Enforcement Officers training manuals, the civil service exam prep books, and the ASVAB prep books.” Quora user Alice York wrote: “At the two  public high school libraries where I have worked: A Child Called It by David Pelzer (a book about parental abuse) and The Rose That Grew From Concrete poetry by Tupac Shakur.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
to be happy, told me, 'be happy Henry!'
and she was right: it's better to be happy if you
can
but my father continued to beat her and me several times a week while
raging inside his 6-foot-two frame because he couldn't
understand what was attacking him from within.

my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: 'Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?'

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw

one day the goldfish died, all five of them,
they floated on the water, on their sides, their
eyes still open,
and when my father got home he threw them to the cat
there on the kitchen floor and we watched as my mother
smiled