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The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
21–30 of 112 posts
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#22I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
> I'm hardly a SJW
You didn't care about the quote on "castrating him" in this article, or being analytical or relating this to dirty realism so you clearly are.
The article is literally about people like yourself wanting to edit these things from history (article is 2013)
Read Charles Bukowski "The Fiend" and then understand why words like rape and castrating were chosen if you care at all about what's being talked about and why the article was written this way.
I despise trigger warnings but surprises are also unfair on a tech forum even if we are talking Bukowski, it is about child rape -
https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/charles-bukowski/page,22,416... (The Fiend starts half way down)
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I happen to agree, but I feel the need to explain why “rape” is used this way. The original meaning of the word was “to take by force”. Using it to exclusively describe sexual assault is a more modern thing. https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/rape This kind of double meaning in English is very common. The word murder can also be used as “to perform badly”. A way to look at it is English often has two forms of words lik…
I also came here to complain about this use of the word "rape". If you titled this article "The Tragic Rape of Charles Bukowski's Poetry", then it would be used solely as the original meaning. The current title is specifically designed to invoke the idea of a sexual assault - what if the title used the word "Corpse" instead of "Ghost"?
It definitely could. Depends on the meaning of “ghost”. In context of the article, I took ghost to mean “legacy”, rather than the person.
English is frustratingly imprecise.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#24I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
That was my first thought as well, but then I realised there is a big difference when one just grossly exaggerates (e.g. "touching someone without consent is rape") and when the word is used with poetic licence. Rape of a ghost is clearly not meant literally.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the 'take by force' meaning does not make sense, as nothing is being taken from anyone. While its a literary crime, Black Sparrow Press is not doing something they don't have the right to do.
You’re taking a direct translation of the root words literally and only applying it to mean legal rights and excluding moral or ethical rights. In this case, they are taking the original work, corrupting it, and passing it off as the original. Legal, but definitely not moral or ethical. I think “rape” is a little strong, but not inaccurate.
>root words literally and only applying it to mean legal rights
No I'm not.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#26I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
You don't get it, do you?
This asswipe, Martin. He fucked up Bukowski's poems. With his mincing, middle-class stink.
Oh, it's not a dirty poem anymore, it's a vulgar one. By the time he's done, it sounds like Bukowski went to Vassar.
Now you? You're going to mince around like this too?
But Michael Phillips -- he respects Bukowski. He knows how to write. He uses the right goddamn word in the right goddamn place.
Like: "castrating". Because Martin took the balls from his poems. "shitty". Because he shat all over them. "unmolested". Because it's like he diddles kids.
That's the same thing you're doing. You're trying to castrate Phillips. And you know what that is?
Rape.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#27I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
It's 2022, can't we stop conflating analogies and metaphors with "morally equating"?
When we "kill" a program there's no life murdered or equivalent moral issue involved either.
But I don't take issue with the wording just because I've had a relative killed in a bad situation. And I don't think anybody should (or if they do, they should get over it).
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
While word replacements and omissions are bad enough, I totally fail to understand why anyone would have thought that these meandering additions were a good thing? How is this even editing? Edit: While substitutions and what you do, when your Mom sees you writing a piece and points at a word, asking, if you maybe could do without it, are a not so much a necessary thing, the writer of this comment doesn't fully unders…
It never ceases to amaze me that people think they can get away with very obvious stuff, like this editor for example. Bukowski is not some unknown author - he has a good following. Did this editor really think nobody would notice? That nobody would get pissed and complain? I just don’t get it
There is clearly a pathological element in such an operation, whether it was by Martin or someone else. Inserting yourself in the work of somebody else can be a power move, or a subconscious desire to get noticed - like a serial killer leaving signature clues. Or it could be a misguided commercial consideration, that Bukowski can be "too sad / depressing / offensive" and so he needs to be toned down to sell more books.
Besides, Bukowski the writer is famous but Bukowski the poet, like all poetry, enjoys very limited popularity.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#29I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
You don't get it, do you? This asswipe, Martin. He fucked up Bukowski's poems. With his mincing, middle-class stink. Oh, it's not a dirty poem anymore, it's a vulgar one. By the time he's done, it sounds like Bukowski went to Vassar. Now you? You're going to mince around like this too? But Michael Phillips -- he respects Bukowski. He knows how to write. He uses the right goddamn word in the right goddamn place. Like:…
To be honest though, while I don't like what Martin did to the poems, and while he should never have taken those liberties with them, I sort of get what he was trying to do with the example Phillips gave.
By changing "ancient" to "medieval" and "dirty" to "vulgar", he's trying to invoke the switch from Church Latin to the vulgate. I mean, there's the organ music in the background, the red wine like the blood of Christ. And then he's saying, "Look at Charles Bukowski, he writes in the language of the common people".
He then reinforces "no vulgarity" later. An addition about "clean[ing] up my act" is also there, to go with the "cleaning the shit stains" (now also explicitly "cleaning"). Which is about devulgarifying the poems.
To go along with all this he makes the poem about why he writes "like" that, not just "why he writes". To make clear that it's about why the poems are vulgar specifically, not why the poems exist at all.
And then he emphasizes that Bukowski is pleased with the result (he puts "pleased" in twice).
So there's a logic to it. It's a little pedantic and a little pretentious. And it changes the meaning of the poem. And it does some of the very devulgarification it's talking about. But it's not totally dumb.
Re: The tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by Black Sparrow Press (2013)
#30I'm hardly a SJW but it's 2022, can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less. I'm sure I'm gonna get slammed for this but whatever.
>can we stop equating rape which is a shockingly violent violation/assult of a real a human being with anything less
sure, we can but in fact using rape as a metaphor for really bad things that one person does to another person is not used to downgrade rape but really to point a finger at why the thing being done is bad. Because rape has power as a bad thing.
Sure, but I mean we must not use rape as an analogy for anything that is not rape, holocaust for anything that is not holocaust, fraud must only be used for things that are legally prosecutable as fraud and so forth. The language must be cleaned and simplified, metaphor and analogy while a seemingly necessary component of the human mind must be excised.