Charles Bukowski by Graziano Origa - Public Domain
Happy festivities, happiness - for the end of this year and into the new.
2023 has been hard, has been unsettling - for me, for you, for us, for them. So we need cheer, faith, hope - and art!
It is in times of trouble that some of us turn to Mother Mary and others to drink, to kisses, deep promises, protests, tattoos of peace signs, painting-by-numbers, spending time helping others, praying, finding meanings in the clouds . . .
I turn to some of the above and to poets and singers.
Here are two poets and one singer I appreciate, to wind down this year of catalytic changes.
Charles Bukowski,
the wandering minstrel, the loner, the loving-drink-drinker: “That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”
He is introduced to me by Armand Lecro, aka Dorian, then also a great writer, before falling off the edge. The date is 1987. I am in Paris, visiting on my way back from two years in India. I am out-of-sync with the West, so Dorian brings me up-to-date. Bukowski burns his eyes, his lips, and Bukowski is still alive and mostly unknown by the mainstream. But this is the year he becomes popular with the film Barfly by Francis Ford Coppola, which screens and competes for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He is the hottest property. I sit at the window overlooking St. Denis as Dorian delves into Bukowski’s life, twirling around so much, so fast, that he falls right into his glass-top table -
my memory,
smashed glass,
Dorian laughing,
quoting Bukowski . . .
Thank you Dorian
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“The Laughing Heart” by Charles Bukowski from the collection of poems and short stories: Betting on the Muse 1993
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is 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 marvellous the gods wait to delight in you.
Constantine Cavafy in 1929 - C.P. Cavafy Archives - Onassis Foundation
It is a cold Montreal Wednesday and I visit Zavi. Besotted by love and anguish, walking knee-deep in 2003 snow, across from my place to his in Little Italy, where his flat nestles between the Cafe Italia and Milano’s, the grocery store where the produce is proudly Italian, and only Italian.
Zavi is a documentary filmmaker I met on a plane the year before. A cat, me a mouse. I like to think this is true. Of course, this is all memory, and I am just Jeanne for him, his friend. He likes my company as he can educate me with the Montreal poets Irvin Layton and Émile Nelligan, and show off his latest productions and music.
Today he introduces me to the Italian artist Franco Battiato. The record jumps a cord or two as trucks shudder to a halt in the impacted snow.
Zavi has this way of wetting the appetite. After Hey Joe he tells me about more about Constantin Cavafy, the Greek poet, his beloved.
Cavafy
“I am from Constantinople by descent, but I was born in Alexandria—at a house on Seriph Street; I left very young, and spent much of my childhood in England. Subsequently I visited this country as an adult, but for a short period of time. I have also lived in France. During my adolescence I lived over two years in Constantinople. It has been many years since I last visited Greece. My last employment was as a clerk at a government office under the Ministry of Public Works of Egypt. I know English, French, and a little Italian.”
Cavafy, unlike Bukowski who wrote spontaneously, wrote obsessively, rewriting each word and each stanza until perfection hit. His themes: young men and love, sex, nostalgia, psychology. He died at 70 years old after a long battle with throat cancer, the words remaining silent, only to be penned, and is instrumental in the revival and recognition of Greekpoetry both at home and abroad. (Wikipedia).
Auden the poet says - Cavafy was a homosexual, and his erotic poems make no attempt to conceal the fact…As a witness, Cavafy is exceptionally honest. He neither bowdlerizes nor glamorizes nor giggles. The erotic world he depicts is one of casual pickups and short-lived affairs. Love, there, is rarely more than physical passion … At the same time, he refuses to pretend that his memories of moments of sensual pleasure are unhappy or spoiled by feelings of guilt.
Zavi picks up his book and reads for me.
Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old
He’d been sitting in the café since ten-thirty expecting him to turn up any minute.
Midnight had gone, and he was still waiting for him.
It was now after one-thirty, and the café was almost deserted.
He’d grown tired of reading newspapers
mechanically. Of his three lonely shillings
Only one was left: waiting that long,
he’d spent the others on coffees and brandy.
And he’s smoked all his cigarettes.
So much waiting had worn him out.
Because alone like that for so many hours,
he’d also begun to have disturbing thoughts
about the immoral life he was living.
But when he saw his friend come in-
weariness, boredom, thought all disappeared at once.
His friend brought unexpected news.
He’s won sixty pounds playing cards.
Their good looks, their exquisite youthfulness,
the sensitive love they shared
were refreshed, livened, invigorated
by the sixty pounds from the card table.
Now all joy and vitality, feeling and charm,
they went-not to the homes of their respectable families
(where they were no longer wanted anyway)-
they went to a familiar and very special
house of debauchery, and they asked for a bedroom
and expensive drinks, and they drank again.
And when the expensive drinks were finished
and it was close to four in the morning,
happy, they gave themselves to love.
Apollo and Hyacinthus by Nicolas-René Jollain (1732-1804), 1769
You have lived a life of wonder, Jeanne Pope! These are lovely glimpses.