Sherry Chandler

“Bukowski: Born Into This”

Poppysmatus is fond of saying if the Nazi Storm Troopers hadn’t existed, pop culture would have had to invent them. How else would we have had Star Wars and Indiana Jones and much of Star Trek, too.

I feel a little bit the same about Charles Bukowski. If we hadn’t had Bukowski, many of the young men poets I have run into would have no role model. The problem is that most young men really haven’t led the kind of life Bukowski led and therefore they tend to find it romantic.

If you want to fill in the gaps in your knowledge about Bukowski, the film “Bukowski: Born Into This” has just been released on DVD – appropriately, I suppose, on World Poetry Day. Here’s part of the Washington Post review:

Odds are that you probably missed “Bukowski: Born Into This” when it briefly played in arthouse theaters two years ago. You might not even know that this independently-made documentary exists. That’s the beauty of DVD: It gives a home to worthy little movies that might otherwise end up homeless.

As its title suggests, “Born Into This” explores the life and legacy of the hard-drinking yet enormously prolific novelist and poet Charles Bukowski, whose blunt way with words inspired artists from David Lynch to U2’s Bono. First-time director John Dullaghan does an admirable job of weaving together the contradictory characteristics — gentle soul one minute, abusive husband the next — that made the man who he was. It’s an intimate portrait, almost uncomfortably so, and that allows the film to translate perfectly to the small screen.

….

Most Poetic Bonus Point: During one extra, Bono and singer Tom Waits each read one of Bukowski’s poems, imbuing his words with their own iconic voices. The only shame is that we don’t get to hear other similar interpretations of the writer’s work.

I have put this movie in my Netflix queue, if only because I like Bono and Tom Waits. More later.

Possibly related posts:

Bukowski

Born Magazine

Born Fighting, Redux

“Born Fighting”

Barack Obama, Poet

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