Charles Bukowski recorded this reading to a live audience in April 1980 at The Sweetwater in Redondo Beach, California. On Hostage, Bukowski reads his poetry for an hour. It’s great to hear his voice in front of an audience–in the moment. This recording is vintage Bukowski–entertaining, merciless and hilarious. Bukowski never suffers a catcalling fool from the crowd without retorting a sharp insult.
Bukowski wrote in 1974, “My contribution was to loosen and simplify poetry, to make it more human. I taught them that you can write a poem the same way you write a letter, that a poem can even be entertaining, and that there need not be anything necessarily holy about it.”
Early on, Bukowski told the Redondo Beach audience, “If you think I look bad, you should see what I see.” Kenneth Funsten wrote in the album liner notes about this evening: “Hank Chinaski, Bukowski’s character in the poems and prose, is also an influence. He’s a Philip Marlowe type perfectly capable of beating up three men and cradling a run over dog on the same night. Like Chandler’s famous detective, Bukowski’s hard-boiled anti-hero paradoxically mixes cynicism and honor, brutality and pathos, failure and success.”
One of my favorite poems from this recording includes “Hemingway”. Listening to Bukowski read, it sounds like you’re sitting at a bar drinking beer with him as he tells a few stories. Somebody shouts out at the end, “Fuck you!” And Bukowski says, “Finally! Let me read this last poem and get the fuck out of this joint.”
Bukowski read his last poem and left before anyone got hurt. Hostage captures Bukowski’s literary punch.
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