Standing in the Shadow of Charles Bukowski

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Don't Try (a gift from the cats of Santa Cruz Street) by David Ivar "Yaya" Herman Dune, ceramic, 2018. Photo by Mayra Zaragoza.

Reflection on the rise and fall and death of the American poet

It’s getting pretty damn crowded trying to stand in the shadow of the poet Charles Bukowski. It’s like apostles to Christ or worse. Everyone has their own version of who he was–however this time we actually have his original words, and don’t have to rely on the delusions of the mind long after the prophet has died. Don’t get me wrong, there still will be stories told by the devotees, there will be exaggerations and lies, and half truths told and repeated as truth incarnate. So much so that the shadow of Bukowski will grow and expand until that shadow no longer represents the figure who cast it. Luckily we still have his words.

The damnable thing about standing too close to the genius of such a lucky muse is that it is almost  impossible not getting lost in this shadow and losing your own style and sense. Such original power is intoxicating and seductive, seducing those close enough and even those at a distance into chanting mindless refrains like Krishna followers banging drums at the airport.

Everyone does want a hero, and Buk is the best anti-hero-hero to come along since Jack Kerouack.  So he serves his purpose, gives purpose and meaning to a lot of meaningless lives, who would be lost in the dive bars and dead end jobs of this metropolis on the desert.

He always had the sense to strike his own matches in an otherwise dark and crowded closet of people who couldn’t find a light in a butane refinery.

Now for all those who follow who are trying to squeeze into that same closet, pull the chain on that same dim light and strike those already burnt matches, just don’t even try. But try as they do it’s just not the same as when Bukowski sat alone striking match after match dropping the spent ones on the floor like so many smoked poems.

We’re damn lucky though to have his words and not just others remembering those words. Damn lucky!

— James Preston Allen, 1994

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James Preston Allen
James Preston Allen, founding publisher of the Los Angeles Harbor Areas Leading Independent Newspaper 1979- to present, is a journalist, visionary, artist and activist. Over the years Allen has championed many causes through his newspaper using his wit, common sense writing and community organizing to challenge some of the most entrenched political adversaries, powerful government agencies and corporations. Some of these include the preservation of White Point as a nature preserve, defending Angels Gate Cultural Center from being closed by the City of LA, exposing the toxic levels in fish caught inside the port, promoting and defending the Open Meetings Public Records act laws and much more. Of these editorial battles the most significant perhaps was with the Port of Los Angeles over environmental issues that started from edition number one and lasted for more than two and a half decades. The now infamous China Shipping Terminal lawsuit that derived from the conflict of saving a small promontory overlooking the harbor, known as Knoll Hill, became the turning point when the community litigants along with the NRDC won a landmark appeal for $63 million.

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