The Greatest

One of the highlights of my early twenties was seeing this man read at the San Francisco Public Library in 1975. Buk came on stage and sat at a long folding table, with a three-foot tall cactus

on one end and a tub of Heineken on the other. In his legendary style, he drank beer after beer, building his "show" into a raucous crescendo of mirth and satire. About midway through the reading a group of gay men began to heckle him. Buk lectured them on their manners for a few minutes and asked them to leave. Jesus, he was funny.

For my money, Buk is America's greatest poet. Why he was never named Poet Laureate of the US, I just don't understand!

Here is a two minute video of Bukowski's reading of

The Genius of the Crowd.


TS