This is extraordinary. The sample edits given at the end of the article go far beyond normal editorial changes. They completely change the meaning and content of the poem. It is a _different poem_. This comment about the editor struck me: > "Now, when I bring this subject up among a certain crowd, they bristle. They become very defensive of Martin and downright antagonistic toward me while they list the many ways in…
John Martin was the manager of an office supply business in LA and also a rare book collector. He founded Black Sparrow Press specifically to publish Bukowski, who at the time was publishing mostly in obscure magazines or in "chapbooks", which were essentially cheaply produced pamphlets. Martin sold some of the first editions from his collection to fund the company.
He offered Bukowski $100 a month back then, something like $700 a month in today's dollars, to quit his post office job and write full time. Without that, Bukowski, who was what almost 50 years old at the time?, had the choice of either continuing to work at the post office and write on the side, or quit and write full time and face desperate poverty.
Don't get me wrong, if this is accurate about what John Martin has done with his editing, it's horrible and wrong and contrary to some of the other comments here I do not think rape is too strong of a word for it. Hopefully the original works get published at some point.
But without John Martin, most of the poem and stories that Bukowski wrote would have gone unwritten. I found out about Bukowski just randomly browsing the stacks in a university library in the 1980's and I remember the titles jumping out at me. Burning in water drowning in flame. South of no north. The days run away like wild horses over the hills. War all the time. Without John Martin, those books wouldn't have been in the stacks.
I don't know about revered. I can defend John Martin but I can't defend his editing.