the trash can -- Charles Bukowski

Winding up the computer poetry theme, here's a poem suggested by
Salima Virani

(Poem #1421) the trash can this is great, I just wrote two poems I didn't like. there is a trash can on this computer. I just moved the poems over and dropped them into the trash can. they're gone forever, no paper, no sound, no fury, no placenta and then just a clean screen awaits you. it's always better to reject yourself before the editors do. especially on a rainy night like this with bad music on the radio. and now-- I know what you're thinking: maybe he should have trashed this misbegotten one also. ha, ha, ha, ha. -- Charles Bukowski

        (From Betting on the Muse - Poems and Stories
         Black Sparrow Press, 1996.)

I know we've just had a poem by Bukowski, but I was specifically on the
lookout for something on the role of computers in the creative process, and
when Salima sent me today's wonderful little piece, I knew I had to run it.
The light, perfectly balanced verse captures very well, the fluidity, almost
I could say the liberation, that the computer affords the wordsmith -
nothing is permanent unless you want it to be[1], erasing a word, a line, an
entire poem is no harder than a click of a button.

Words on paper have a definite inertia to them - the crossed out lines track
their way indelibly across the sheet, a visible and increasingly messy
record of a work's revision history. Contrast the aesthetic freedom of

                          no
         paper, no sound, no
         fury, no placenta
         and then
         just a clean screen
         awaits you.

And the poem itself definitely reflects that freedom, the lines pouring
forth with careless abandon until they reach a hilariously antipoetic
conclusion that made me laugh out loud. A fitting ending to the theme, I
think. Ha, ha, ha. Ha.

martin

[1] or sometimes, tragically, even if you do - see Poem #1420 :)